How to get comments on a draft — on the sentences, from people who won't install anything
Good feedback on a draft depends on three things you control: how narrow the question is, how little the reviewer has to do before they can comment, and whether each comment comes back attached to the sentence it is about. Get those right and one round of comments turns into a second draft in an evening, instead of a week of back-and-forth.
Why feedback on a draft usually disappoints
You send the file. A few days later you get one of three things back: a document with comments in a format you have to convert, an email with “a few thoughts”, or nothing, because opening the file turned out to be a chore. Even the good case costs you an evening of putting each remark next to the paragraph it is about before you can do anything with it.
None of that is the reviewer's fault. It is the shape of the request.
Ask a narrow question
“Any thoughts?” is the most common way to ask and the least useful. It gives the reviewer the whole job of deciding what to look at, so you get impressions — “it feels long”, “I liked section two”.
Ask about the part you are unsure of instead:
- Does the argument in part two hold up, or is there an obvious objection I have missed?
- Could you repeat the method from section three without asking me anything?
- Is the recommendation in the first paragraph clear enough to act on?
One or two questions is enough. Say also what you do not need — “ignore typos, it will be proofread” saves a reviewer from spending their attention on commas.
Make commenting take no setup
The people whose opinion you most want — a supervisor, a senior colleague, a client — are the least likely to install something, create an account or convert a file in order to give it. Every step between them and the first comment loses some of them.
The best version is a link: it opens in whatever browser they have, on a phone if that is what is in their hand, and they can start commenting straight away.
Get comments back on the sentences
A comment detached from its sentence is a puzzle: “the definition here is too loose” — which definition? Feedback is only quick to act on when each point is attached to the words it is about, in the document you are editing. Then a second draft is a list of decisions — change this, answer that, decline the other — rather than a reconstruction job.
The same holds for the next round. If the reviewer can see what you changed and what you did with each of their comments, they check your answers instead of reading the whole draft again.
How to do it in MindMax
MindMax's Request review is built around those three points.
1. Send a link from the draft. In a Markdown document, open the comments panel menu and choose Request review…. Write your question in Ask reviewers to focus on, check the preview, pick how long it stays open — 7, 14 or 30 days — and send. The link is copied; paste it into the email you were going to write anyway.
2. They comment in their browser. No account, nothing to install. They select a sentence and choose what kind of comment it is — a comment, a question, a suggested rewrite with the wording they would use, a fact to check, a missing source.
3. Their comments land on your draft. Each one appears in your comments panel on the passage it is about, with the reviewer's name. Revise from the ones you agree with: the edits come back as tracked changes, in groups that each name the comment they answer, and nothing is written until you accept it. Reply to the questions, and Decline what you will not change, with a reason they can read.
4. Send the next round to the same link. They see the new version and can switch to See changes for what moved and how each earlier comment was handled.
Where it gets hard
- Markdown only, for now. PDFs, ebooks and Word files cannot be sent for review yet.
- A copy goes to our servers. It is the one MindMax feature that does: a read-only copy of the version you sent, readable by anyone with the link, deleted when you withdraw it or 30 days after the review ends. It needs a free account. What is stored.
- Some people will still reply by email. Put each of their points on its passage as your own comment; it ends up in the same place.
- Vague comments make vague edits. Reply and ask what they would change before revising from “this part is weak”.
Request review · Get feedback on a draft, step by step · Download MindMax