Personalised Feedback

Giving feedback is not easy. It’s a skill that needs to be honed and developed so as not to discourage the receiver or detrimentally harm their confidence. (If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of careless or harmful feedback, you’ll know what I mean.) But with almost two decades of teaching experience, I can confidently say that this is a skill I’ve acquired — and it’s perhaps the one that makes me stand out as a writing coach.

The feedback I give to the writers I work with is honest, considerate, and encouraging. I don’t sugarcoat the truth; I’ll always point out where improvements can be made — that’s my job, after all, and you and your story deserve the truth — but I’ll always, always, deliver that feedback with kindness and respect, as well as find the positives in your work and let you know what you’re doing well so you know when you’re on the right track.

When you submit an assignment for feedback, I do a comprehensive read-through of your workbook to get a sense of where you’re headed. Once I’ve processed your ideas, I go back to the beginning and leave notes in the margin using the comment feature in Word.

My comments generally fall into the following five categories:

• Celebratory comments, prefaced with YOU ROCK!, to let you know what works or to point out improvements you’ve made;
• Questions to encourage you to think critically about your ideas and find solutions to issues that will strengthen the story;
• Suggestions for other possibilities, offered only to illustrate a point or an idea, rather than as a directive to change something — it’s YOUR story and you’re free to disregard any suggestion offered;
• Important things to consider about writing craft or the reader’s point of view — a big part of my role as a coach is to teach so that you can make informed decisions about where to take your story;
• General comments to express my reader’s response to specific parts of the story.

When you receive your feedback, read through it and let the information settle. Don’t start making changes to your story the moment you finish reading my comments. You should take at least a day to ruminate on the insights you gain and let new ideas percolate before deciding on the best course of action.

If, after reading through your feedback and giving it time to settle, you find that you have more questions than ideas, or you’re drowning in new ideas and need a knowledgable sounding board, you can choose to purchase a debrief session in order to gain clarity. Learn more about debrief sessions.

The cost of each assignment submission is AUD $165, or you can purchase all five submissions up-front for AUD $750, for a saving of AUD $75. 

IMPORTANT! — Unfortunately, due to the scaffolded nature of the story-planning process, I cannot provide feedback on the tasks completed in Workbooks #2-5 (#3-5 are completed in the following two courses) unless I’ve done so for all those preceding it. Why? Because I need to understand your story’s bigger picture and all the intricacies introduced right from the first task in order to accurately analyse the story elements you will cover in subsequent tasks.

Bear this in mind when deciding on your payment option. If you anticipate wanting feedback on your story outline, which is completed in Story Fundamentals #3: The Roadmap, and have the capacity to purchase the submission bundle, that would be the better option for you. There is also an option to purchase the whole coaching package.