How a Bad Review Can Help Your Writing
As writers, we are always hoping that our readers and critics are going to love our work. They will leave 5-star wonderful reviews and buy tons of copies of every book you write. As wonderful as this would be, you are most likely going to have an even amount of positive and negative reviews…if not more negative. Even though this can be disheartening, always try to take a positive away from this.
How can this help your writing?
What sucked?: Many negative reviews will be open and unkind about the portions of your book that they hated or didn’t work for them. This is some feedback you can use to think of how else you could have written these parts. If you are writing a book series this can even help to give you some ideas of how to make the next book better.
Anger over character deaths: Some critics will talk about how they think killing off certain characters was wrong or stupid, however, this not only shows how they connected with the people in your story but also that you kept them hooked to find out why this happened. Yes, they may stop reading your series or the rest of the book however, the fact that they took the time to write this review will grab other readers' interest. Based on these reactions, you can look to how you write your other characters' storylines to make the connection to your readers.
Can you right this wrong?: Many times we see some reviews of how readers wanted to see more of other characters or how they wished the storyline would have taken a different direction. You can help to ease these reviews by making special edition alternate short stories to give the readers a different perspective. This makes you think differently as a writer and challenges you to think of different avenues for your characters.
Being a writer and placing your work out there for others to read and the judge is never easy. Just remember that most times you can learn from them and take something away from them. The hard part is creating it and you have created something wonderful. So be proud!