Reader feedback, whether from a book reviewer or your beta readers, can be an emotional challenge. Your story is like a part of your identity and hearing that it’s not up to par can sting. But if you can get past your emotions, you can gain valuable insight from the negative feedback.
For one thing, a bad review can point to the fact that your work may not be in line with genre expectations. For instance, if your homicidal maniac doesn’t feel scary enough for your target audience, that feedback can be a clue that you need to rework the character’s motivations or make him more dynamic.
It can also be useful to look at the criticism through the lens of reader-response theory, which sees reading as an active process in which readers impart a unique meaning to literary works. This approach to criticism differs from formalism and New Criticism, which emphasized that only what is within a text has meaning.
Some reader-response theorists, such as Bleich, posit that individual readers control the reading experience and others, like Holland, assume a uniform response by all readers called “uniformists.” Whatever approach you take, it’s essential to appreciate your beta readers for their time and expertise. Show your appreciation with clear communication, and resist the urge to tell them why their feedback is wrong or off-base. It’s not their job to defend your work against the criticism of others; it’s their job to help you write a better one.