Asking for feedback is not an invitation to collaborate
Feedback is essential for the making of good creative work, but it is something that many of us do badly. There are many feedback-giving sins. This blog deals with one of them.
A common fault among feedback givers is that they tend to tell you how they would have done your piece of work if they had been you, its creator, instead of telling you how experiencing it affected them as ‘consumer’ (audience / participant / customer).
They don’t comment on the work that exists – the work that you made. They comment on how a hypothetical work – a work that exists only in their imagination – could look. They compare your actual draft to their pie in the sky fantasy, and find the actual work wanting.
When people, in the guise of giving you feedback, undertake to ‘correct’ your work by trying to change it into what they would do instead then they’ve missed the point of giving feedback. Worse still, they sometimes latch onto your project in a way that is almost parasitic. In the past, especially during my theatrical existence, I used to have people who would try to muscle in on the making of the work. Having blithely speculated on how they would have crafted the material differently to the way I did, they would then announce, uninvited, that they would be happy to give me a hand.
But I didn’t necessarily want this. Their vision for the work was not the same as mine – they had demonstrated this to me by not addressing the work I had made but by inflating their lungs and talking about the imaginary work that lived only in their heads.
Asking for feedback is not an invitation to collaborate.
And not addressing, specifically and directly, the content in front of you with thoughtful and constructive feedback does not advertise you as a good potential collaborator.
If you give feedback, then you must focus on commenting on the content that exists. If seeing that work inspires other thoughts then be quite clear whose head they exist within, i.e., yours. If you can act on those inspirations without plagiarising the extant draft your friend or peer has shown you then go ahead. If you can’t then tough; respect the work that someone else has put together through their own sweat, blood, and tears. Turn away from your fantasy.
If you would really love to collaborate with the creator who has just asked you for feedback, then tell them so. Tell them what you liked about their work instead of instructing them to change it. Tell them that their work has kickstarted your imagination but accept that this might not be the right time for them, as immersed in their own project as they will be, to want to know how.
If you are giving feedback, then remind yourself to respond to the work in front of you. If you feel impelled to make suggestions, first make sure you understand the intentions behind the work – what the creator is hoping to achieve – and then only give advice if it supports those intentions.
Otherwise, accept that this is not your project to play around with and that a possible collaboration with the creator may not happen during a project that was under way before you gave feedback on it. Giving constructive and honest feedback with sensitivity will demonstrate your ability to be creative. If the creator wants to hear more about your suggestions, or even to invite you on board, they will feel encouraged to respond by your constructive and respectful approach.
Cover illustration by Rebecca Stewart
I hope that you enjoyed this blog. If you did find it interesting then you may like my resource Arrows and Honey: How to give, ask for, and analyse feedback on creative projects. You can buy it here.
