Photo credit: gigijin (Flickr).

Who should you ask for feedback on your story or novel? Some of them should be fellow writers, so you can be sure they’ll take a critical eye. Some of them should be your target audience, so you can be sure you’ve written your genre well. Ideally, one or two should have a career in English, so they can catch all of your mistakes (and you will make mistakes).

But how many people should you ask for feedback? It should be at least a few, so you can get multiple opinions. If you can find a lot of people who want to read your work, great. David Brin, for example, has about 50 beta readers who he sends all his novels to. But there is one piece of advice that I would strongly recommend.

Don’t send your writing for feedback to everyone who’s interested.

That seems a little counterintuitive. Why wouldn’t you want as much feedback as you can get? It’s simple: you might write something else.

Basic courtesy says you should only send people one thing to review at a time, especially if it’s a novel. If you send your novel to everyone in your social circle who has the time and interest to read it, and then you write a short story in the meantime, you won’t have anyone else to send it to. I learned that the hard way.

So don’t go overboard while looking for feedback, and in the meantime, keep writing.