A challenging but important element of peer reviewing is this: framing feedback in a way that makes helpful suggestions, without imposing your own writing style or preferences on the author. Erin Coull demonstrated skill at this in her winning review for the Fantasy Writing Competition. “I see storytelling as a very collaborative process; a piece of writing requires more active engagement from an audience than any other art form, making audience perspective very important”, she says. “My creative feedback consisted of open-ended questions that they could take or leave, answering and interpreting them based on whatever best suited their voice, characters and story.”
Read this interview with Erin to find out more about her reviewing style, as well as her first steps for giving feedback and her poetry recommendations!
What is the first thing you do when peer reviewing a piece of writing?
I mostly review work by new members to Write the World, so I will start by welcoming my reviewee to the community and thanking them for sharing their work; validation is vital for writers who are perhaps putting their words out there for the first time. My reviewing style is somewhat erratic – I tend to start by picking out lines and phrases that jump out to me, using the highlighting tool to explain why. These moments bring me closer to the core of the piece (as I see it), which I will discuss in my answers to the prompting questions. Writing is deeply entwined with my thought process; I must continue reading and writing about specific words and phrases in order to flesh out my personal interpretation of the piece.
In your winning peer review, you included several questions to the writer. Is this an important part of giving feedback, and why?
Absolutely. Asking a writer both specific and open-ended questions is the best way to help improve a piece of writing, because it leaves creative control with the writer. Thoughtful inquiries and musings also demonstrate the reviewer’s interest in the piece, illustrating that the writer’s words are worthy of a deep level of engagement. This is, in my opinion, the best form of praise a writer can receive. Asking questions can even reveal to the writer elements of their piece they weren’t even aware of, empowering and enabling them to keep writing with increased confidence and value in their work.
Guest Judge Marie Lu praised your ability to help “flesh out the story that the writer is trying to tell” without twisting it “in a way only satisfying to the reviewer”. How did you go about giving suggestions for improvement, whilst allowing the writer to keep control over their own narrative?
I see storytelling as a very collaborative process; a piece of writing requires more active engagement from an audience than any other art form, making audience perspective very important. However, it’s the uniqueness of a writer which gives a story any power or meaning at all, and simply pandering to what readers want dilutes it. Therefore, when reviewing, it’s important for creative feedback to be more than just arbitrary. My critical feedback to writer CaileyTarriane was rooted in the highlights of their writing and how these could shine through even more. My creative feedback consisted of open-ended questions that they could take or leave, answering and interpreting them based on whatever best suited their voice, characters and story.
What is one book, story or poem that you would like to recommend to other WtW community members?
I live in Tasmania, the beautiful horned island state down under The Land Down Under. The island is host to a vibrant community of writers including the emerging poet Kristen Lang. Her recent collection Earth Dwellers was the first book of poetry I ever bought, and it was mind-blowing. Lang’s writings about nature and our place in it are like nothing I have ever read. She broke all the ‘rules’ of poetry I had grown up with and inspired me to start writing my own. If you can find it online, prepare to have your breath stolen, then returned full of mycena spores and starlight.
