How Valuable is an Author's Feedback?

Most consider Michael Jordan to be the best basketball player of all time. His Airness, however, has proven to be less than competent as a general manager (see Kwame Brown). Similarly, Magic Johnson, another fantastic player, made a horrendous coach (and a worse talk-show host).

Historically, the best coaches/judges of talent/etc. tend to be either middling players (e.g., Phil Jackson) or people who never had a professional career. Analysts suppose this has to do with the fact that the top-tier players don't understand the limitations of their inferiors and, consequently, can't figure out how to squeeze the juice from the lemons.

And I wonder if this applies to writers. I wonder if it applies more so, because we're not just lemons, we're an entire fruit basket. If so, does that mean I should hope I suck as a critter? (and, if I do, I apologize to those I've critiqued :)

How do you know a good critiquer?
Perhaps we should hand out championship rings to more easily identify.

Pave the Path to Hell

In Scholastic editor Cheryl Klein's book Second Sight (a compilation of talks she's given at conferences throughout the years), she discusses how to get the reader turning that page, breaking it down to three elements: Mystery (who shot JR), Conflict (the escalating fight between JR and killer), Lack (how will JRs loved ones recover).

Lack is the hardest, IMO, Mystery is hard to do well (without pulling that proverbial wool), and Conflict's probably the easiest (external, that is - internal kind of relates back to Lack).

One of the easiest ways to create external conflict is between characters. I hate you is really easy, but a bit overdramatic most of the time and will wear thin ultra-fast without justification. More believable character conflict will occur on an internalization level with subtlety in dialogue, but to really inject truth into fiction (particularly in 1st POV), you can create conflict through misinterpretation of intention.

You know what your characters mean when they act/say something, but the opposing character does not. Sometimes it's hard to separate, and sometimes you might not want to travel down that path if you've got a bunch of other things blowing up, but layering in misinterpretation of intention can create secondary conflicts that add dimensionality to story and characters (e.g., friends aren't always friends), and, in some instances, can juice up the mystery (e.g., if MC interprets character Friend's actions in a certain way, but reader realizes through story development that there's more going on, then author might should will give us breadcrumbs - via Friend or via MC discovery - along the way that lead to mystery solution).