Types of Critique Groups

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Part Five of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

How Do You Group

I've been thinking about crit groups for the past few weeks and have some different configurations dreamed up.

The Hodgepodge: This is just a bunch of writers who happened to find each other. They likely all write something different. Face to face groups are more likely to end up like this. There's a Meetup.com group in my city that fits this description. Everyone who attends is a writer, but they all seem to write something different: mystery, paranormal romance, fantasy, westerns, so on and so forth. I honestly don't see how this kind of group can be of much help aside from grammatical and very basic style issues. Otherwise, what would be considered cliché in one genre would be spot on in another. They can be dangerous places for your writing to be edited, especially if you are impressionable.

The Forum: There are lots of these about, and often many genre writers end up finding their way to these at one point or another. They're great for finding like-minded people, just be wary of those who tend to be there ALL of the time. These people aren't writing; they are talking about writing and I question their seriousness with regards to it. The Forum is also notorious for not being very dedicated. You get random critiques, often from random people, and it's hard to count on them. Oh, and the fluffy bunnies! They're everywhere in The Forum. Tread lightly or they'll sneak up behind you and strike you down with their fluffy rainbow of sugary sweet emotionality.

Genre Group: “Hey, you write Fantasy, I write Fantasy, Bob writes Fantasy, John writes . . . well, terribly, but he's my roommate, we should get together and critique.” Nothing wrong with this one. I think that most personal groups fall into this category. These groups tend to be smaller and often the critiquing is done on a turn by turn basis. This usually works out well for those who are working on short stories or who need larger gaps of time between critiques so that they can get work done. But, if you're looking to churn out work; the gaps between crits can be agonizingly long in some cases, especially if meetings are skipped. My last crit group met once every other week. That means you get a critique every six weeks unless you start doubling them up like we ended up doing. But then there's a holiday, or an emergency, or who knows what and now you're looking at eight weeks or worse. 

Novel Group: I totally stole this one from the writing excuses kids; a small group of no more than five writers, all of a similar genre style, and all working on novels. Each person in the group submits a chapter a week of their WIP and each member critiques all the other chapters. This creates an artificial deadline that drives you to keep moving forward with your novel. No excuses in this group. You don't show up with your work and you get caned by the other members as punishment. But be careful, some people might join this group for the sole purpose of being caned when they fail to show up with their chapter. Naughty. 

Crit Guild: There's a temptation to find writers who are just like ourselves. We want them to have the same voice so that they can hear what we're saying and notice when something doesn't come out quite right. But what happens when everyone listens and no one looks, smells, tastes, or feels? 

This third crit group is likened to an RPG guild. In a guild you try to have characters whose strengths lie in different areas. You have the ranger who attacks from afar, the soldier who carries the front line into battle, the healer who keeps everyone's stats up. Super hero groups get this too. Heck, even we as writers understand it when we are creating our group of companions. Unfortunately, we forget this valuable lesson once we get to critiquing. 

In a Critique Guild you might have one person who is strong in dialogue, another at pacing, another at setting, you might even have your token grammar nazi. Alone, they can manage well enough, but bring them together and you are UNSTOPPABLE!!!11!!1ELEVENTY ONE PWNAGE!!!

Each member focuses on their strength when they crit. They can give broad opinions too, “The opening works really well,” but Dialog-man focuses on your dialog, Grammar Nazi Girl focuses on your grammar, token annoying guy brings the snacks. This way, when you get your WIP back, you can go through each crit and work on that focus area. Of course the trouble is, how do you find these people? Do you use Cerebro to search them out? Do you find the local guild house for Grammar Nazis?

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I think I'd like to try the Crit Guild but have no idea how I would figure out who is strong at what? Heck, I don't even know what I'm strong at. Dialog, I suppose. Yup, that's it, Dialog Dave. It works. Do you just ask what writers find comes easiest for them, what they get the most comments on (hey, that's a good idea)?

Feedback please. :)

Critique Group Rules

Posted by Unknown |4 comments

Part Four of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Remember critique circles? When you'd go out and drop a wad of cash on a huge stack of copies all collated and stapled, text double spaced leaving just enough room for inline comments. Remember that feel of the warm ink and smooth copy paper in your hands? The slightly metallic smell of the freshly burned carbon. The lugging of all of those copies into a class and wishing them luck on their journey as they were passed around the room. “Fly little birdies, fly.”

Remember getting them back? By and large the feedback you get on most wasn't worth the fifty cents a copy that you blew on getting them printed in the first place. You got a lot back with “Wow, great story!” scribbled on them with silly little smiley faces, a bunch with meandering comments that didn't make any sense, some came back a gory mess, and maybe one or two that were actually worth a damn. Oh, and let us not forget that one jerk who returns your story with nothing written on it at all. Thanks Jasper; appreciate it.

All of my different experiences with crit groups led me to come up with my own "rules" with regards as to what should happen during crit group.   

Thoughts On Rules:

I think that there have to be parameters set up for crit groups. Get too many artsy people collected in one place and drama is sure to ensue. Remember, the key to a critique is open, and honest feedback.

Don't Talk Back: When you're being critiqued you sit there with your notepad and copy of the story, keep your mouth shut, and you listen. Period. As soon as the back and forth banter starts, even if it's all positive and Rainbow Brighty, you're affecting the critique and won't get honest feedback. We read body language, intonation, all those subtle hints and cues that others give off. And since humans have a strange desire to please those that we are around so that we appear favorably in their eyes, we'll adjust our feedback accordingly.

Don't Explain Yourself: When you send your story off to an agent or editor, you're not going to get to explain things. “Obviously you didn't get it, you see, so and so has to do such and such in order for this to happen so . . . .” Uh, no. You're story has to stand on its own two feet, so let it. If the reader didn't understand something, that's your fault, not there's. Now you just have to decide if you need to clear that part of the story up with your writing or that you like the ambiguity. 

Constructive Feedback Only: It's fine if you feel like there is a problem in a story but you can't put your finger on what it is. Just make sure you note that. “At this point in the story I found myself drifting away but I'm not sure why.” Also, try to give them something to go on. It's your job as the critic to provide more than just a read through.

The Critic is ALWAYS Right: If someone is telling you how something in your story made them feel, that's how it made them feel. They can't be wrong about that. Opinions are never wrong, just different. Now, whether you act on that opinion is up to you, but don't discredit it.

Don't Disagree: At least don't 'openly' disagree. To do so tells your critic that you don't value their opinion. In the future, said critic is not going to give you their open and honest thoughts. They'll filter their feedback so as to spare you're fragile ego. A tell tale sign of this is when your writing suddenly goes from being filled with feedback to receiving nothing but praise. It's not that you got into a car accident and turned into Stephen flipping King overnight, it's because no one wants to argue with you about how they feel about your story.

Take Notes: All of these rules don't mean that you don't get to interact with anyone. Once the critique is done, then you get to ask questions. If you didn't fully understand something that someone said, ask them about it. If you get an idea and think it might solve their problem with a story element, run it by them.

Wait Till The End: Related to the above, I think that questions should come at the very end. In this regard I like the crit circle setup. You go around in a circle, starting next to the author, everyone goes through their feedback, highlighting points that they think might need clarification or that really stood out to them as either good or bad, and then only at the very end does the author get to ask questions. This is a huge time saver.

Time Limits!!!!: I've been subject to no time limits before and it is an agonizingly miserable experience. You've done your crit, you're ready to move on, but said author wants to pick pick pick at your brain until nothing's left. Again, this is yet another way to earn yourself 'glowing' reviews.

Write Your Own Damn Story: Feedback should be general, and not specific. Rewrites should not occur during crit group. Two reasons: 1) it's your story, write it, 2) it will kill your voice. Take the suggestions home, sleep on them, then fix things.

Deadlines: Part of being in a crit group is coming through for others, both in your crits and in providing your work.

Rules Can Be Bent: Not broken. Everyone has stuff come up in their lives, though I'm finding more and more in life that those who achieve success do so because they don't come up with excuses. There are those of us who allow circumstances to get us out of things, and those of us who decide that we will get things done regardless of circumstances. Success seems to follow the latter group.

Today is supposed to be the end of the crit series buuuuut . . . tomorrow will be the end. Promise. The rules sound kind of like a rant anyway, so I'll post the above as a Friday Rant of sorts. Either tomorrow or later tonight I'll post the last article on critiquing. It will outline different forms of crit groups, my thoughts on both, the crit group I'm starting, and then a second crit group that I'm considering putting together in the near future.

Sorry about carrying this over an extra post. I hope you can all hang in there. I've noticed the comments slip off for the crit series, so I'm assuming that series aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I've got lots of fun stuff in the cue for next week.

The Critique Partner

Posted by Unknown |8 comments

Part Three of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

So you want a critique partner? Well of course you do. You want that camaraderie. You want someone you can call on to help you through a scene during a moment of crisis. You want a brother or sister in arms. Just be wary when you go out and look for one. Even when you have great critique partners (like I do) there is both good and bad that you have to watch out for.

The GOOD

One on one dialog: I find that gathering ideas from a message board just doesn't work for me. As I mentioned in Talking Through Writer's Block, sometimes you just need to talk it out.

Intimate connection with your story: You eventually have another specialist in your work that you can turn to for help. They know the characters, how they would act, where you're going with it. This person can call you on things that others, who are unfamiliar with the work, might miss.

Cheering Section: We all need someone in our corner cheering for us. “Alright, now get it finished and send it off.”

Commiserate: You're going to have bad days, you're going to be rejected, slammed by decision makers, ignored by agents, and that's when having someone to help you come up with the perfect torture scene for those individuals is key. They know your pain because they've been there. Or better yet, they can be there to get excited with you about a rejection. Honestly, can you imagine getting all giddy about a personalized rejection letter with feedback in front of a friend that knows nothing about the publishing industry? 

Community: Writers tend to be loners. We like to sit in coffee houses and observe others. Trouble is, we need to get out there and experience life as well. You can only get so much from reading about others' experiences. Besides, who are you going to attend cons with?

Trust: Need I say more?

The BAD

Desensitizing: After a while they might gloss over things that they've grown used to in your writing.

Power: You might end up taking their word as the end all be all when what you really need is another opinion.

Colored lenses: The more your crit partners know, the harder it is to count on them to respond honestly to twists. They know where the story is headed, and can help map it out, but if they know the destination, your twist might be obvious to them whereas it wouldn't be to those with virgin eyes.

Crutch: If you can't get anything done unless your crit partner helps you through it, there's a problem. I've actually critiqued with folks who took suggestions for rewrites word for word and inserted them into their stories. We would honestly stop during critique reviews and reword sentences for this person. It got to a point where I just stopped giving suggestions because I knew that we would have to stop during the review to work through it with them. "Well, how do you think I should say it?" "Uh, I don't know. I can't really think of anything (lies all lies)."

Enabler: The wrong crit partner might simply be enabling you to continue to produce bad work. Granted, we need some praise from time to time, even Countess Bathory manages to dole some out for me from her tub from time to time, but when all you get is glowing reviews you run the risk of floating away with your inflated ego (as the Countess is always sure to remind me).

Voice Killer: And here's a good one that I never thought of that I found on another blog while researching this post. “Which brings me to critiquing. I have confessed in the past that I don’t critique—other than the occasional read-through for a friend—because I’m a voice-killer. I have this compulsion to rewrite the manuscript until it’s the way I would have written it. It’s wrong, I can’t help it, and therefore I’ll only read for writers I know are strong enough to ignore that aspect of my critique. Beware of authors like me. We are out there and not all of us recognize this tendency in ourselves.” (source:  http://shannonstacey.com/2009/06/09/critique-partner-or-enabler/)

The Dating Game:

Unless you have a frequented blog spot and can put up a crit dating request on your blog like Maggie Stiefvater, author of Shiver (made it up to number THREE on the NYT best sellers list), you'll likely need help searching someone out. And finding the “One” can often be as tricky as finding the one you'll spend the rest of your life with. Remember, you're not just looking for a friend. Just like in marriage, you're looking for a business partner as well as a friend. They have to fit what you write and they also have to bring their own strengths to the table. You have to feed off of each other. You have to inspire along with being inspired.

Damihjva, who shall henceforth be referred to as Paris because of her purchase of a rat dog, I found via a MySpace search. I wanted to find someone who lived nearby that I could commiserate with. That was the luck of the draw. She had a crit group that needed another critter; I needed a crit group. I made her cry with a short story and it was critter love.

Countess Bathory is a part of a fantasy forum that I'm on. (Oddly enough, Paris was a part of the same group years ago and remembers my handle from back then; guess we crossed paths but didn't meet up.) She sent out a request for off board crit partners and I made the audacious suggestion that she post something and get it critiqued by a few people and then pick out those she liked; I still think this is a good idea -- sort of like speed dating. She replied to me off-board, asked if I'd crit her chapter, I did, made her cry for an entirely different reason, was dubbed Attila and voila, critter love.

What can we learn from this? Make people cry.

But seriously, you have to try people out. It's like dating; you have to open up and expose yourself before you can find the right one. If you're too guarded, then you apparently aren't ready. You're also going to have to go through a lot of duds. That's the way it is. True love doesn't knock at your door; you have to go out, find it, hit it over the head, and then drag it back home.

Places to bird-dog partners:

Writing forums: This is kind of a crap shoot but worth a shot. Many forums want you to participate and critique others' work before you post anything of your own. If you've got the time, go for it. I don't critique in forums because I don't have the time. I give advice when I can and if someone finds what I say useful and decides they'd like to hear my thoughts on what they've written, they can ask and I will crit.

Critique Circle: There are a few sites that specialize in critiquing stories. Some of them are pay sites, others are not, but everyone there is there to critique. 

Social Media Search: In the same way I found Paris, you might be able to find someone near you.

Dating: Maggie Stiefvatter mentions in the above linked article that she was starting a critter dating board over at her fan site. I couldn't find it, otherwise I'd have linked to it, but it's a good idea.

Blogosphere: Seems like every writer has a blog these days. What better way to get to know a person before asking them out on a crit date than by reading their blog?

Keep a couple things in mind as you head out on your search. First, this is not a Hollywood Romance. Love and crit partners don't work like the movies would like us to think. My wife and I don't see eye to eye on everything, nor would we want too. The same holds true for crit partners. Don't try to make them fit an idealized mold of “the perfect crit partner” because you're going to end up frustrated.

That said, keep this second piece of advice in mind: Remember, it is better to not have a critique partner at all than to have a bad one. 

A Critique Example

Posted by Unknown |2 comments

Part Two of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

October 24, 2000. That's the earliest “last modified” date that I have for my first venture into writing, and that's a “version 2” so something must have come before it at an even earlier date. I generally set things aside for a year before I come back to them and start working on second versions, so we're looking back at least ten years into the past. And if memory serves it was even slightly further back.

You see, on March 31, 1999 the Matrix was released. On April 1, I saw it in a crowded theatre, by myself, . . . on my birthday (sad birthday that year). I left the theatre with the same adrenaline rush as everyone else that had seen it. But there was one thing different for me. Along with trying to figure out how I might one day make Trinity my wife, and looking for tell tale signs that the matrix was real and all around us (come on, you know you did it too) I was also thinking, “Those bastards stole my idea!”

No, not the entire digital reality thing, they stole that from someone else, I'm talking about the programming fight training. This was nearly as bad as when Marvel Comics stole my name for a super group when they retitled The New Mutants to X-Force. I totally came up with that years ahead of them. Of course there's no proving any of this because in both cases I never showed the works to anyone. So that's just downright creepy. I mean, how did they get into our house and steal all those ideas? There's no justice in the world! Wait! There's a black helicopter flying over my house again. I'll be right back, I'm going to get my bullhorn and read them the constitution again, that usually gets them to go away, that and “I'm calling the news!”

Now then, where were we? Right, my crap story. It's old. I also didn't critique all of it. I just couldn't make it through the entire thing. I got two pages in and asked, “Why are you torturing yourself?”

Being as I did not have to torture myself, I opted to stop. I also knew that if I couldn't make it through, no one else would either, so after two pages I cut out the middle section, four pages of the middle section, four pages that didn't need to be there. Sigh.

Keep in mind that I'm a bit harsher with myself than I would be with someone else's work. Although, if you asked crit partner 2, the one that calls me Attila, as in Attila the Hun, she might disagree. But the way I see it, for as harsh as my criticism tends to be, I don't say anything out of spite, and nothing I can say can ever be worse than what you'd get from an editor.

Remember that my crit guide would usually come along with the critique so as to explain some of my terms and thoughts in better detail. Also bare in mind that this is not the only way to give a crit. David Farland recently sent out an entire series on 'how' to give crits. Unfortunately, Farland doesn't have a blog or anything that I know of where he posts all of this stuff, so I can't link to it (if he does and I'm just clueless, let me know and I'll fix this). You can only get it in your email. Farland is also long winded, even more-so than me (yes, it's possible). His critique series was at least seven posts long. Honestly, I don't think it's possible to keep even half of what he mentions in mind when doing a critique. That's why I resort to the tried and true, “This is what I was thinking while reading,” approach.

I try to note any “rules” that I think are broken. I look for repetitive uses of words and sentence starters. I'm looking for gerunds and participles that don't need to be there as well as said bookisms. POV shifts tend to stand out. In beginnings I'm looking to see if I'm going to be hooked, if I can get a hint at the characters story worthy problem and the inciting incident that sends us on our path. I also like to give my feelings, “At this point I'm curious about so and so.” And yes, I really do say nice things too. Just because there's not much nice to say about this old story doesn't mean that I don't say them about others' stories.

For the most part, you get better at critiquing by doing it, just like with writing. And the more critiques you expose yourself to from others the more rules you learn. I'm going to try and aggregate Farland's guide into something digestible. (Momentary admission of guilt: I never read the series he sent out, it was too much for my little brain to wrap around at the time.)

If you didn't catch the link above, you can download the pdf of the critique here [link]. Thanks to FreePDFHosting.com for hosting the file. If you've got a pdf of less than 2mb that you need to create a down-loadable link to, be sure to check these guys out.

Critiquing Using Word and Open Office

Posted by Unknown |4 comments

Part One of the Critique Series

Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Critiquing in the digital age. Gone are the days of sorting through stacks of line edits in your double spaced manuscript, bloodied with red pen in indiscernible handwriting, returned to you by critique partners that you met down at the local coffee shop. Actually, if you can find people to critique with at a coffee shop, wow. I applaud you. I for one haven't been so lucky. Okay, actually I was, but then she moved away. Sniffle sniffle.

But even if you do have local crit partners and don't have to collaborate via the internet, you can still find something useful in today's post. Meeting in person does not change the fact that you can save a lot of trees and make life a bit easier on yourself by using the built in functionality of word processing programs to help streamline some of the work for you. So let's get to it.

I've gone through and taken snapshots of both Open Office and Word 2007 in action in order to help guide you through the process. There are subtle differences in the two programs, so pay attention, but by and large you can get the same things accomplished in both.

Track Changes:

One of the first things you're going to want to do with any critique is turn on 'Track Changes'. This feature allows the recipient of the critique to go through and see exactly what you've changed and then choose whether or not they will keep the changes. In both Word and Open Office a black, vertical line will appear net to any line with a correction. Right clicking on the change will bring up an option menu that will let you choose to accept or decline the change.

MSW: Select the 'Review' tab and click 'Track Changes.' Yup, it's that simple.  

OOo: Once you're used to the Word tabs that are so annoying when you first upgrade to 2007, finding things in menus becomes annoying. For OOo you have to Edit>Changes and then choose 'Record' and 'Show' if you want to see it recording the changes.

Line Numbering:

Each time I get a document to critique I start by numbering the lines. I've found it to be helpful when going over any questions that the recipient might have. They can refer me directly to which line they are talking about as opposed to going through the headache of “third page, second paragraph, about halfway through the third line.” Just say, “Line 93,” and we're all set. No confusion there.

MSW: Go to the 'Page Layout' tab, select 'Line Numbers' and then direct it to number in the way you would like. I usually just go with continuous.

OOo: Tools>Line Numbering pretty simple, no?

Comments/Notes:

Gone are the days of trying to squeeze your comments between double-spaced lines of text. By using the comments feature you can be as wordy as you'd like. Normally, wordiness is a bad thing, but when you consider that you're trying to be delicate with your criticism, that you want it to come across as “you're going in the right direction, I'd just like to see you expand this,” rather than, “you suck,” then the extra words end up counting for a lot.

Both Word and Open Office expand your screen when you start using comments (they're called 'notes' in OOo, but I'll just call them 'comments' for both programs) and tuck them off to the right. Comments is one of the areas where Word outdoes OOo. Word will number the comments for you so that they are easier to refer to. It also allows you to highlight a section of text and comment on the highlighted section. OOo will only place an arrow marker at the beginning of your highlighted area, so it makes it harder to cue a person in to a line or a series of lines that you want to comment on. The person being critiqued with OOo has to guess at where your reference begins and ends unless otherwise specified.

As I mentioned in the Word vs. Open Office post, one way OOo one ups Word is through having an option to comment on a comment. Although, honestly, I don't see much point to the feature unless you're collaborating. If anything, this feature makes it easier to commit one of the deadly critique sins that we'll talk about tomorrow, responding to criticism.

Another nice feature of Word is that when you hover the cursor over a section of highlighted text, it will pop a dialogue box that shows you the comment. You know, just in case you can't trace that dotted line back to it's origin.

MSW: Each time you want to make a comment in Word, just go up to the 'Review' tab and hit 'New Comment'. Wherever your cursor is in the text is where your comment will be attached. Or, if you have a section of text highlighted (click and drag with the mouse) and then hit 'New Comment', the comment feature will highlight that text and attach the comment to all of it.

OOo: While OOo doesn't highlight, it is a bit easier to add your comment. Just hold down Ctrl+Alt+N and it will give you a new comment where your cursor is. Otherwise it's under the 'Insert' menu. I haven't been able to find such and easy keyboard shortcut for Word, so if you know of one, please share. With as much commenting as I do on crits it would save lots of time.

Merge:

After I've gone through all of the comments, deleting those that I don't, hanging on to the ones that I need to give more thought to, and accepting the changes I feel should be made in all of my returned critiques, I start the merger process. This collects the remaining feedback and all the changes into a single document. Word call's this process “combine,” and it might take a little while for the process to complete, but hang in there. To be safe, I set my merges to take place in a new document. I haven't tried to do more than two documents at a time, and I really don't think that it's possible. I reduce by twos until I can get it all down into one document.

(Note: I haven't used this process of combining in a long time. Last time I used it was in the 2003 version of Word. I'm trying it right now in 2007 as an experiment, an experiment that is not going so well. I started the combination process about 30 minutes ago with two crits of the same chapter and I'm still waiting for Word to show me something.)

(Note to the Note: Crash! Word apparently could not handle all of the comments left by my crit partners.)

Highlighting:

As I noted in my crit guide. I use the simple highlight feature to draw attention to things like repetitive words. If I find that someone is using an odd word rather often, I'll simply conduct a search for that word and highlight it each time it appears. Explaining this in a crit guide helps cut down on explaining it each time you do it.

Whew!

And there you have it. Those are all the features that I use when critiquing. Of course I'm no word-processor guru or anything, so I'm sure that there are probably more features that need to be added to this. I'm also sure that as smart as all you folks are, you know of some of them. So please add them to the comments so that I can update this article. And don't worry, I'll be sure to give credit where credit is due.