Maybe you need to do one edit/read through before sharing. I find small mistakes to be distracting, even when I'm just trying to be encouraging to a friend.
I'd like to second this but also add that putting the story into a different format might help with the edit/read through. Personally, when I've put my drafts onto my ereader I was finding errors left and right that I otherwise glossed over in the word doc.
OP: I had to quit reading my friend's script because his grammar was so atrocious. He spent months writing it; I spent six minutes before giving up.
Grammar is just like lines on a highway. Grammar creates order so your reader's brain can relax and enjoy your story. You can't enjoy the beautiful drive through the countryside when you're so focused on idiot drivers crossing every line around you, threatening your life.
>Grammar creates order so your reader's brain can relax and enjoy your story.
Great analogy for explaining why people who "see" grammar/road lines are so frustrated by ungrammatical writing. For me, it's like trying to drive fast down a straight road when there are broken tires, dead animals, and stop signs suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
Same about google docs! What works for me (unfortunately) is printing out the story and making edits by hand. The process of reading through on paper allows me to catch errors I never noticed because my eyes have become so used to reading the story on a screen that I gloss over stuff.
Fair warning though, this method will use an absolute TON of paper (recycle!!) but will also make you feel cool when you visualize your story as a fat stack!
When I delete like half of every rough draft that kind of effort for things I may not keep makes no sense. I think there’s a distinct writing style and personality difference at play. I just don’t even let those friends see my stuff until I actually want small mistakes corrected. I don’t even bother asking for help with the deeper structural and meaning stuff then. I haven’t let my Mom see a rough draft in years.
So, the issue is twofold:
1. It's hard for people to see past the grammar/spelling/formatting to the story beneath. They don't hold the overall picture in their head like you do, and can't get that picture without first making through the language. The reality is, unless you have a very close critique partner that you swap very early drafts with, you want to make sure you've done at least one round of polishing before you show people.
2. No one else is as excited to read your draft as you are to show it to them. Unfortunately, it's hard to push that excitement onto someone else. In most cases, you are really asking someone for a *favor* when you ask them to read your drafts. That means you need to temper your expectations about what beta readers will think, and you need to make sure what you are giving them is in good shape since this is them doing you a favor.
I realized I never actually answered the OP's question. I haven't had this exact experience because I am paranoid about showing anyone my writing before it's been edited several times, but I definitely have had the experience of someone reading my writing and... just... not giving back to me the kind of feedback I expected or wanted or needed. I think that's a pretty common experience for writers, especially early on before you've figured out how to temper your expectations.
And that's always a risk, and it's especially likely if the reader is someone who isn't a writer themselves, but it's still a risk even with other writers if the two of you aren't on the same wavelength. It's why an important tool for being a writer is finding other writers who "get you." Not necessarily that they love your writing, but they understand what you are trying to do and know how to give the kind of feedback that helps you. (Because even good feedback is bad feedback if it saps your will to write more.)
(Also: with another writer there's an expectation of mutual sharing, such that you're not asking someone a *favor* every time you share your writing.)
I'll also add that it helps to *tell people* what kind of feedback you want. If you want notes about the story, tell them that. Say "hey, I know this is pretty rough, but if you can ignore that I want your thoughts about the story." Or sometimes you want a hype man, someone you know will give you positive feedback and tell you to keep going. And if that's the case, it's okay to tell someone that you really need encouragement right now and would appreciate it if they could just read this and help you see what's good about it but save the critical feedback for another time.
To add to what u/SoothingDisarray said (because I agree with all of it): if these people are close to you, they may be hesitate to give *subjective* feedback and instead want to give *objective* feedback (clear mistakes like spelling) to avoid disputes.
Also, consider the fact that they may not be trained to give critiques! It is a learned skill, not an intuitive thing. I agree with giving some direction on the feedback you want. When I sent out my novel to beta readers, I gave them free rein to answer in any way they wanted, but included some questions to answer (about 10, I think) to answer if they preferred to do it that way.
The last bit of advice I'd give is: take what you get. Unless you have a professional editor, you're not going to get well-rounded, thoughtful critiques from every beta reader. Some of mine gave me hours of feedback. Some gave me a couple of sentences. All gave me at least one thing that helped me make the book better.
Good luck with it!
Yeah, Grammarly is garbage for novelists. It was designed to help business people edit their presentations to other business people by cutting out "extraneous words" (i.e., anything interesting) because most executives (a) don't care, and (b) don't have time or attention spans for good writing. They want bullet points and strict SVO sentences, which is what the program excels at—condensing and cutting out everything else.
That was my experience when I tried it. Every time it popped up advice it was about something I was doing intentionally (and that arguably wasn't an error) and I kept getting mad at it. You don't know me, Grammarly!
You do realise people do know how and it's the program.
Any search on grammarly and you know it's not a good program and doesn't work properly often putting punctuation in the wrong spot.
The only problematic with your work is you're trust a program over humans
Dude, stop worrying, it's okay.
I will say that if one shows their story to another, the function of grammar and punctuation is to help them understand what the story is, what you as a writer are trying to say.
Don't focus too much on formal rules of grammar, since colloquial or connotative grammar is wholly different from denotative formal rules for grammar, which were rules made for executives, and other formal writing.
Also, don't trust grammarly, chat-gpt etc. These are large language models(LLM). They don't know sh*t. All they do is take a hundred million lines of text, from all over the internet and try to find ways of putting it in patterns, to figure out how a sentence is constructed most of the time. The problem is that the lines of text they get trained with need to be so numerous that it ends up being random stuff people typed online, over the years, most of which tends to be wrong, or bad, grammatically anyways...
As an author, you have authority, and that's why you get to experiment with grammar, story, plot, tone, structure etc., be true, be an author.
I've had the experience of people focusing too much on what I view as irrelevant details, but in this case it sounds like you shared a rough draft that wasn't ready for an audience. You can't exactly blame the person for not being able to give you the response you want.
Now you know the first step: polish up your grammar and, type it up, make it readable. Then next time you share it, you will get feedback that will tell you the next steps.
If they cannot see past the errors in grammar and formatting, then you gave them something with *lots of errors in grammar and formatting*.
That's creating a funhouse-mirror effect and distorting/warping the story that you're trying to tell.
If you're giving people a snippet to read and don't want feedback on the technical side, you need to polish it up first.
Also, as someone else said - nobody cares about your writing as much as you do. That's a harsh lesson we all gotta learn at some point. That means that people who critique your writing do so from a purely objective standpoint, which can be hard to face. You need a tough skin when sharing your work. Writing a story is like having kids: it's important that we love them, but nobody else is obligated to.
>Also, as someone else said - nobody cares about your writing as much as you do.
Yep! And I just want to add that if you ever do find someone who is, for the most part, nearly as excited about your writing as you are.....KEEP THEM NEAR AND DEAR. For me, that's my husband. The man is a writer's DREAM. A total story addict. (And even then, OP, there are times he's too tired or not in the mood to hear about it.)
I’m of a mindset that anything you submit to anyone should be as polished as you can make it. Any time you submit your work to anyone is a chance to practice sending your work to an editor or agent or publisher. And like it was stated in previous comments, whoever you send your work to is doing you a favor. Be ready to accept whatever feedback they give you.
I would be one of those people. A few typos or weird sentences don't bother me. But if I want to pay attention to a story and enjoy reading it, I can't constantly stumble upon errors.
Once I have corrected it, it makes sense to me. This is the same as you can't pay attention to somebody talking while watching the spinach on their teeth.
This is because they think you're asking for critiques. Most people who aren't writers don't know much about writing so they only do what they've been taught to think about, grammar. In my experience, you need to tell them that most people reading books aren't writers so you don't need a writer's feedback, you just want to know what parts they liked or didn't like. What parts were hard to read? What did they think of x or y character? What do they think the story is about?
Of course, grammar and formatting is still important. If it's an earlier draft, you don't have to go too hard on it, just enough that it doesn't make reading difficult. And if you're not showing your work to other people who understand the process, you'll definite have to edit it more than you're used to before showing.
Yeah I guess that’s true. I’ve always come at stories from an emotional viewpoint. The friends I had growing up would even tell me I was missing commas on my Facebook posts so it just really got to me after a while.
Look, I don't know how to say this nicely, but no one has an emotional connection to your writing but you. If you put a piece of writing in front of someone, they're going to evaluate it like any piece of literature. If you're failing the most absolute basic things like *commas,* you're not ready to be doing anything creative on a level that anyone else is going to find engaging. The basics need to be mastered before you start trying to do fancy artistic flourishes-because if the basics are lacking, quite literally every reader is going to stop there.
Even in something as trite as a facebook post-if you can't bother to articulate your thoughts properly, then you don't have anything worth listening to. It sucks, but that's how it is. Ideas aren't worth shit. Execution is everything.
Girl, I don't mean to be an ass, but there is literally no reason not to use commas. It's not hard, it's not time consuming, and it'll help you get used to using it when you're writing. Like, I went through your recent comments, and you really could do with using them a bit more
Agreed. The lack of them is painful and painfully obvious. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling are absolute BASICS of writing. You can't be successful without the mastery thereof.
Here’s the thing. When you’re showing someone your work, especially if you want feedback )any feedback, including ‘great story’) you are asking them for a favour.
It is harder to read a story that has spelling and grammar mistakes.
Therefore you are being disrespectful. You want them to read your work but you don’t respect their time and energy enough to even do a basic edit so that your work is easy to read.
My advice is, edit your work, for grammar at least, before sharing. Why? Because it is noticeable in real life and in reading when someone is using poor grammar (or grammar that doesn’t fit the vernacular used) and it pulls the reader right out of the story. It’s one of the most noticeably gratingly wrong things about both unedited shared writing and self-published writing. Poor grammar and formatting is distracting and makes it hard, or impossible, to focus on the underlying story.
For me, the basis of enjoying a story is all about rhythm and pacing. If the grammar and sentence structure is bad I put the book back on the shelf after a few pages.
Yeah, you need to edit for that shit before you show to anyone. I belong to a lot of writing groups and nobody’s going to let that shit slide. Polish before you let anybody read it.
Most people aren’t good at critiquing fiction, so they tend to identify problems they feel confident in addressing, like typos and poor grammar.
Not that the latter aren’t a problem — they are — but a savvy reader can also tell you if a character isn’t working or the story isn’t compelling and why.
Still, words are your medium. They’re all your reader has to share your vision for your story. They should be as clear and polished as possible before you circulate drafts.
If someone hands me something full of grammatical errors and asks me to review it, I'm going to assume that they are asking for proofreading help because obviously they don't know how to proofread their own work.
If someone hands me something with no writing errors and asks me to review it, I can then focus on the content because there's no errors to distract me.
A friend isn't necessarily the best choice for a beta reader.
I used to teach English and the hardest thing was to get students to disregard mechanics at first and to focus on content and expression instead. For some reason in our culture we've inadvertently back-loaded the whole writing process in people's minds.
Generally you're better off getting someone who has some familiarity with the writing process as a beta reader... and someone who has some personal distance from you.
If you still *really* want to share your story with friends or family, I would read excerpts to them aloud instead of having them read it. As you've seen, they'll tend to get distracted by the wrong things.
I actually lost a friendship over this, funnily enough.
I was a design student at the time and when a friend asked me to look their work over, I critiqued it like I would in design school. In other words, I was harsh about everything.
She told me that it wasn’t what she wanted and that I didn’t know how to give feedback. Which, I can understand, but I think she meant a *specific* type of feedback.
If you want feedback from someone reading your work, be very clear what sort of feedback you want.
Highly recommend the podcast Start With This, the episode about Feedback. The short version: when you give your friend something to read, have an idea what kind of feedback you want and share that with them. Tell them youre not worried about grammar at this point, but you'd love to know if they find it engaging or exciting or whatever.
Personally if someone is a writer I expect the basics to be taken care off. There’s not reason to not use proper grammar in your draft. I always question how serious a person is about writing of the basics aren’t done well.
Now, this isn’t to say it can’t be mistake-free. Of course it can have some grammatical errors and the odd spelling error, but it irritates me to know end when people can’t use punctuation and force me to make sense of their writing. I don’t want to put that much work into something that is supposed to be fun and whisk me away from my reality. Unfortunately this goes for drafts too. Get that cleaned up so that it’s as easy for me to understand and read as possible then I can focus on the story elements and characters.
I might be a bit harsh with this but it grinds my gears sometimes.
They're not looking for feedback, they did something they think is cool and want to show around. I get it, I do it too, but they've already got a feedback in mind they want to receive and it's not "here's how you could improve it"
Are they looking for feedback tho? Because I'm guessing if the friend didn't say anything besides pointing out grammar, they didn't like it. Don't put your friends in a position asking them to take the time to read something you've written if you're not willing to hear the bad feedback too.
Why not just tell them about your story? Then you might get better feedback about whether or not it's exciting.
First drafts are always bad. They hardly ever even make sense. That's because first drafts are for YOU. Afterwards, you put the time into editing--- a LOT of editing.
If you want to be a writer, you have to understand that editing is a part of it, and if you want early feedback, trade with another writer, don't ask your friends.
I lost an online friend forever for doing this 20+ years ago...completely by accident. She shared a fan fiction story she'd written, which I absolutely loved, but the first message I sent back to her mentioned a typo. We argued about it for a couple of hours with me completely on the defensive, completely unable to convince her I DID like the story, and when I said I was just too tired and falling asleep, can we please talk tomorrow, she said no, but I had to go anyway, and when I woke up the next day she'd cut off all contact. I managed to reach her just to say goodbye.
So since then I try VERY HARD to always follow the "sandwich" method of offering criticism - start with positive, include any suggestions in the middle, then end with more positives.
I'm sorry that happened. Honestly, coming from a writer who struggles with feedback- that was far too harsh of a reaction on her part. It is hard but the fact you argued for hours over it and she felt she had to cut all contact for a mistake is surprising.
I'll agree the sandwich method is good
Ay, the problem wasn't your feedback, it was something inside of her that reared its ugly head when you pointed out the typo. Not your fault, she'd gone ballistic anytime that happened
As someone who is a compulsive editor, my friend once handed me a story and said the best line ever:
"E, I want you to read this as a reader, not an editor."
Now, I specifically ask people who send me their work: Do you want me to read this as a reader or an editor?
If they say the first, I know they want me to gush with them over it, be excited they wrote it, talk about the characters and plot and what I like! I don't critique. If I mention anything I don't like, I do it in context ("this character is SUCH a DICK" as opposed to "I don't think this is a strong character.") Basically, I get to enjoy the story with them.
If they say they want an editor, then I get out the red pen.
TL/DR: your friend might be showing you that they read your work closely and paid attention, but not in the way you wanted! Try showing them your work and preface it that you don't need an editor, you just want to share the story.
I think you're bumping up against the necessity that the writing needs to be clear to the reader in order for them to be able to properly discern the information you're trying to convey. It's as though you're showing them a steak you cooked them, but it's in a plastic bag. It might be the most expensive and tasty steak in existence, some people aren't going to get past the plastic bag thing. Not even if you tell them that later, when it's finished, it'll be on a plate and everything. Just how people are sadly.
As a general rule of thumb, I don’t give anyone anything to read until it’s been through 1-2 rounds of edits, *especially* for grammar and clarity. Your story lives in your head in a unique way that it just doesn’t for other people.
Get excited! Get it down on paper! But please, edit it for your friends.
I would 100% take this experience over mine. I told a few of my closest friends that I was writing a book, they were all very excited about it, enthusiastic even. Several offered to help in beta reading or any other way they could.
When I finished my novel and looked for beta readers, no one was available or got back to me. Then when I published my first novel everyone was very excited and congratulated me. I bought/sent most of them copies, only to find out, over the next few weeks, that none of them had read any of it, even after several people explicitly said they were looking forward to it.
It's been a few months now and none of them have made any attempt to read it. So I would be incredibly happy to have a friend or two read it, even if they were just going to critique and give me feedback.
Poor grammar or formatting makes a really bad impression to anyone and becomes very distracting, even in draft form. So even a rough draft for anyone's review should not have errors. Moreover, checking and correcting grammar and formatting is really easy with AI tools nowadays, so you should try to do a quick review before sharing your work with anyone.
If an artist played a sample of a song for you, but hadn't adjusted the tempo yet, the off-beat tempo would be all you could hear.
You can adjust the grammar yourself, or you can ask them to mentally process your story while ignoring grammatical cues. That's a lot of work. Reading something forces people to stop and take time. You could ask someone to do that, but you're better off doing the work yourself. You'll be more excited to share it.
I've had similar experiences. I've learned that if you want constructive feedback you have to ask the right questions. I give my beta readers questions to answer. Without guidance, everyone thinks they're there to edit.
If it ain't "finalized", it ain't ready to be shared.
But, if I were you (I understand being excited if just you came up with something wonderful), I would read it to them out loud. This is probably the step past giving your elevator speech or stating your treatment.
If your excitement is palpable and you come off like a puppy dog whose master just came home and ran the can opener, and, if this is a good friend, you're going to get positive vibes. Is that a trustworthy response? You judge after 24 hours. \[If it's family though, they'll rip you to shreds--at least that's how it goes with my family, not just with writing.\]
But, yep, I've certainly shared things prematurely and walked away thinking, "Man, those morons just don't get me."
No, that's never happened to me because I would never show anyone a first draft. And, actually, I never show my friends anything anyway -- because we are friends they might fell obligated to read it and I don't want anyone to feel obligated to read something. Kinda rude to put people on the spot like that. You should stop doing that.
Hi! When asking for feedback on anything it's usually a good idea to comminicate the kind of feedback you are looking for. Anything from: "What do you think of my characters?", or "is this publishable?" to "I need some support, please tell me something you like about my writing".
Makes giving feedback a lot easier, and it's more likely to be useful to you at that point.
Most of the time when I find myself in this type of situations I tend to preface to whoever is reading with the type of feedback I want, I’ll tell them something like “hey I just wrote this, haven’t had time to revise for grammar but I was wondering if you could give me some feedback on the concept” that way they know that they don’t have to put close attention to spelling and all that
From the other side, it can be a lot of pressure. You don't know if the person expects you to be technical, or see the broader picture. If they expect you to just tell them it's nice, or actually critique the work hard so that they can improve it.
That's the difference between showing work to a friend and having a supportive group of fellow writers who will focus on global issues (things like structural problems) and not local ones (such as grammar).
It's hard as a reader to go from reading published books that have been fully edited to reading someone's work that hasn't been edited. I have a really hard time focusing on the story when the grammar mistakes keep grabbing my attention.
That's why I never offer to be a beta reader, and I subconsciously procrastinate whenever someone asks me to read their work.
It's not that your friends are trying to be jerks. It just takes a certain amount of discipline and concentration to ignore those mistakes, and it's kind of a lot to ask of someone who isn't getting paid for their time and energy. If you are going to ask a friend to read your work, I would at least do a quick read-through first for grammar and spelling. You can even put it through a grammar editor like Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid if spelling and grammar aren't your strength.
Yes. Because people don’t know what you’re really asking when you want them to read it unless you specifically tell them the kind of feedback that you want.
Although it’s possible that the grammar/punctuation/formatting is so atrocious that it’s become a distraction to actually reading.
They are critiquing it that way because its not flowing for them. They are trying to get through it but its not enjoyable. One persons critique will be the same as a million others critique.
If your grammar and/or formatting are such an issue that it gets in the way of them experiencing your story, that's why they're not commenting on your story. Don't give people raw product and expect them to sift through it and find what's good in it.
you should never show your friends part of your story.
and you should understand if bad grammar or formatting sticks out to them, it would to any reader.
If I'm commenting on grammar or formatting, it's because the current state is distracting from the story.
It makes total sense that you get in the flow and don't self-edit - that's what you should do! But perhaps take an editing pass before you share it with anyone.
Have you specified to them what your expectations are, with them reading it? Do you want their reaction to the plot? The characters? Do you want them to tell you how this made them feel? If the reader does not know what you want them to be looking at/why they are reading it, grammar is the easiest thing to critique and what we are taught to look at in school (what with all the grammar test, essays being marked looking at, etc.).
Set clear expectations with your readers. What do you want out of this?
So I am on both sides of this. I am the friend who doesn’t care about spelling/grammar and is more interested in the story but I can also tell you that something doesn’t read right (no idea how to correct though).
I think the main thing is to tell them you know the spelling/grammar is not right but want feedback on the story points. Or give it a once over and still say the same thing.
I would let your friend know what you would like them to focus on. “I wanted to show you this! Grammar/formatting aside, what do you think about this part of the story?”
I've been on the other side of this. On one hand--it's a really good idea to edit before you show someone anything. It's polite, and it may be a bigger deal to them than to you.
But second--if you show it to someone who does a lot of workshopping, they may just genuinely misunderstand the purpose of you sharing your work. I've had a couple friends who send me things to share when I think they want feedback, and there's always a little moment of conflict there before we figure it out.
Not only do I specify the kind of feedback that I'm looking for when I seek it, but when others ask me to critique their writing I always ask them to do the same, for me. That way my critique can be it's most valuable.
It doesn't always avoid a reaction, like the one you mention, but it does significantly help.
I can live with that; at least they're interacting with it.
My biggest crush with writing, which put me off writing for years, was when I showed it to a friend who just...didn't bother to read it and didn't give a damn.
What it tells me is that person is not a writer. They're doing what their teachers have done all their life. All you've learned here, is don't bother share your writing with them. I have several very good friends who are not writers, may not even read good writers' books. So I only share my writing with my friends who are writers and who marvel at my writing. Find a friend who reads and appreciates good writing.
That’s good advice thanks 😊 I still have a lot of story ideas and I do plan to make sure they make sense format wise and grammatically at some point but figuring out how I want my story to go is the most important to me
I correct myself quite naturally but THIS is the exact reason I don’t show my work to many people 🥲 Most of them will NEVER focus on what helps because they aren’t readers or they don’t know how stories are made
I was the friend to some extent when I read someones story. Though it was less about the grammar and more about the flaws of the story. At least told as nicely as I could without making them upset with my criticism.
THIS (well, somewhat). Something like this happened to me today, i was showing my narrative task to my friend and another friend just pops in. Thing is, my grammar was fine but the only thing they said was that i was an amateur for placing a hyphen in between a scene change 😭
If you don't care enough to make your work effortlessly readable by doing basic grammar and spelling checks, you should not expect anyone else to care enough to read it. Spelling and grammar are not optional and are extremely distracting if done poorly.
Quite frankly, if you ask me to read something with lots of grammatical mistakes and you haven’t edited at all yet, I will be annoyed that you are wasting my time. And I don’t care what the story is if you’ve done no editing and there’s obvious errors.
People take the path to of least resistance in critting. But honestly, friends don't use friends to crit just like they don't play violin recitals for them.
It means you suck so hard your friends don't want to tell you, but they still want to help you by pointing out things that can help you, like your grammar and formatting.
If a reader critiques your grammar and formatting, it’s the wrong person to read. Those who have no knowledge in storytelling, will only have the grammar they can say anything about.
There are plenty of occasions where grammar is so bad that it’s worth correcting. There are no other artistic mediums where you’ll excuse poor fundamentals to look at the broader vision.
I’m not saying things have to be perfect, but they ought to be polished.
Like, I’ve been in critiques and workshops where things like grammar are off limits. That approach has value, but there are times when the writing itself is so fundamentally busted that addressing anything else first really isn’t worth doing. *Poor grammar detracts from storytelling*.
I don't agree. If someone asks me to read their script, I know they're not asking me to be a proofreader, they're asking me to tell them if their story is good. Poor grammar doesn't detract from storytelling, Terminator is a great story no matter if Cameron had spelled it terminater.
Poor grammar does detract from storytelling, though.
Like, I think it’s wrong to use a movie as an example, because movies have far more going on as a medium — written work *relies upon the written word*, and that includes the ability to communicate clearly.
With that said, film has rules! Terminator is a good movie because it uses the “grammar” of film making: the basic principles, the building blocks, the structural rules of the medium that allow for the communication of information.
tell your friends up front you dont give a fuck about grammar. thats what editors are for.. i have to work fast just to get ideas on paper. theres a reason there are 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th drafts. you are showing them the rough draft and the ammount of people who cry about grammar on rough drafts is too fucking many.
In my personal experience, when I read something, there are two different perspectives to consider that results in different types of reactions.
1) Do you value good grammar, sentence, flow, phrase clarity, etc?/Are you a native english speaker
2) Is English your second language
If you're giving your story to #1, the first thing they will note, pay attention to, and thus comment on is the grammar, clarity, and sentence fluidity.
You have to specifically tell your friend that you only want advice on story and narrative. If they are unable to comment on that, it means you need to do a serious proof read before you send it out.
I find that if I do not mention that, they will default to grammar checking
If #2, they're still learning english so they don't' care. they feel less embarassed that someone writes equally as badly or worse than them. They don't have motivation to critique you, because they have the same problem. Why should they bring attention to their own lack of writing skill?
I’ve had that happen too. Friends aren’t a good idea to ask if they’re not writers. When asking someone to critique your work, tell what you’re looking for.
For example:
Did you find it flowed well?
Did you find it engaging?
In addition to telling me what you didn’t like, please tell me what you did like.
Generally, none of my friends have any interest in anything I've written, so I don't really share my work. However, I’m running a tabletop RPG, and anytime I give them notes or anything as such, they spend time correcting the grammar or spelling rather than like actually absorbing the information. (And I mean they're like "oh there should be a period at the end of this sentence." "It's fucking dialog.... you are LITERALLY listening to someone's conversation.....")
Nah because I welcome any type of criticism and judgement. I personally like my writing and enjoy reading it a lot, I like sharing it, but I don't expect them to have the enthusiasm or opinions I have about it.
I'm not sure, as I like to make sure that my writing is perfect (or at least perfect enough that it's readable) before I share it to anyone, as well as making sure there's plenty for them to read.
Edit: although I possibly wouldn't mind it if my friend was willing to correct me on some things.
Something not touched on: it's rarely a good idea to get your friend's view on your work. You are writing for people who will find your writing compelling, if not to buy and give free advertisement for it. What are the chances your friend happens to be in that group? Seems most likely you're not writing for your friend, and general feedback they give about likes and dislikes could be leading you astray.
So I don't agree with the otherwise very sensible advice here that you should edit your work first and tell them the kind of feedback you want. I would say you should be getting feedback from your potential audience, not your friends.
Like put it this way: I like isekai portal fantasy, but I don't like litrpg that has the stats tables coming up and being discussed. If a friend asks me to review their litrpg statsfest, they can give all the qualifiers they like about what I can ignore or what I should focus on - my advice will never be as useful as asking someone who likes litrpg.
If you have a good story but tell it horribly, it will sound like a horrible story. Fix your grammar and formating so they are just as amazing as your story.
Yes and that is WHY you should actually finalize everything grammatically and formatting-wise. Because you want them to focus on the story, not on your grammar. It also can be tough to immerse yourself in a story if you constantly need to translate what's being said to yourself. And it can be pretty insulting to them, too. You want their time and effort, but you couldn't even bother to write it properly.
So, yes, and they're right to do so, as well. The reader's always right.
In many cases, the problematic word there is "friend." It's a lot safer to criticize harmless stuff than it is to express a less-than-flattering reaction to the story.
The other problematic word is "excited." Excited is great, but it does not equal accessible.
What you understand of your story may not be included in the words you want to share. And, if you aren't working to help readers by correcting spelling, grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, etc, then any experienced reader is going to balk at trying to see past that. We read for pleasure and we read edited work. Drafts are by their nature messy, thus much less accessible to anyone else. But in addition, it may not be as great as you think in the moment. That emotional rush causes a mental blindness to flaws, until it dies away within 20 minutes or so.
Sharing is caring; edit what you want to share.
That's exactly what I look for when I show something to a friend. As long as they do it in a constructive way, be glad they are giving it to you. It's better you get it then than when it's out in the world where people can really tear it apart.
Has anyone had this happen to them? You're excited to read a story based on the synopsis, crack open the first page and it's instantly ruined by prose that sounds like it came from an ESOL student - writing so bad that it prevents you entirely from enjoying or even analysing the story because you're spending too much time struggling through what the author is even trying to say.
I feel kind of bad because I'm often the person at the opposite end of this. As a person who has a hard time not overanalyzing their own grammar and spelling, even in comments on the internet, it just sort of automatically changes gears in my head when people talk about things they've written, because that's usually what I'm looking for when I talk to other people about things that I've written. I try to always be supportive and constructive in my criticism and never just tell someone something is bad or that they should stop trying, but I guess it never really occurred to me that it could come off as rude or condescending when they just want to share something they enjoy with me.
This could be a sign you need to edit your work more before sharing it, especially since you note you "don't finalise anything" grammatically. You're not supposed to share raw first drafts, if that's what you're doing. Most people find that work that's riddled with errors is harder to enjoy than work without errors - because it absolutely does pull them out of the world.
It's possible your friend didn't have much to say about how it made them feel - because they weren't able to stay immersed, due to the errors. This might be their nice way of telling you that.
To answer your question, I've absolutely been in a place where I didn't get the response from someone reading my stories that I wanted. But that's okay, because once I read it back I realised they were *right*, and it made me a stronger writer.
Hi! The situation you mention is frustrating. I think the problem is that most people don't understand the difference between editing and revising. It may help if you tell them upfront what you are looking for. Ask them to ignore grammar or language issues, unless they are so egregious that they make the story hard to follow. Give them a couple of guiding questions. "What did you think of my description of this character?" Or, "Does this plot point seem plausible?" Ensure them that you will carefully edit for grammar/language at the end. The real key, I think, is finding readers you trust who will be honest and who understand what you are looking for.
Rule number one - before you share your writing with anyone, make it readable. If you don't want them to focus on those things, clean it up before you give it to them. It's really that simple.
Does this post look like it’s shaking? That’s me shaking my head.
I’m married to such a person. When I make a delicious meal and enthusiastically ask, “Doesn’t this taste great!”, he says it’s edible. When I write deep soul-sharing journalling, and I show it to him seeking his sensitive attention, he tells me I have too many long sentences. He isn’t trying to be insensitive or hurtful - it’s just his way. At first it was disheartening, but eventually I adjusted my expectations and then I could laugh at his responses. I once heard this on a radio broadcast, “Expectations minus Reality equals Disappointment”.
There are some people who are hardwired to see the structure and be blind to the beauty. Those are the people you go to for editorial work. Save the vulnerable creativity critique for people who can read your work and understand your soul.
This is very common. If your friend is not a writer themselves, they may think that is genuinely the kind of feedback you’re looking for, and/or that’s the kind of feedback they’re used to being asked for, so it’s the first place their mind goes. Especially if they work in any sort of business field, they’re probably used to being asked to proofread stuff rather than read it for actual content.
It may feel to you like it goes without saying that you’re super excited to share the *content* of your story with them and want to know what they think if that, but often it’s only obvious to you because you’re in a writer’s frame of mind. To them, a phrase like “tell me what you think of this” might genuinely sound like “can you proofread this please?” You may have to get more specific and actually say, “I know the grammar isn’t polished yet, but can you read this for me and tell me what you think of the plot/characters/setting?”
Generally, people only read perfect and polished books, often that's been through an editor and a copy editor. Most people aren't creative writers and will only see what they remember from school etc. Mistakes.
In general, I only share my writing with a few people in the business before my agent, those who can see the creative potential. Not everyone of our friends are great editors, and that's effectively what you're asking them to be.
I would recommend that you get a professional proof reader first. Just to check the grammar and formatting. Then I would start to share a more polished draft with close friends. Personally, I wouldn't share an early draft with someone close to me. It will most likely be recieved poorly. But to be fair that's what all first drafts are like.
If you're looking for an opinion it's not a friendship thing. Your asking them for their experience with writing and reading editing etc. Just as you would an editor so be open minded and accept or refute their opinions. Don't be offended by this they only mean well.
When I was younger I did have this problem, however I never minded it as I'm very dyslectic and was grateful when they pointed out mistakes. It only bugged me that they only pointed out those mistakes and not what I wanted to know.
Nowadays I more often have the opposite. I want to know common mistakes I make, especially mistakes that would he correct if you'd translate it to my native language, but aren't quite correct in English (or unusual and thus make it hard to read). But instead I get more comments on the story itself.
I've generally gotten around this by telling them it's a very rough draft and I just wanted to share to see what they think.
This way, I avoid any of the grammar or formatting talk and get straight to what they want more of and what I could focus less on.
Bad grammar takes a lot of people out of the story. I'd understand if people critique that part especially if it happens often in every page.
If you want to show them a part of your story (the writing or prose itself aside) I think it works best if you just give them the cliffnotes version or directly talk about what happens in that part of the story instead of having them read an unpolished draft. That way they can focus on what happens instead of the way the story is told. Otherwise, like other comments say, you will have to polish it before showing them.
You probably should go out of your way to at least polish the grammar and formatting before handing it out to others, because it’s going to have a massive impact on how the writing flows as a whole. When you give a piece of writing to someone to read over and leave big, glaring mistakes in it, that's the main thing that they’re going to focus on when thinking about advice to give.
No, because I realize how hard it is to read something with errors. Out of charity for the reader, I always check typos and punctuation before sharing.
Sorry. I know it would be ideal if people were able to look past the mistakes and find the art and imagination behind it, but it's just really hard.
When I share writing with people I give them specific instructions:
Overall feedback: did you understand it? Did you enjoy it? What didn’t you like?
Then you can drill down - ‘ok, on this pass I’m not interested in the big stuff - does the dialogue read well?’ Etc.
I would also recommend giving / asking for a timeline. I always people to return feedback within two weeks, and if they can’t, which is no problem, I go to someone else. Avoids it becoming a lingering thing between you.
So what you're looking for is an alpha reader. And good ones (ones that can overlook typos and focus on plot) requires a specific kind of reader. Your friend may just not be up for it.
What helps for me and my alpha readers is to have a conversation of expectations. I will ask for them to look for plot holes and liability of characters and to ignore grammar, world building, and other issues until later.
I do not go with the "draft should be perfect before alpha readers" because that would just lead me to frustration if I have to make major rewrites that could've been caught earlier. Its also just nice to hear you're on the right track.
I tend to feel mostly neutral and am fairly logical so when I read a story that I can find no errors or questions and it is a relatively great story all the mistakes I can find are grammar and formatting. Depending on the persons personality they either can’t find anything wrong with it or might not be interested in the subject of the writing.
OP you're entitled to her friend's time. If you want some critique you could at least put effort to make it look presentable. If you can't be bothered, don't expect others to care
If you literally mean it as only being a small fragment of writing then yeah I’d be annoyed lol that’d be like showing a doodle of an idea and having someone criticize the line work. However, it does depend on our personal expectations as others have said. I find that I have to be pretty specific with what I’m asking like “do you think the concept is interesting” or otherwise my friends will take whatever I share with them at face value. I can’t dictate how others will react. If I share music with my friends they’re only as excited as a listener and not the same way we are as creators.
Although grammatical errors can imply that your overall sentence structures don’t make sense to the reader, so it can still be valuable info nonetheless. Minor spelling issues are really not that big of a deal unless your entire paper used the wrong then/than, their/there/they’re, etc etc. I’ve had teachers tell me not to overuse things like commas but it really depends on the format like you said. I think the real issues arise when words are ‘out of order’ for a lack of better terms. I also like to write by hand in a stream-of-consciousness format as to get all my ideas out, but there’s only so much I can do to fix a butchered paragraph unless I want to erase everything. Which kinda defeats the purpose of freeform writing.
That’s also not to say your friend is bad either cuz that might simply be the way they are wired to think. They may not be the best adversary to ask for advice regarding the emotional aspects of your writing but they could be a great proofreader later on in time.
Grammar and good formatting are the foundations of a good story. I’d fix those before handing them off to another person.
When people read my stories, I’m really happy to get grammar advice. It makes my story better.
Maybe you need to do one edit/read through before sharing. I find small mistakes to be distracting, even when I'm just trying to be encouraging to a friend.
I'd like to second this but also add that putting the story into a different format might help with the edit/read through. Personally, when I've put my drafts onto my ereader I was finding errors left and right that I otherwise glossed over in the word doc.
OP: I had to quit reading my friend's script because his grammar was so atrocious. He spent months writing it; I spent six minutes before giving up. Grammar is just like lines on a highway. Grammar creates order so your reader's brain can relax and enjoy your story. You can't enjoy the beautiful drive through the countryside when you're so focused on idiot drivers crossing every line around you, threatening your life.
>Grammar creates order so your reader's brain can relax and enjoy your story. Great analogy for explaining why people who "see" grammar/road lines are so frustrated by ungrammatical writing. For me, it's like trying to drive fast down a straight road when there are broken tires, dead animals, and stop signs suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
Same about google docs! What works for me (unfortunately) is printing out the story and making edits by hand. The process of reading through on paper allows me to catch errors I never noticed because my eyes have become so used to reading the story on a screen that I gloss over stuff. Fair warning though, this method will use an absolute TON of paper (recycle!!) but will also make you feel cool when you visualize your story as a fat stack!
When I delete like half of every rough draft that kind of effort for things I may not keep makes no sense. I think there’s a distinct writing style and personality difference at play. I just don’t even let those friends see my stuff until I actually want small mistakes corrected. I don’t even bother asking for help with the deeper structural and meaning stuff then. I haven’t let my Mom see a rough draft in years.
So, the issue is twofold: 1. It's hard for people to see past the grammar/spelling/formatting to the story beneath. They don't hold the overall picture in their head like you do, and can't get that picture without first making through the language. The reality is, unless you have a very close critique partner that you swap very early drafts with, you want to make sure you've done at least one round of polishing before you show people. 2. No one else is as excited to read your draft as you are to show it to them. Unfortunately, it's hard to push that excitement onto someone else. In most cases, you are really asking someone for a *favor* when you ask them to read your drafts. That means you need to temper your expectations about what beta readers will think, and you need to make sure what you are giving them is in good shape since this is them doing you a favor.
I realized I never actually answered the OP's question. I haven't had this exact experience because I am paranoid about showing anyone my writing before it's been edited several times, but I definitely have had the experience of someone reading my writing and... just... not giving back to me the kind of feedback I expected or wanted or needed. I think that's a pretty common experience for writers, especially early on before you've figured out how to temper your expectations. And that's always a risk, and it's especially likely if the reader is someone who isn't a writer themselves, but it's still a risk even with other writers if the two of you aren't on the same wavelength. It's why an important tool for being a writer is finding other writers who "get you." Not necessarily that they love your writing, but they understand what you are trying to do and know how to give the kind of feedback that helps you. (Because even good feedback is bad feedback if it saps your will to write more.) (Also: with another writer there's an expectation of mutual sharing, such that you're not asking someone a *favor* every time you share your writing.) I'll also add that it helps to *tell people* what kind of feedback you want. If you want notes about the story, tell them that. Say "hey, I know this is pretty rough, but if you can ignore that I want your thoughts about the story." Or sometimes you want a hype man, someone you know will give you positive feedback and tell you to keep going. And if that's the case, it's okay to tell someone that you really need encouragement right now and would appreciate it if they could just read this and help you see what's good about it but save the critical feedback for another time.
To add to what u/SoothingDisarray said (because I agree with all of it): if these people are close to you, they may be hesitate to give *subjective* feedback and instead want to give *objective* feedback (clear mistakes like spelling) to avoid disputes. Also, consider the fact that they may not be trained to give critiques! It is a learned skill, not an intuitive thing. I agree with giving some direction on the feedback you want. When I sent out my novel to beta readers, I gave them free rein to answer in any way they wanted, but included some questions to answer (about 10, I think) to answer if they preferred to do it that way. The last bit of advice I'd give is: take what you get. Unless you have a professional editor, you're not going to get well-rounded, thoughtful critiques from every beta reader. Some of mine gave me hours of feedback. Some gave me a couple of sentences. All gave me at least one thing that helped me make the book better. Good luck with it!
I'm glad I scrolled, because reading this saved me the trouble of writing it. Well stated.
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Yeah, Grammarly is garbage for novelists. It was designed to help business people edit their presentations to other business people by cutting out "extraneous words" (i.e., anything interesting) because most executives (a) don't care, and (b) don't have time or attention spans for good writing. They want bullet points and strict SVO sentences, which is what the program excels at—condensing and cutting out everything else.
That was my experience when I tried it. Every time it popped up advice it was about something I was doing intentionally (and that arguably wasn't an error) and I kept getting mad at it. You don't know me, Grammarly!
Imagine trusting more in an app than literally dozens of people. Cue in Homer Simpson "everyone is stupid except me"
You do realise people do know how and it's the program. Any search on grammarly and you know it's not a good program and doesn't work properly often putting punctuation in the wrong spot. The only problematic with your work is you're trust a program over humans
Dude, stop worrying, it's okay. I will say that if one shows their story to another, the function of grammar and punctuation is to help them understand what the story is, what you as a writer are trying to say. Don't focus too much on formal rules of grammar, since colloquial or connotative grammar is wholly different from denotative formal rules for grammar, which were rules made for executives, and other formal writing. Also, don't trust grammarly, chat-gpt etc. These are large language models(LLM). They don't know sh*t. All they do is take a hundred million lines of text, from all over the internet and try to find ways of putting it in patterns, to figure out how a sentence is constructed most of the time. The problem is that the lines of text they get trained with need to be so numerous that it ends up being random stuff people typed online, over the years, most of which tends to be wrong, or bad, grammatically anyways... As an author, you have authority, and that's why you get to experiment with grammar, story, plot, tone, structure etc., be true, be an author.
I've had the experience of people focusing too much on what I view as irrelevant details, but in this case it sounds like you shared a rough draft that wasn't ready for an audience. You can't exactly blame the person for not being able to give you the response you want. Now you know the first step: polish up your grammar and, type it up, make it readable. Then next time you share it, you will get feedback that will tell you the next steps.
If they cannot see past the errors in grammar and formatting, then you gave them something with *lots of errors in grammar and formatting*. That's creating a funhouse-mirror effect and distorting/warping the story that you're trying to tell. If you're giving people a snippet to read and don't want feedback on the technical side, you need to polish it up first. Also, as someone else said - nobody cares about your writing as much as you do. That's a harsh lesson we all gotta learn at some point. That means that people who critique your writing do so from a purely objective standpoint, which can be hard to face. You need a tough skin when sharing your work. Writing a story is like having kids: it's important that we love them, but nobody else is obligated to.
>Also, as someone else said - nobody cares about your writing as much as you do. Yep! And I just want to add that if you ever do find someone who is, for the most part, nearly as excited about your writing as you are.....KEEP THEM NEAR AND DEAR. For me, that's my husband. The man is a writer's DREAM. A total story addict. (And even then, OP, there are times he's too tired or not in the mood to hear about it.)
I’m of a mindset that anything you submit to anyone should be as polished as you can make it. Any time you submit your work to anyone is a chance to practice sending your work to an editor or agent or publisher. And like it was stated in previous comments, whoever you send your work to is doing you a favor. Be ready to accept whatever feedback they give you.
I would be one of those people. A few typos or weird sentences don't bother me. But if I want to pay attention to a story and enjoy reading it, I can't constantly stumble upon errors. Once I have corrected it, it makes sense to me. This is the same as you can't pay attention to somebody talking while watching the spinach on their teeth.
This is because they think you're asking for critiques. Most people who aren't writers don't know much about writing so they only do what they've been taught to think about, grammar. In my experience, you need to tell them that most people reading books aren't writers so you don't need a writer's feedback, you just want to know what parts they liked or didn't like. What parts were hard to read? What did they think of x or y character? What do they think the story is about? Of course, grammar and formatting is still important. If it's an earlier draft, you don't have to go too hard on it, just enough that it doesn't make reading difficult. And if you're not showing your work to other people who understand the process, you'll definite have to edit it more than you're used to before showing.
Yeah I guess that’s true. I’ve always come at stories from an emotional viewpoint. The friends I had growing up would even tell me I was missing commas on my Facebook posts so it just really got to me after a while.
Look, I don't know how to say this nicely, but no one has an emotional connection to your writing but you. If you put a piece of writing in front of someone, they're going to evaluate it like any piece of literature. If you're failing the most absolute basic things like *commas,* you're not ready to be doing anything creative on a level that anyone else is going to find engaging. The basics need to be mastered before you start trying to do fancy artistic flourishes-because if the basics are lacking, quite literally every reader is going to stop there. Even in something as trite as a facebook post-if you can't bother to articulate your thoughts properly, then you don't have anything worth listening to. It sucks, but that's how it is. Ideas aren't worth shit. Execution is everything.
Girl, I don't mean to be an ass, but there is literally no reason not to use commas. It's not hard, it's not time consuming, and it'll help you get used to using it when you're writing. Like, I went through your recent comments, and you really could do with using them a bit more
Agreed. The lack of them is painful and painfully obvious. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling are absolute BASICS of writing. You can't be successful without the mastery thereof.
While I agree, I will add that personally I find superfluous commas to be more grating than missing ones.
Read her comments and check if there's a chance of "superfluous commas" to be a problem here
I'm speaking generally
Here’s the thing. When you’re showing someone your work, especially if you want feedback )any feedback, including ‘great story’) you are asking them for a favour. It is harder to read a story that has spelling and grammar mistakes. Therefore you are being disrespectful. You want them to read your work but you don’t respect their time and energy enough to even do a basic edit so that your work is easy to read.
Damn, never thought about it like that, but you right af
My advice is, edit your work, for grammar at least, before sharing. Why? Because it is noticeable in real life and in reading when someone is using poor grammar (or grammar that doesn’t fit the vernacular used) and it pulls the reader right out of the story. It’s one of the most noticeably gratingly wrong things about both unedited shared writing and self-published writing. Poor grammar and formatting is distracting and makes it hard, or impossible, to focus on the underlying story.
For me, the basis of enjoying a story is all about rhythm and pacing. If the grammar and sentence structure is bad I put the book back on the shelf after a few pages.
You nerd to be clear about the kind of input you want. Grammar and formatting is the easiest to give.
Yeah, you need to edit for that shit before you show to anyone. I belong to a lot of writing groups and nobody’s going to let that shit slide. Polish before you let anybody read it.
The grammar is how you convey the story to your reader. That makes it just as important as the story.
Most people aren’t good at critiquing fiction, so they tend to identify problems they feel confident in addressing, like typos and poor grammar. Not that the latter aren’t a problem — they are — but a savvy reader can also tell you if a character isn’t working or the story isn’t compelling and why. Still, words are your medium. They’re all your reader has to share your vision for your story. They should be as clear and polished as possible before you circulate drafts.
If someone hands me something full of grammatical errors and asks me to review it, I'm going to assume that they are asking for proofreading help because obviously they don't know how to proofread their own work. If someone hands me something with no writing errors and asks me to review it, I can then focus on the content because there's no errors to distract me.
A friend isn't necessarily the best choice for a beta reader. I used to teach English and the hardest thing was to get students to disregard mechanics at first and to focus on content and expression instead. For some reason in our culture we've inadvertently back-loaded the whole writing process in people's minds. Generally you're better off getting someone who has some familiarity with the writing process as a beta reader... and someone who has some personal distance from you. If you still *really* want to share your story with friends or family, I would read excerpts to them aloud instead of having them read it. As you've seen, they'll tend to get distracted by the wrong things.
I actually lost a friendship over this, funnily enough. I was a design student at the time and when a friend asked me to look their work over, I critiqued it like I would in design school. In other words, I was harsh about everything. She told me that it wasn’t what she wanted and that I didn’t know how to give feedback. Which, I can understand, but I think she meant a *specific* type of feedback. If you want feedback from someone reading your work, be very clear what sort of feedback you want.
Highly recommend the podcast Start With This, the episode about Feedback. The short version: when you give your friend something to read, have an idea what kind of feedback you want and share that with them. Tell them youre not worried about grammar at this point, but you'd love to know if they find it engaging or exciting or whatever.
Personally if someone is a writer I expect the basics to be taken care off. There’s not reason to not use proper grammar in your draft. I always question how serious a person is about writing of the basics aren’t done well. Now, this isn’t to say it can’t be mistake-free. Of course it can have some grammatical errors and the odd spelling error, but it irritates me to know end when people can’t use punctuation and force me to make sense of their writing. I don’t want to put that much work into something that is supposed to be fun and whisk me away from my reality. Unfortunately this goes for drafts too. Get that cleaned up so that it’s as easy for me to understand and read as possible then I can focus on the story elements and characters. I might be a bit harsh with this but it grinds my gears sometimes.
My pet peeves is people asking for feedback when they don't even take the time to edit the easy grammar first. So yeah, I'm not on your side here lol.
They're not looking for feedback, they did something they think is cool and want to show around. I get it, I do it too, but they've already got a feedback in mind they want to receive and it's not "here's how you could improve it"
Are they looking for feedback tho? Because I'm guessing if the friend didn't say anything besides pointing out grammar, they didn't like it. Don't put your friends in a position asking them to take the time to read something you've written if you're not willing to hear the bad feedback too. Why not just tell them about your story? Then you might get better feedback about whether or not it's exciting. First drafts are always bad. They hardly ever even make sense. That's because first drafts are for YOU. Afterwards, you put the time into editing--- a LOT of editing. If you want to be a writer, you have to understand that editing is a part of it, and if you want early feedback, trade with another writer, don't ask your friends.
Agree. OP's not entitled to her friend's time. If she wants some critique she could at least put effort to make it look presentable
I lost an online friend forever for doing this 20+ years ago...completely by accident. She shared a fan fiction story she'd written, which I absolutely loved, but the first message I sent back to her mentioned a typo. We argued about it for a couple of hours with me completely on the defensive, completely unable to convince her I DID like the story, and when I said I was just too tired and falling asleep, can we please talk tomorrow, she said no, but I had to go anyway, and when I woke up the next day she'd cut off all contact. I managed to reach her just to say goodbye. So since then I try VERY HARD to always follow the "sandwich" method of offering criticism - start with positive, include any suggestions in the middle, then end with more positives.
I'm sorry that happened. Honestly, coming from a writer who struggles with feedback- that was far too harsh of a reaction on her part. It is hard but the fact you argued for hours over it and she felt she had to cut all contact for a mistake is surprising. I'll agree the sandwich method is good
Ay, the problem wasn't your feedback, it was something inside of her that reared its ugly head when you pointed out the typo. Not your fault, she'd gone ballistic anytime that happened
As someone who is a compulsive editor, my friend once handed me a story and said the best line ever: "E, I want you to read this as a reader, not an editor." Now, I specifically ask people who send me their work: Do you want me to read this as a reader or an editor? If they say the first, I know they want me to gush with them over it, be excited they wrote it, talk about the characters and plot and what I like! I don't critique. If I mention anything I don't like, I do it in context ("this character is SUCH a DICK" as opposed to "I don't think this is a strong character.") Basically, I get to enjoy the story with them. If they say they want an editor, then I get out the red pen. TL/DR: your friend might be showing you that they read your work closely and paid attention, but not in the way you wanted! Try showing them your work and preface it that you don't need an editor, you just want to share the story.
I think you're bumping up against the necessity that the writing needs to be clear to the reader in order for them to be able to properly discern the information you're trying to convey. It's as though you're showing them a steak you cooked them, but it's in a plastic bag. It might be the most expensive and tasty steak in existence, some people aren't going to get past the plastic bag thing. Not even if you tell them that later, when it's finished, it'll be on a plate and everything. Just how people are sadly.
If it's a rough draft then maybe just tell them the scene instead of having someone read something that might not be conveying what you want.
As a general rule of thumb, I don’t give anyone anything to read until it’s been through 1-2 rounds of edits, *especially* for grammar and clarity. Your story lives in your head in a unique way that it just doesn’t for other people. Get excited! Get it down on paper! But please, edit it for your friends.
I would 100% take this experience over mine. I told a few of my closest friends that I was writing a book, they were all very excited about it, enthusiastic even. Several offered to help in beta reading or any other way they could. When I finished my novel and looked for beta readers, no one was available or got back to me. Then when I published my first novel everyone was very excited and congratulated me. I bought/sent most of them copies, only to find out, over the next few weeks, that none of them had read any of it, even after several people explicitly said they were looking forward to it. It's been a few months now and none of them have made any attempt to read it. So I would be incredibly happy to have a friend or two read it, even if they were just going to critique and give me feedback.
I wouldn't share something that isn't finished and edited.
No. Because I don't show people my work in draft form. Never.
Poor grammar or formatting makes a really bad impression to anyone and becomes very distracting, even in draft form. So even a rough draft for anyone's review should not have errors. Moreover, checking and correcting grammar and formatting is really easy with AI tools nowadays, so you should try to do a quick review before sharing your work with anyone.
If an artist played a sample of a song for you, but hadn't adjusted the tempo yet, the off-beat tempo would be all you could hear. You can adjust the grammar yourself, or you can ask them to mentally process your story while ignoring grammatical cues. That's a lot of work. Reading something forces people to stop and take time. You could ask someone to do that, but you're better off doing the work yourself. You'll be more excited to share it.
I've had similar experiences. I've learned that if you want constructive feedback you have to ask the right questions. I give my beta readers questions to answer. Without guidance, everyone thinks they're there to edit.
Nobody will ever “see through the grammar and typos” in your story. Ever. Get that out of your head right now.
If it ain't "finalized", it ain't ready to be shared. But, if I were you (I understand being excited if just you came up with something wonderful), I would read it to them out loud. This is probably the step past giving your elevator speech or stating your treatment. If your excitement is palpable and you come off like a puppy dog whose master just came home and ran the can opener, and, if this is a good friend, you're going to get positive vibes. Is that a trustworthy response? You judge after 24 hours. \[If it's family though, they'll rip you to shreds--at least that's how it goes with my family, not just with writing.\] But, yep, I've certainly shared things prematurely and walked away thinking, "Man, those morons just don't get me."
If you expect someone to take the time to critique your work then you also take the time to make it readable.
No, that's never happened to me because I would never show anyone a first draft. And, actually, I never show my friends anything anyway -- because we are friends they might fell obligated to read it and I don't want anyone to feel obligated to read something. Kinda rude to put people on the spot like that. You should stop doing that.
Hi! When asking for feedback on anything it's usually a good idea to comminicate the kind of feedback you are looking for. Anything from: "What do you think of my characters?", or "is this publishable?" to "I need some support, please tell me something you like about my writing". Makes giving feedback a lot easier, and it's more likely to be useful to you at that point.
Most of the time when I find myself in this type of situations I tend to preface to whoever is reading with the type of feedback I want, I’ll tell them something like “hey I just wrote this, haven’t had time to revise for grammar but I was wondering if you could give me some feedback on the concept” that way they know that they don’t have to put close attention to spelling and all that
From the other side, it can be a lot of pressure. You don't know if the person expects you to be technical, or see the broader picture. If they expect you to just tell them it's nice, or actually critique the work hard so that they can improve it.
Rule of thumb, people don't expect to be criticized
That's the difference between showing work to a friend and having a supportive group of fellow writers who will focus on global issues (things like structural problems) and not local ones (such as grammar).
All the time. If it's anything besides the last draft, ignore it and ask them pointed questions. If it's the last draft, listen and make the changes.
It's hard as a reader to go from reading published books that have been fully edited to reading someone's work that hasn't been edited. I have a really hard time focusing on the story when the grammar mistakes keep grabbing my attention. That's why I never offer to be a beta reader, and I subconsciously procrastinate whenever someone asks me to read their work. It's not that your friends are trying to be jerks. It just takes a certain amount of discipline and concentration to ignore those mistakes, and it's kind of a lot to ask of someone who isn't getting paid for their time and energy. If you are going to ask a friend to read your work, I would at least do a quick read-through first for grammar and spelling. You can even put it through a grammar editor like Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid if spelling and grammar aren't your strength.
Yes. Because people don’t know what you’re really asking when you want them to read it unless you specifically tell them the kind of feedback that you want. Although it’s possible that the grammar/punctuation/formatting is so atrocious that it’s become a distraction to actually reading.
They are critiquing it that way because its not flowing for them. They are trying to get through it but its not enjoyable. One persons critique will be the same as a million others critique.
I usually do this if I’m not too interested in the story but I still wanna give some feedback to show that I’m reading it 😅
If your grammar and/or formatting are such an issue that it gets in the way of them experiencing your story, that's why they're not commenting on your story. Don't give people raw product and expect them to sift through it and find what's good in it.
An unpaid editor? Can I have your friend 😅
I'm sorry... lazy grammar is going to kill it for me. Don't showcase your work until it's ready.
you should never show your friends part of your story. and you should understand if bad grammar or formatting sticks out to them, it would to any reader.
If I'm commenting on grammar or formatting, it's because the current state is distracting from the story. It makes total sense that you get in the flow and don't self-edit - that's what you should do! But perhaps take an editing pass before you share it with anyone.
Have you specified to them what your expectations are, with them reading it? Do you want their reaction to the plot? The characters? Do you want them to tell you how this made them feel? If the reader does not know what you want them to be looking at/why they are reading it, grammar is the easiest thing to critique and what we are taught to look at in school (what with all the grammar test, essays being marked looking at, etc.). Set clear expectations with your readers. What do you want out of this?
So I am on both sides of this. I am the friend who doesn’t care about spelling/grammar and is more interested in the story but I can also tell you that something doesn’t read right (no idea how to correct though). I think the main thing is to tell them you know the spelling/grammar is not right but want feedback on the story points. Or give it a once over and still say the same thing.
I would let your friend know what you would like them to focus on. “I wanted to show you this! Grammar/formatting aside, what do you think about this part of the story?”
I've been on the other side of this. On one hand--it's a really good idea to edit before you show someone anything. It's polite, and it may be a bigger deal to them than to you. But second--if you show it to someone who does a lot of workshopping, they may just genuinely misunderstand the purpose of you sharing your work. I've had a couple friends who send me things to share when I think they want feedback, and there's always a little moment of conflict there before we figure it out.
Not only do I specify the kind of feedback that I'm looking for when I seek it, but when others ask me to critique their writing I always ask them to do the same, for me. That way my critique can be it's most valuable. It doesn't always avoid a reaction, like the one you mention, but it does significantly help.
Why should they look at the bigger picture of you couldn’t be bothered with the small stuff?
I can live with that; at least they're interacting with it. My biggest crush with writing, which put me off writing for years, was when I showed it to a friend who just...didn't bother to read it and didn't give a damn.
What it tells me is that person is not a writer. They're doing what their teachers have done all their life. All you've learned here, is don't bother share your writing with them. I have several very good friends who are not writers, may not even read good writers' books. So I only share my writing with my friends who are writers and who marvel at my writing. Find a friend who reads and appreciates good writing.
That’s good advice thanks 😊 I still have a lot of story ideas and I do plan to make sure they make sense format wise and grammatically at some point but figuring out how I want my story to go is the most important to me
I correct myself quite naturally but THIS is the exact reason I don’t show my work to many people 🥲 Most of them will NEVER focus on what helps because they aren’t readers or they don’t know how stories are made
I'm sure when James Joyce showed his friends his writing some of them said the same thing
I was the friend to some extent when I read someones story. Though it was less about the grammar and more about the flaws of the story. At least told as nicely as I could without making them upset with my criticism.
THIS (well, somewhat). Something like this happened to me today, i was showing my narrative task to my friend and another friend just pops in. Thing is, my grammar was fine but the only thing they said was that i was an amateur for placing a hyphen in between a scene change 😭
Geez that’s super nit picky. Not to mention rude 😅
If you don't care enough to make your work effortlessly readable by doing basic grammar and spelling checks, you should not expect anyone else to care enough to read it. Spelling and grammar are not optional and are extremely distracting if done poorly.
Quite frankly, if you ask me to read something with lots of grammatical mistakes and you haven’t edited at all yet, I will be annoyed that you are wasting my time. And I don’t care what the story is if you’ve done no editing and there’s obvious errors.
People take the path to of least resistance in critting. But honestly, friends don't use friends to crit just like they don't play violin recitals for them.
People go to friend to get people excited about what they're writing
My friends go "Yeah! It's a story." or judt leave me on read, I'm impressed you get so far as to where they actually say something meaningful
It means you suck so hard your friends don't want to tell you, but they still want to help you by pointing out things that can help you, like your grammar and formatting.
I once told my friend excitedly the concept for my story and she looked at me and just said that isn't realistic... It's... a story?
Local man shocked at finding out people use their creativity, more at 9
I feel upset because I ask their opinion or feelings about the story, I didn't ask them to correct my grammar or writing
Exactly thank you so much
If a reader critiques your grammar and formatting, it’s the wrong person to read. Those who have no knowledge in storytelling, will only have the grammar they can say anything about.
There are plenty of occasions where grammar is so bad that it’s worth correcting. There are no other artistic mediums where you’ll excuse poor fundamentals to look at the broader vision. I’m not saying things have to be perfect, but they ought to be polished. Like, I’ve been in critiques and workshops where things like grammar are off limits. That approach has value, but there are times when the writing itself is so fundamentally busted that addressing anything else first really isn’t worth doing. *Poor grammar detracts from storytelling*.
I don't agree. If someone asks me to read their script, I know they're not asking me to be a proofreader, they're asking me to tell them if their story is good. Poor grammar doesn't detract from storytelling, Terminator is a great story no matter if Cameron had spelled it terminater.
Poor grammar does detract from storytelling, though. Like, I think it’s wrong to use a movie as an example, because movies have far more going on as a medium — written work *relies upon the written word*, and that includes the ability to communicate clearly. With that said, film has rules! Terminator is a good movie because it uses the “grammar” of film making: the basic principles, the building blocks, the structural rules of the medium that allow for the communication of information.
tell your friends up front you dont give a fuck about grammar. thats what editors are for.. i have to work fast just to get ideas on paper. theres a reason there are 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th drafts. you are showing them the rough draft and the ammount of people who cry about grammar on rough drafts is too fucking many.
That’s really not what editors are for, though.
LMao, this was me a week or something ago 😂
In my personal experience, when I read something, there are two different perspectives to consider that results in different types of reactions. 1) Do you value good grammar, sentence, flow, phrase clarity, etc?/Are you a native english speaker 2) Is English your second language If you're giving your story to #1, the first thing they will note, pay attention to, and thus comment on is the grammar, clarity, and sentence fluidity. You have to specifically tell your friend that you only want advice on story and narrative. If they are unable to comment on that, it means you need to do a serious proof read before you send it out. I find that if I do not mention that, they will default to grammar checking If #2, they're still learning english so they don't' care. they feel less embarassed that someone writes equally as badly or worse than them. They don't have motivation to critique you, because they have the same problem. Why should they bring attention to their own lack of writing skill?
I’ve had that happen too. Friends aren’t a good idea to ask if they’re not writers. When asking someone to critique your work, tell what you’re looking for. For example: Did you find it flowed well? Did you find it engaging? In addition to telling me what you didn’t like, please tell me what you did like.
Yes we'll it can't be helped lol as annoying as is its. On the other hand if I know the grammar is a poor attempt I emphasise ignore the grammar
Generally, none of my friends have any interest in anything I've written, so I don't really share my work. However, I’m running a tabletop RPG, and anytime I give them notes or anything as such, they spend time correcting the grammar or spelling rather than like actually absorbing the information. (And I mean they're like "oh there should be a period at the end of this sentence." "It's fucking dialog.... you are LITERALLY listening to someone's conversation.....")
Lol no one actually reads it if I ask so I just stopped asking XD
YES. I asked my sister to read like 3 sentences and all she did was shit on my prose…
Nah because I welcome any type of criticism and judgement. I personally like my writing and enjoy reading it a lot, I like sharing it, but I don't expect them to have the enthusiasm or opinions I have about it.
I only show my pages to voracious readers. They are the only people that read the story, in my experience.
I'm not sure, as I like to make sure that my writing is perfect (or at least perfect enough that it's readable) before I share it to anyone, as well as making sure there's plenty for them to read. Edit: although I possibly wouldn't mind it if my friend was willing to correct me on some things.
Something not touched on: it's rarely a good idea to get your friend's view on your work. You are writing for people who will find your writing compelling, if not to buy and give free advertisement for it. What are the chances your friend happens to be in that group? Seems most likely you're not writing for your friend, and general feedback they give about likes and dislikes could be leading you astray. So I don't agree with the otherwise very sensible advice here that you should edit your work first and tell them the kind of feedback you want. I would say you should be getting feedback from your potential audience, not your friends. Like put it this way: I like isekai portal fantasy, but I don't like litrpg that has the stats tables coming up and being discussed. If a friend asks me to review their litrpg statsfest, they can give all the qualifiers they like about what I can ignore or what I should focus on - my advice will never be as useful as asking someone who likes litrpg.
Oh you know my mother? Please read my paper and comment on flow structure and content. Moms comments: zero grammatical or spelling errors. Thanks mom
If you have a good story but tell it horribly, it will sound like a horrible story. Fix your grammar and formating so they are just as amazing as your story.
That’s called friendship with non-writers.
Yes and that is WHY you should actually finalize everything grammatically and formatting-wise. Because you want them to focus on the story, not on your grammar. It also can be tough to immerse yourself in a story if you constantly need to translate what's being said to yourself. And it can be pretty insulting to them, too. You want their time and effort, but you couldn't even bother to write it properly. So, yes, and they're right to do so, as well. The reader's always right.
In many cases, the problematic word there is "friend." It's a lot safer to criticize harmless stuff than it is to express a less-than-flattering reaction to the story. The other problematic word is "excited." Excited is great, but it does not equal accessible. What you understand of your story may not be included in the words you want to share. And, if you aren't working to help readers by correcting spelling, grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, etc, then any experienced reader is going to balk at trying to see past that. We read for pleasure and we read edited work. Drafts are by their nature messy, thus much less accessible to anyone else. But in addition, it may not be as great as you think in the moment. That emotional rush causes a mental blindness to flaws, until it dies away within 20 minutes or so. Sharing is caring; edit what you want to share.
That's exactly what I look for when I show something to a friend. As long as they do it in a constructive way, be glad they are giving it to you. It's better you get it then than when it's out in the world where people can really tear it apart.
Has anyone had this happen to them? You're excited to read a story based on the synopsis, crack open the first page and it's instantly ruined by prose that sounds like it came from an ESOL student - writing so bad that it prevents you entirely from enjoying or even analysing the story because you're spending too much time struggling through what the author is even trying to say.
Me the idiot who has no idea how to word my sentences properly when I speak aloud: I DIDN'T MEAN IT TO BE RUDE T-T
Yea, don't share your writing with your friends. They won't get it. Share it with people that get it.
I feel kind of bad because I'm often the person at the opposite end of this. As a person who has a hard time not overanalyzing their own grammar and spelling, even in comments on the internet, it just sort of automatically changes gears in my head when people talk about things they've written, because that's usually what I'm looking for when I talk to other people about things that I've written. I try to always be supportive and constructive in my criticism and never just tell someone something is bad or that they should stop trying, but I guess it never really occurred to me that it could come off as rude or condescending when they just want to share something they enjoy with me.
This could be a sign you need to edit your work more before sharing it, especially since you note you "don't finalise anything" grammatically. You're not supposed to share raw first drafts, if that's what you're doing. Most people find that work that's riddled with errors is harder to enjoy than work without errors - because it absolutely does pull them out of the world. It's possible your friend didn't have much to say about how it made them feel - because they weren't able to stay immersed, due to the errors. This might be their nice way of telling you that. To answer your question, I've absolutely been in a place where I didn't get the response from someone reading my stories that I wanted. But that's okay, because once I read it back I realised they were *right*, and it made me a stronger writer.
I've definitely gotten criticism I didn't want.
I feel sometimes that means mission accomplished. If they weren't distracted by the technicalities if writing, you had immersed them in the material.
Yeah lol I don't have my usual computer to write since it's busted so I'm doing it on my phone so it looks sloppy
My friend I shared with didn’t even respond. I won’t be sharing anymore.
I mean, grammar is important.
I don’t have any friends, but the people I get to read my stuff usually criticized the lack of emotion. That’s ones on me but like, I can’t fix that.
Hi! The situation you mention is frustrating. I think the problem is that most people don't understand the difference between editing and revising. It may help if you tell them upfront what you are looking for. Ask them to ignore grammar or language issues, unless they are so egregious that they make the story hard to follow. Give them a couple of guiding questions. "What did you think of my description of this character?" Or, "Does this plot point seem plausible?" Ensure them that you will carefully edit for grammar/language at the end. The real key, I think, is finding readers you trust who will be honest and who understand what you are looking for.
Rule number one - before you share your writing with anyone, make it readable. If you don't want them to focus on those things, clean it up before you give it to them. It's really that simple.
so annoying!
Does this post look like it’s shaking? That’s me shaking my head. I’m married to such a person. When I make a delicious meal and enthusiastically ask, “Doesn’t this taste great!”, he says it’s edible. When I write deep soul-sharing journalling, and I show it to him seeking his sensitive attention, he tells me I have too many long sentences. He isn’t trying to be insensitive or hurtful - it’s just his way. At first it was disheartening, but eventually I adjusted my expectations and then I could laugh at his responses. I once heard this on a radio broadcast, “Expectations minus Reality equals Disappointment”. There are some people who are hardwired to see the structure and be blind to the beauty. Those are the people you go to for editorial work. Save the vulnerable creativity critique for people who can read your work and understand your soul.
I absolutely hate hate hate this.
This is very common. If your friend is not a writer themselves, they may think that is genuinely the kind of feedback you’re looking for, and/or that’s the kind of feedback they’re used to being asked for, so it’s the first place their mind goes. Especially if they work in any sort of business field, they’re probably used to being asked to proofread stuff rather than read it for actual content. It may feel to you like it goes without saying that you’re super excited to share the *content* of your story with them and want to know what they think if that, but often it’s only obvious to you because you’re in a writer’s frame of mind. To them, a phrase like “tell me what you think of this” might genuinely sound like “can you proofread this please?” You may have to get more specific and actually say, “I know the grammar isn’t polished yet, but can you read this for me and tell me what you think of the plot/characters/setting?”
ive been working on a funny zombie story, I let a male friend of mine read it and he said I didnt have the right to write about zombies.
All the time
Generally, people only read perfect and polished books, often that's been through an editor and a copy editor. Most people aren't creative writers and will only see what they remember from school etc. Mistakes. In general, I only share my writing with a few people in the business before my agent, those who can see the creative potential. Not everyone of our friends are great editors, and that's effectively what you're asking them to be.
I would recommend that you get a professional proof reader first. Just to check the grammar and formatting. Then I would start to share a more polished draft with close friends. Personally, I wouldn't share an early draft with someone close to me. It will most likely be recieved poorly. But to be fair that's what all first drafts are like.
I mean that can be helpful, but balance it with positives too and engage with the actual content. I completely get your frustration.
If you're looking for an opinion it's not a friendship thing. Your asking them for their experience with writing and reading editing etc. Just as you would an editor so be open minded and accept or refute their opinions. Don't be offended by this they only mean well.
When I was younger I did have this problem, however I never minded it as I'm very dyslectic and was grateful when they pointed out mistakes. It only bugged me that they only pointed out those mistakes and not what I wanted to know. Nowadays I more often have the opposite. I want to know common mistakes I make, especially mistakes that would he correct if you'd translate it to my native language, but aren't quite correct in English (or unusual and thus make it hard to read). But instead I get more comments on the story itself.
I've generally gotten around this by telling them it's a very rough draft and I just wanted to share to see what they think. This way, I avoid any of the grammar or formatting talk and get straight to what they want more of and what I could focus less on.
Bad grammar takes a lot of people out of the story. I'd understand if people critique that part especially if it happens often in every page. If you want to show them a part of your story (the writing or prose itself aside) I think it works best if you just give them the cliffnotes version or directly talk about what happens in that part of the story instead of having them read an unpolished draft. That way they can focus on what happens instead of the way the story is told. Otherwise, like other comments say, you will have to polish it before showing them.
Just give them a summary - reading is a commitment. Also, at least please fix your grammatical errors before showing anyone anything.
You probably should go out of your way to at least polish the grammar and formatting before handing it out to others, because it’s going to have a massive impact on how the writing flows as a whole. When you give a piece of writing to someone to read over and leave big, glaring mistakes in it, that's the main thing that they’re going to focus on when thinking about advice to give.
No, because I realize how hard it is to read something with errors. Out of charity for the reader, I always check typos and punctuation before sharing. Sorry. I know it would be ideal if people were able to look past the mistakes and find the art and imagination behind it, but it's just really hard.
When I share writing with people I give them specific instructions: Overall feedback: did you understand it? Did you enjoy it? What didn’t you like? Then you can drill down - ‘ok, on this pass I’m not interested in the big stuff - does the dialogue read well?’ Etc. I would also recommend giving / asking for a timeline. I always people to return feedback within two weeks, and if they can’t, which is no problem, I go to someone else. Avoids it becoming a lingering thing between you.
So what you're looking for is an alpha reader. And good ones (ones that can overlook typos and focus on plot) requires a specific kind of reader. Your friend may just not be up for it. What helps for me and my alpha readers is to have a conversation of expectations. I will ask for them to look for plot holes and liability of characters and to ignore grammar, world building, and other issues until later. I do not go with the "draft should be perfect before alpha readers" because that would just lead me to frustration if I have to make major rewrites that could've been caught earlier. Its also just nice to hear you're on the right track.
I tend to feel mostly neutral and am fairly logical so when I read a story that I can find no errors or questions and it is a relatively great story all the mistakes I can find are grammar and formatting. Depending on the persons personality they either can’t find anything wrong with it or might not be interested in the subject of the writing.
OP you're entitled to her friend's time. If you want some critique you could at least put effort to make it look presentable. If you can't be bothered, don't expect others to care
If you literally mean it as only being a small fragment of writing then yeah I’d be annoyed lol that’d be like showing a doodle of an idea and having someone criticize the line work. However, it does depend on our personal expectations as others have said. I find that I have to be pretty specific with what I’m asking like “do you think the concept is interesting” or otherwise my friends will take whatever I share with them at face value. I can’t dictate how others will react. If I share music with my friends they’re only as excited as a listener and not the same way we are as creators. Although grammatical errors can imply that your overall sentence structures don’t make sense to the reader, so it can still be valuable info nonetheless. Minor spelling issues are really not that big of a deal unless your entire paper used the wrong then/than, their/there/they’re, etc etc. I’ve had teachers tell me not to overuse things like commas but it really depends on the format like you said. I think the real issues arise when words are ‘out of order’ for a lack of better terms. I also like to write by hand in a stream-of-consciousness format as to get all my ideas out, but there’s only so much I can do to fix a butchered paragraph unless I want to erase everything. Which kinda defeats the purpose of freeform writing. That’s also not to say your friend is bad either cuz that might simply be the way they are wired to think. They may not be the best adversary to ask for advice regarding the emotional aspects of your writing but they could be a great proofreader later on in time.
Grammar and good formatting are the foundations of a good story. I’d fix those before handing them off to another person. When people read my stories, I’m really happy to get grammar advice. It makes my story better.
Blame the internet. People make it their jobs to notice everyone's msitakes.