When Feedback Lands Hard

Hearing beta reader feedback can be hard. You put your all into telling your story; long stretches working alone as the world and the characters come to life at your fingertips. You go through countless revisions and edits to make sure everything connects just right, making the first few pages come alive. And then, you take those first steps to bring it out into the world. Not with friends who won’t tell you what they really think straight to your face, but with strangers who agreed to preview your book.

And then … you get the feedback. Plot inconsistencies. Confusing transitions. Stakes that aren’t high enough. OK, maybe it’s not all bad, but some of it can cut deep.

I recently started getting feedback from a few beta readers for my book, after months of creation, and heard all those points. Some were easy and obvious – just simple clarifications that a few connective words or changes took care of. But others cut deeper. Not just because it wasn’t clear how to address them, but in how the feedback spoke to my ability as a writer.

My book’s inciting incident is a pivotal choice the main character has to make at the end of the first chapter. And I got consistent feedback asking, as one reader put it, “is he truly conflicted or just has a busy social calendar? I think the reader needs more buy in at this point to keep reading.” That hit my self-confidence hard. If the first chapter wasn’t hooking someone who found the initial concept interesting, what hope was there for a general audience?

But you know what they say, feedback is a blessing. So after a day of reflection, I came back to look at my blurb. These people saw something in the pitch. What had I been promising that got them interested in the first place? I read the first chapter, trying to be as detached as I could. And yeah, I saw it. I really wasn’t weaving enough of the stakes early enough into the book. That’s the first step; acceptance.

Fortunately, from there my structural instincts kicked in as I went into “bug fixing” mode, plotting out what had to be brought into the first chapter and how those changes impacted the rest of the flow. It wasn’t easy, and I still don’t know if I’ve fixed it.

Now I’m sitting with a radically different opening with ripple effects all the way through the story. Ready for the next beta reader to get a fresh set of eyes, and a whole new set of reactions. Rinse, repeat. It’s not an easy process, mechanically or spiritually. But it’s part of the journey.