Getting feedback(or lack of it) from friends

I'm well aware that feedback is important to improvement. Unfortunately, getting that feedback has been very challenging. In some cases it's friends who I really do think would be interested in what I have written of my novel so far and in others cases it's people who asked to see it.

The problem is, except for a few cases, 75% of the people I give it to....never seem to get around to reading it and the ones that do I have to pretty much badger about it constantly.

And I wouldn't mind if it was because it was boring or repellant or unreadable something, but the answer I constantly get is "I can't find the time" or "I'll read it on the weekend". Which all seems like I'm being constantly blown off after a while. I'd much rather someone just tell me "Hey, I get to chapter 3 but then I kept falling asleep" or "I hate your POV character and hope he dies horribly" or "There's no plot" or something to tell me what he problem is.

I can find the time to write it and it's taken two years of my life so far. I even say "Just read one chapter per week and give me honest feedback"(T He longest chapter is 25 pages long, double spaced). That's an hour out of someone's week at the most. Not even this seems to help.

I can't tell if it's really that bad or everyone around me is just total flaky. Am I the only one who has this problem?

Also, everyone I know wants a free copy of the book when it's done. Ironically, I'm offering them a free copy right now and they just don't seem to be interested at all.

edited 10th Jul '12 9:31:33 PM by hpl

Well many people like experiencing a ready story but have no interest in its production. That is to say, if your friends are that hard to get into reading your draft, they probably are not people who enjoy reading drafts and/or giving feedback. Perhaps they don't like to analyse texts at all. It could be your friends have trouble saying "no".

Try finding a beta online.

I used to have this problem. I gave an m/m peice to a male friend of mine and asked him if he could check my anatomy and give me some feedback on it. The next day he contacted me and told me that he had a few drinks, fapped to it and then fell asleep and forgot all about it. I haven't asked him for feedback since.