Thick Skin: 8 Things I Learned About Constructive Criticism and How to Handle It

It was a blustery early September afternoon. Despite the wind, the air was hot and still smelled faintly of forest fire, as it usually does in the summer. Work was busier than usual. Though the store typically didn’t have much foot traffic, many customers that day were eager to trade the uncomfortable dry heat of the outside for the slightly less uncomfortable damp mugginess of a basement bookstore.

And I was hiding in the bookstacks bawling my eyes out.

I had come back from my lunch break and could not stop crying. After about ten minutes of increasingly uncomfortable silence, an older gentleman approached me and asked if I was all right. I responded with a shaky voice and smile, asked him if he needed help finding anything, and then started crying again as soon as he was gone. My supervisor emerged from their office not long after, took one look at me, and promptly sent me home, no questions asked.

It’s not quite the most embarrassing moment of my life, but it’s a strong contender for the top ten. And the thing that had made me so upset I had to be literally sent home from work?

Two bad reviews of my play at an ongoing fringe festival.

I find this moment a funny to look back on now. I’ve been writing in various amateur and professional capacities for more than ten years. I’ve been on the receiving end of more criticism than I can count. I made it through my graduate degree thesis play, where I was still receiving revision notes during the play’s staged reading’s performance run. I had always considered myself to have “thick skin”, that constructive criticism was something I could handle gracefully. It didn’t matter how harsh it was, I could “take it”, as if I was some writerly punching bag enduring pain and punishment for some future benefit.

I made a mistake looking at those reviews that day. But I was a self-produced theatre artist at the time and I was in charge of my show’s social media. Fringe festivals move very quickly and you need to be on top of your outreach, particularly on Twitter and Instagram. I was waiting for reviews to come in so I could snag a line or two, put them on a promotion post, and get it out there. My show only had one review so far (a generic one that couldn’t be used for promotion), so I was nearly ecstatic with anticipation when I checked my socials that day and found two more. Those feelings came crashing down very quickly when I saw what was written about me, my play, and my actors, and turned me into a blubbering mess hiding behind a stack of books.

I knew the play had issues (what creative work doesn’t?), but I did think it was a well-told story with compelling characters. The reviews were harsh (2 and 2.5 stars, respectively). One called the play boring, then spent a couple paragraphs criticizing how my dialogue sounded like it was ripped from an episode of Game of Thrones because my French noblewoman character said “fuck” one too many times. The other said the play was “badly in need of revisions” and something about it could be good in the future, but wasn’t worth the time now. I remember feeling completely crushed. No one would want to come see the play now. My future as a playwright in my local theatre was forever ruined now I was the person who wrote “that boring play about the lesbian opera singer!”

The irony is those comments never mattered. Two bad reviews didn’t stop folks from showing up and—judging from the post-show chatter as they were leaving the theatre—loving it. The local queer community (who were the target audience in the first place) saw it multiple times. I can’t even find those reviews now; they are scrubbed from the Internet, alongside their inactive creators.

Since then, I’ve thought a lot about reviews, criticism, and what it means to have “thick skin.” It’s an adage often heard by writers. Criticism—whether it is constructive or not—is part of being a creative. No matter what kind of project you’re working on, someone, somewhere, will always have a negative opinion. I think there is an expectation, particularly when a work exists online, that all forms of criticism are justified, and the creator is supposed to grow that thick skin and accept it for the betterment of their project. But, as with most things to do with writing, there is a balance. There’s a time to listen and a time to disengage.

Because I’m talking about artistic work in general, I’m going to refer to readers, game players, theatre-goers, movie watchers, etc. generally as “the audience”.

1. Your Feelings Are Valid

Criticism hurts. The initial sting that hits when you receive criticism is natural. Telling writers to simply “grow a thick skin and deal with it” invalidates the very real emotions that come when someone picks your work apart. It’s a very specific person who can shrug it off without a care, and, to be honest, most creative people are not that.

Feeling hurt about your work means that you care. You care about the time and effort it took to create it. You are invested in its creation and where you can take it. The important thing here is to accept those hurt feelings and process them in a healthy way. Breaking down crying in your workplace and getting sent home is probably not a healthy way of processing that creative hurt. Biting back at negative reviewers or fighting with them on social media is also not healthy.

Once the initial sting is gone, it is much easier to process the negative criticism and figure out what the reviewer or critic was really trying to say. Sometimes there might be worthwhile points or opinions in that criticism that will be useful for you in the future.

Because my work is now centred online, I receive a significantly larger amount of criticism than I did when I was only doing theatre. Pretty much every week I have something critical in my DMs, in my itch reviews or comments, or in my public bug report form. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting every time I get a negative comment. But instead of handling it immediately, I wait a few days for the sting to subside. Sometimes I share the negative message with a close friend so I can vent about it and move on. I can allow myself to feel as affronted and upset as I want to in the moment, but I shouldn’t make any responses—if at all—until those feelings subside. Most of the time I don’t respond; there’s little point in fighting with complete strangers on the internet about my game’s story, characters, or mechanics.

2. Criticism Is Not Always Personal…

Criticism often feels like an attack. While some critics are genuinely trying to be helpful, it’s easy to read their criticism as a personal affront. It can feel like they’re calling you a bad writer or creative, and that you don’t have the talent or the skill to create the project you’re working on.

But this is often not the case. Art is subjective and nothing is perfect. Every creative project has something to improve upon, even past the point where it’s finished and the creator will not be working on it anymore*. When someone gives you criticism, it doesn’t automatically mean they think you are a bad writer, but rather that they caught an oversight or a mistake. This kind of good faith criticism is offered because the audience is invested in the work and they want to see it become the best version of itself.

I deal with this type of criticism almost every day in my bug reports. Sometimes when I’m handling upwards of +20 bug reports, it can be difficult to not interpret all these errors as if I’ve made a complete mess of my game. I worry sometimes that bugs have ruined player experience. But when I’m handling almost a million words of content, there will always be mistakes. No matter how careful I am, there is always a margin for human error. If I took every bug report personally, I would not be able to make a game at all.

On a related note, you might be interested in my article from 2021, Perfectionism and the Feedback Cycle. There will always come a point when you need to put aside the critical feedback and finish your story. While there may always be something to improve, it doesn’t mean that you will always have the time, means, or energy to make that improvement. At a certain point, you have to say no to the criticism and let the work stand as it is.

3. …Except When It Is.

Some criticism is critical simply for the sake of being critical. Critics who publicly hate on you and your work may do so for a number of reasons:

• They genuinely hated it and they’re upset that they spent their time on it
• They thought they were getting into one thing and they got something completely different. (I get this every so often when folks think they’re playing a visual novel and then they’re upset that they have to “read too much”)
• They’re angry about something completely unrelated and they’re looking for someone or something to yell at
• They’re the type of person who finds ripping creative works apart is fun

Bad faith criticism will always happen, particularly if you’re sharing your work online. When people can hide behind the anonymity of a username, it allows them to say whatever they want, however they want, to whomever they want.

There’s nothing you can do about bad faith criticism. I deal with it by sharing the bad faith comments with close friends, venting about it, and then letting it go. I’m not always great at this. It’s hard to avoid the impulse to snap back when someone is attacking you personally online. But while it’s hurtful and frustrating to receive, the worst thing you can do is engage with it. The moment you snap back at someone who wants to get a reaction out of you, you will only escalate the situation.

4. Not All Criticism Is Valid…

An important part of the creative process is learning to separate helpful criticism from unhelpful criticism. Even when someone isn’t going out of their way to attack you personally and they genuinely want to help you improve your work, their opinions may not be useful.

Writing is a tricky artform. Not everyone who knows how to write knows how to tell a story. I used to be an actor and a musician and I received far less criticism for my work there than I do as a writer. If I did a somewhat mediocre concert, my peers would have critiques for me, but most of the audience wouldn’t know what was off. But writing is different. I think a lot of people believe that because they know what they like in the stories they consume, they have the skill and knowledge to offer useful criticism to a writer. There have been times where the person giving me criticism is extremely passionate about the story and characters, but if I implemented their feedback, it would only make the storyline messier or sacrifice another element in the narrative.

Critical feedback is complicated for in-development works, particularly when those works are shared online. When a work is “in development”, it’s sometimes taken as a sign that the creator is always open for critical feedback and will accept it from anyone. But a single creator cannot filter and parse every single piece of feedback or constructive criticism they receive from their audience—especially when that audience numbers in the hundreds or thousands. At some point, Stranger #601’s opinion cannot and will not matter to you because you do not have time or the energy to dissect their feedback and decide whether to implement it or not.

This is the main reason why there is no bug report channel in Wayfarer’s public Discord and I do not accept public feedback. The game has almost reached 100,000 browser plays. It is impossible for me to consider the opinion of every single person who has played the game, valid or not.

I personally find that public forums make it harder for a writer or developer to create a good story because they are balancing far too many contrasting opinions. When you’re looking for critical feedback, narrow it down to a single group of trusted individuals who know you, your writing style, and the direction you want to take the story. Ten informed opinions will be infinitely more useful to you than 120 unreliable ones.

5. …But Some of It Is.

Deciding which criticism is useful and which is not is not a free pass to avoid ALL criticism. Constructive criticism is still a good—and necessary—thing to improve your creative skill. Sometimes there are useful notes within a bad reaction or a critical response. It can take time to filter it out and you can only really consider it once the initial sting is dampened. However, in general I find paying attention to all types of responses the audience has to your work can give you beneficial insights.

A few months ago, I received a particularly nasty review on itch.io. The review was several paragraphs long, criticized the setting as being too “dark” and “dismal”, the dice roll mechanics for being too difficult, and a note I had left on the level up system about how reloading the page may give you a different result.

I was ready to write this review off because the person who left seemed determined to be overly critical. Every public comment they had left on other games was critical, and they were only interest in pointing out all the things they hated or found “wrong”. But once the critical sting wore off, I did think about what they had said about the level up system. I had originally added the note because another player was confused why they had a different number of skill points when they reloaded a save to redo their point allotment (the level ups was inspired by Fire Emblem games and used to have dice rolls, with the % chance of getting 0 to 3 skill points based on what your character’s health status was when you finished the episode). I realized that this was needlessly complicated, and while some players did get a kick out of finishing an episode and getting hit with 0 or 1 skill point, it was going to cause more frustration to a greater number of players in the long run. I ended up getting rid of the level up dice rolls entirely.

While it may be the last thing you want to do, it is important not to ignore all negative feedback. Sometimes a person’s negative response is what you needed to hear to make a change that improves your work.

6. Reviews Are Not For You

No matter how much you want to know what people are saying about your creative work, sometimes it’s better not to know. Reviews are for the audience, not the creator. They exist to inform other people about what they’re getting into. The folks who write them don’t expect the creator to ever see them—and the same is true for comments on forums or other social media.

If you track down every review and comment made about your work, you are bound to encounter something you don’t like. There is little point in setting yourself up to feel hurt or attacked when you discover criticism that the critic never intended you to se in the first place.

It’s a different situation when a review/comment system is set up with a direct line to the creator. Itch.io’s system is like this: reviews are semi-private, accessible only to the creator and the reviewers’ followers. Ratings and comments are public, and always show up in your notifications. When someone leaves a comment on Wayfarer’s page, I feel like that is directed to me the same way as asks on Tumblr or messages in the public Discord.

7. The Audience is Allowed to Feel Whatever They Want About Your Work

You cannot control how the audience reacts to your work.

I’m sure everyone has been in this situation: you sit down to watch a movie, finish it, and feel like you wasted the last two hours of your life. Not every piece of media is going to be everyone’s cup of tea. There will be people who encounter your work, get part way into it, and then decide, “No thanks, it’s not for me.” They might be angry or upset about it. They may want to critique it. They may want to write fix-it fanfiction where they change everything about the initial story and characters to fit the vision they have.

Those reactions are valid. Attempting to control them and rid yourself of all negative reactions is not.

While creators should find ways to process negative constructive criticism in a healthy way, this does not mean they should censor their audience. Removing public comments, ratings, and other tools that the audience uses to communicate whether or not they liked a work makes it solely about you and your feelings*. And while your feelings as a creator are valid, censoring audience opinion is not a healthy way of managing negative feedback. It’s not up to you to determine how someone reacts to your work.

This is specifically about comments, ratings, and reviews in public spaces, not private ones. In private spaces, the creator should be allowed to handle things however they see fit.

For example, itch.io gives creators a certain level of control over their public pages. Alongside moderating comments, you can also remove the dislike button from your comments page and disable ratings and reviews. There are plenty of reasons why you may want to disable these features (for example: your game isn’t ready for ratings or reviews, your game is a hobby project, you’re getting review-bombed, you’ve had issues with homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, etc. comments in the past).

However, I do find it a little strange when games (either in development or fully released) disable the dislike button and regularly censor or remove negative comments. Even if your game is free, players are allowed to feel however they want about it. Trying to control negative responses or reactions only puts you in an echo chamber of positive feedback and blinds you to issues you may need to address.

8. There’s a Time and a Place for Feedback

This article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning hobby and fan projects. I’ve written a lot of fan fiction in my life and I firmly believe constructive criticism does not have a place in the fan work sphere. If you’re creating for fun or as a hobby, constructive criticism is the last thing you should be worrying about unless you have specifically asked for it.

Something that is intended to be casual should be a safe space for the creator to experiment, practice their craft, and have fun—without the stress of managing constructive criticism.