How to improve your business storytelling, part 2: give (and receive) feedback
If you ever feel like burning your stories, you’re in good company. James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Nikolai Gogol, and (more recently) Ottessa Moshfegh have done it. Franz Kafka, over the course of his life, burned an estimated 90% of his writing. His last request was that his remaining papers be burned unread. (Max Brod—Kafka’s friend, biographer, and literary executor—ignored the request.)
Gordon Lish, one of the most influential and controversial editors of all time, used to tell his students that “You can’t throw enough away," and “You will lose only what you do not need.”
Some comfort, perhaps. But if you’re not ready to give up hope, here are a few points to keep in mind.
“Who thinks we should burn it?”
Get your levels straight
How do you make sure that the feedback you’re giving or receiving has the best chance to be useful? A good place to start is by defining the level of feedback you’ll be dealing with.
There are four basic levels of feedback: concept, structure, line, and proofreading/copyediting.
Concept: This the place for the 40,000-ft. view, where you can talk about the story on its most basic levels. What kind of story do you want to tell? What are its themes, its desired outcomes? At the concept level, you should evaluate the most essential and abstract elements of your story, and feel comfortable with radically different attempts to tell it.
Structure: If you’ve already decided, in broad strokes, on the story’s concept, then the level of structure is where things begin to take shape. This is the perfect place for moving things around. Maybe you’ve started your story with some “throat clearing”—unnecessary exposition that drags and can wait until later (or be removed altogether). Maybe the end fails to resonate because of earlier details that are unclear or nonexistent, or there’s a failed premise, or certain characterizations need to be more meaningful. It can be especially hard to give feedback at this level. Sometimes, the best sort of feedback can be as simple and as vague as “something seems to be missing here.” Even if you can’t identify exactly what that “something” is, it can serve as a jumping-off point to discuss alternative approaches.
Line: After you’re clear on the concept and its structure, it’s time to stop making sweeping changes. Focus on making “streamlined” sentences that help your story’s flow. Try different formulations of the same sentences and paragraphs. There’s no need to get everything perfect, though, because there’s still one level left . . .
Proofread/Copyedit*: The final level is for sticklers who love getting down to the nitty gritty. You want to make sure that every word and punctuation mark is not only in the right place but that it’s unambiguous and easy to understand. As Oscar Wilde said, “I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out.”
*Yes, there is a difference between proofreading and copyediting, but they’re close enough.
“So you’re telling me I should burn it. Anything else?”
It’s always better to give than to receive
If you’re giving feedback, you want to emphasize that your feedback isn’t necessarily advice—your thoughts aren’t gospel—but merely ideas that the recipient can use along with their own. If what you’re saying is helpful, then great. If not, well, maybe it was good as a sober second thought. Before the story is finished, at least it will be exposed to another consciousness outside the echo chamber of a single mind.
If you’re receiving feedback, you want to make it clear that you’re not going to take things personally. It’s easy to take things personally—after all, if it’s your story, it may be a story that’s about you, so clearly the comment on the quality of the story is, in some way, a comment about you as a person. But try, to the best of your ability, to be dispassionate (or pretend to be). Divorcing yourself from your work as much as possible not only allows you to have an objective eye when looking for ways to improve, but it also makes others more likely to give you honest, meaningful feedback without fear of reprisal.
Strive to focus on the words on the page. Resist the temptation to talk about the writer (unless the writer has expressed a willingness to be psychoanalyzed).
“Remarks, thoughts, and reactions to a given piece of writing should be addressed to the room as a whole and not to the author, whose presence, for the rest of us, is superfluous. We are studying the text, what the text actually is rather than what the author might have wanted it to be or thought that it was.”
Conroy is talking about “workshopping” stories in a graduate writing program, but the advice holds for any situation where you’re giving feedback, and is especially true in group settings, where things can quickly turn unproductive.
It’s hard to read with flames in the way.
Storytelling Feedback Matrix
One way to think about feedback is by plotting it on a 2X2 matrix.
Feedback on this matrix: “I like how you made it in Microsoft Word.”
Top-left box
Three smiley faces! To be in this box is great news: someone tells you to make a change, the change is a smart one, and you use it. Maybe there’s a missing detail that you can add. Maybe the story starts at the wrong place, or there’s a confusing turn of phrase to clarify. Maybe you realize your mistake in naming the gentle, stay-at-home father Ted Bundy.
Sometimes the story is flawed at a deeper level. Huggies got in trouble for a tone-deaf ad about putting their diapers to the “Dad Test”—but the company quickly pivoted and released an updated version.
Bottom-right box
Good news! This is where you’ll find yourself when you’ve honed your BS detector (Bad Storytelling detector). Your friend says they love your story about your grandpop’s funeral service—the subtle family tensions and introspective regrets make a great personal story, but it would be better if grandpop leapt out of the open casket and did a backflip. Thanks, friend, we’ll keep it in mind for the next draft.
Burning a manuscript is thirsty work.
Bottom-left box
The box on the bottom left is not ideal. It’s a shame that you didn’t use the advice, because it could have made your story better, but sometimes it’s less a matter of don’t use as can’t use—you’re not skilled enough to implement the feedback, you don’t have enough time to make changes, maybe it’s too early in the process for that level of detail, or you have other organizational constraints. It’s an important distinction to make. There may be many fine suggestions—you shouldn’t have so much flashback, and the first few pages could be cut altogether—that conflict, for whatever reason, with the best version of your story as you see it.
Top-right box
Welcome to your nightmare! Terrible news: not only is this feedback wrong, but you spent time taking it into account and now your story is worse. What should you do if you consistently find yourself looking back on changes that have weakened your work? Try to find different sources of feedback. Don’t second-guess yourself so easily. Whenever possible, take some time away before making any changes, and come back to the page with fresh eyes. If all else fails, buy matches and gasoline.