The five types of beta reader feedback

I've reached another draft milestone with my current project, which means it's time to find strangers on the internet to critique it. For this round I've collected four beta readers, ones who will read my book in exchange for me reading theirs. Strangers are the best: unlike friends and family, they don't care about your feelings and will tell the truth about the problems with your story. My current experience has caused me to reflect on what I think of as the five levels of feedback that I've seen over the course of different books. Each has lines I've tried to read between over the years, eager to milk every last drop of criticism from each reader like a dish towel

Level 1: [silence] The worst type of feedback but also telling. When you give someone your book to read and they're like, "Sure, excited to help," then you never hear back from them or the next time you see them they don't mention the manuscript, there are a couple of options. Either they read ten pages but then became way too busy, or they read ten pages and noped out of it. Though depressing, both tell you a little bit about your story: it wasn't interesting enough to convince the reader to go back (I've had a lot of these)

Level 2: "I read it and I liked it, no notes." Thanks dad. At least this tells you one thing: your manuscript is legible enough that someone was able to complete it then recap it to you like a fourth grader writing a book report. Something about your book inspired them to finish it, even if they don't want to risk your relationship by offering criticism.

Level 3: "I read it, I liked it, but parts were slow." Now we're getting somewhere. What parts were slow? No idea, but there are slow parts somewhere. It's like someone reporting a turd in the pool: it's now the lifeguard's job to search this half a million gallon pool for that turd. At least you know what you're looking for.

Level 4: "I liked it but the part where they were in the woods was slow." Great, that's awesome. Now I know I need to work on the woods. What am I going to do with the woods? No idea, I'll have to figure it out. When I hear this type of feedback do I occasionally spin out and worry that I'm a fraud for thinking that the woods bit was good? Of course.

Level 5: "If you moved the murder to happen in the woods instead of the ice rink, it would speed up the story." The golden child. The blessed reader who can make suggestions to counter their own criticism are invaluable and must be protected at all costs. Ernest Hemmingway once said, "murder your darlings," but no doubt Ernest did not murder his darlings alone. A beta reader had to suggest it.