I have recently sent a novel to be critiqued. While the reader said some very positive things about my manuscript, she also made suggestions for things she thought were ‘not working’. One of these involves deleting a character altogether and making another one much more unpleasant (apparently it is a bad thing if everyone is ‘nice’?). While I am grateful for her guidance on certain things – eg not having too many viewpoints, and am glad she has pointed out a couple of logistical plot flaws that hadn’t occurred to me, I really do not want to write this particular character out of my story. I do not see how the book will work without him and I also think my ‘baddie’ is quite horrible enough already. However, I have spent several hundred pounds on this feedback and so I feel I should follow it. How much should one listen to criticism if it goes against one’s gut instincts?
JOSEPHINE RUSS Battersea, London