As many of my friends and family know, I’ve recently begun doing more creative writing in the form of a historical novel and have had many new skills to learn. Fortunately, the classes I’ve taken at Seattle’s Hugo House have been tremendously helpful as I strive to develop compelling characters, put them in interesting situations, and come up with the right balance of scene and summary to tell an engaging story.

Practicing new writing techniques also has helped me realize that writing fiction is incredibly different than the writing that I typically do as a communications professional.

As I build new skills, I’ve received significant feedback from my writing group, my instructor and a few trusted friends. Overall, this feedback has been helpful, but there are times when I have felt discouraged. Other times, I’ve found it challenging to decide whether to accept or reject a person’s input.

For instance, this summer I solicited feedback from an author and teacher of fiction. His opinion was that my plot was flawed and he suggested I scrap my first 100 pages and start over. After mulling over his comments and thinking about whether I agreed with his perspective, I began again. After all, he is the successful author of two novels, numerous short stories and personal essays.

Although it created more work for me, I remain grateful for his feedback because I have never attempted to write a novel and I desperately wanted know how I could improve. Sure, it would have been better if he’d told me that my work was fantastic, but this is a learning process. And it’s probably not realistic to expect to produce a literary endeavor without hard work on the craft of plot development, narrative structure and writing. I also know some of the new skills I’m building will be applicable at work, so I am motivated to keep at it.

But not everyone is so enthusiastic about feedback. According to a Harvard Business Review article, “In a study of seven companies and 11,471 days of creative work, researchers found two striking patterns: First, getting feedback was incredibly rare, indicating that people seemed to avoid it; and second, when people did receive feedback, it generally left a negative emotional residue.”

Negative emotional residue. Yikes! Who wants to create that? I eagerly dove into the article entitled “How to Give and Receive Feedback About Creative Work,” and the research that the author did to address the question: what does effective feedback for creative work look like? Here’s a summary of the main takeaways:

Ask the Right Questions

First, curiosity plays a role in securing feedback. The researchers explain that people who are curious tend to get better feedback than those who are motivated by other desires such as completing a project quickly or eliciting praise. For instance, people who are curious tend to ask more open-ended questions versus asking narrow questions. When professionals ask “What do you think about my work?” or “What else do you think I should cover in this article?” they will elicit very different information than asking something narrow like “What did you think about the ending of my blog?”

The researchers also point out that there are often underlying motives at the root of questions. People may genuinely want feedback, they may want to minimize doing additional work on the project, or they may be looking for affirmation that they have done quality work. Individuals looking to validate their existing ideas tend to ask narrow questions and are often less likely to generate novel or groundbreaking work.

Remember it is an Opinion

The second interesting point in the article was the reminder about the subjectivity of feedback. According to the researchers, “… peers providing critiques who recognized that feedback is a subjective opinion as opposed to an objective statement were more effective in enhancing creativity …”

This is important for those of us reviewing other people’s work. When you give feedback, you are sharing your opinion. The authors of the article remind critics to use first-person pronouns and language like: “What I took away from this is…” or “I really enjoyed … and would like to see more of this.…”

In my writing classes at the Hugo House, students are encouraged to frame critiques in this manner. We often workshop one another’s work and are coached to remember that the authors of the work are vulnerable. We are also encouraged to provide feedback in the form of neutral questions around the craft of writing.

If you work in a creative field and are developing or critiquing creative work, the Harvard Business Review article may offer you some sound and practical ideas for soliciting and sharing feedback, as it did for me. Give it a read and then let me know what you think!