The Writer's E-Zine Home

Writers' Village University - F2K: Free Fiction Writing Course - ePress-online
Writers' Village University Membership Information

Literary Lights

Priscilla Fagan

Critique or Feedback: Is There a Difference?

I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers. John Berryman

This is the dilemma for most writers. Many writing sites have critique groups and, as I’ve seen from experience, most hold nothing back, which results in hurt feelings and nasty arguments. After all, how can you not respond to someone who attacks your hard work? There is an art to critique, or as we at WVU refer to it, ‘feedback’. Nothing is accomplished by tearing apart someone’s creativity, unless you do it with finesse. Writers helping writers is a motto heard among the halls. I can state it best by quoting Emerson. Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.

Whether we call it critique or feedback, it can and should be instructive and inspiring, not harsh and biting. Save that for the critics once you are published. Benjamin Disraeli said in 1860, It is much easier to be critical than to be correct. I believe this is an observation we, as writers, should all take to heart. So, try and take a closer look the next time you give feedback. Are you just being critical? If so, a rewrite is in order.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of someone’s cruel opinions. Apocrypha, The blow of a whip raises a welt, but a blow of the tongue crushes bones. Keep this phrase in mind the next time you give feedback to an aspiring writer. You might inadvertently destroy budding creativity. Writers, whether beginning or published, have been known to be a tad sensitive. Ahem, yours truly included.

W. Somerset Maughan says, People ask for criticism, but they only want praise. Don’t we all? However, I don’t agree 100 percent with his statement. I do agree we all want constructive criticism and I think this brings us full circle.

So, what is the difference between critique and feedback? I’ll defer to Webster.

Critique: an act of criticism, usually unfavorably
Feedback: (this relates back to the work ‘feed’): support, encourage: to supply (a fellow actor) with cues and situations that make a role more effective.

Well, I don’t know about you, but since I choose to learn, I’ll take good feedback over a critique any day.

Have a great summer.

Priscilla, the eternal optimist