How I Review Drafts: Literary Feedback with Derrida, Barthes & Writing Tips

How I Review Drafts: Derrida, Barthes, and Literary Curiosity

If you write short stories, poems, essays, or novel drafts, you’ve probably wondered how to get feedback that actually helps. In reading some drafts, I look for contradictions, gaps, and moments that breathe — guided by insights from Derrida, Barthes, and novels like Noli Me Tangere (classic), Ilustrado (contemporary), and Smaller and Smaller Circles (genre).

I don’t just mark typos or red-line expressions. I read by stumbling through questions, noticing cracks, and occasionally coaxing myself to drag philosophers into the messy mix. This approach to your draft mirrors how I read my own work, shaped by the books and theories I’ve wrestled with over the years.

Why I Use Theory in Writing Feedback

I didn’t plan to become the kind of reader who drops French philosophers into workshop feedback. But after years of teaching literature and asking, how do I help students read deeply? — these things sneak in.

No, I’m not rating your work on a scale of one to ten. I’m listening to what your text says — and also to what it leaves unsaid. Theories like Barthes and Derrida act as guides through the forest of your writing: sometimes they reveal paths I wouldn’t have noticed, sometimes I trip, but they can help me navigate the shrubs and thickets that might have otherwise blocked my way.

And if, through a bit of “deconstruction,” I point out a contradiction in your story, it’s like pausing to admire a strange tree or an unexpected path in the forest: the detour might reveal something I wouldn’t have noticed if I’d stayed on the main trail.

Final Thoughts: My Ongoing Confession as NinangJ

Reading and writing are inseparable. When I sit with your draft, I’m not hunting for mistakes. I’m looking for moments where the text surprises, unsettles, or asks me to imagine alongside it.

Yes, I drag in Derrida or Barthes sometimes, but only because they help me notice what I might otherwise skim over. Feedback like, “Let this contradiction breathe” or “Trust your reader more” isn’t a formula — it’s me, muddling through your words with curiosity, patience, and a bit of theory tucked under my arm.

Your drafts don’t need to be flawless. Mine aren’t either. Together, we can make them richer, layered, and alive. At least, that’s the dream.

Using Derrida’s Deconstruction in Creative Writing Feedback

Derrida reminds us that no text has only one meaning. Every story, no matter how neat, is full of contradictions and gaps. When I read your draft, I search for a clearing — a place where the story hesitates, wavers, or rests in the space of its own telling, letting light and air into the narrative.

Questions I Ask Using Derrida:

• Do your characters say one thing but act another? (These tensions often reveal the heart of the story.)

• Are you leaning too hard on opposites — rich/poor, city/province, tradition/modernity? Can we complicate them?

• Am I tempted to flatten your story into one big message, or can I help you explore the spaces between layers instead?

In Noli Me Tangere, Crisostomo Ibarra advocates for reform while Elias insists on revolution. This tension isn’t fully resolved, even in the next novel, El Filibusterismo. The fire they ignite is hesitant, too clumsy to consume the whole town, yet its flicker reveals the power of unresolved conflict.

When I read a draft, yours or mine, I ask: Can I let the uneasiness stand? Can I let the gaps and contradictions become the clearings where the story breathes?

Barthes’ “Death of the Author” and How It Shapes Feedback

For Roland Barthes, once a book is published, the author is “dead,” and the reader takes over. Your intentions matter, yes, but so does how the story lands on its first reader — me

Questions I Ask Using Barthes

• Am I carried by images, emotions, or sensations — or stuck in explanations?

• Are echoes of other works, myths, or cultural references sneaking in unnecessarily, or can I let the fragments speak for themselves?

• Am I trying to control the reader too tightly, or can I trust them to navigate the story, piecing meaning together from the spaces I leave?

Ilustrado is a carefully crafted pastiche, composed of fragments — journal entries, letters, blog posts, newspaper clippings, and fictional memoirs. The novel trusts readers to piece these pieces together, with meaning slowly evolving, never fixed. At first, it can feel chaotic, but the fragments gradually reveal connections.

When your draft overwhelms with detail, I ask: what if you trusted your readers more, letting them navigate the fragments and discover the story themselves?

When Derrida and Barthes Mingle in Draft Feedback

Just as Ilustrado lets readers assemble meaning from fragments, Smaller and Smaller Circles blurs binaries like justice versus corruption and morality versus violence. The novel doesn’t spell everything out, inviting me to bring my own suspicions and interpretations.

When I read your draft and mine, I ask: Are we leaving space for readers to fill in meaning? Are we letting contradictions breathe and guide the story?

My Key Curiosities when Reviewing Drafts

Are you letting contradictions breathe?

Are you leaving space for readers to fill in meaning?

Checklist for Writers Revising Drafts:

• Read your work as if it isn’t yours

• Notice contradictions and leave them unresolved

• Complicate simple opposites

• Avoid over-explaining; trust the reader

• Leave space for meaning to unfold

• Invite layers instead of hammering one “big message”

My Four-Step Framework for Creative Writing Feedback

1. Step Back – Read it as if it isn’t yours or mine. What gaps jump out?

2. Deconstruct – Look for contradictions, opposites, or assumptions.

3. Shift to the Reader – How does it land? What echoes or gaps emerge?

4. Refine – Lean into tension instead of smoothing it over.