Long story short, even though one member of a crit group I’m in has refused to crit my work for the last three session another member decided to send the semi-closed group an email where they specifically complained about my critique of their story being not detailed enough.

It’s getting to the point where I just don’t have time for this sort of thing. But instead of turning this into a rant I’m going to repost my guide to good critiquing. After all, I have a full request in my mail box, among other things that need to be done.

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A Guide to Good Critiquing

By Michele Lee

*Reposts acceptable as long as you link back here.

Section 1: Being a Critiquer

Giving a good critique is an absolutely vital part of being a member of a critique group. It is possibly the most important, as you tend to get what you give, and therefore doing nothing but taking from a group, will make you a target for resentment very quickly.

First, let me clarify, when I say “give a good critique” I do not mean a favorable one. I mean a *useful* critique. Because every person is different it is sometimes hard to gage what another writer wants. Some want you to be brutal, some say they want you to be brutal, but don’t. And let’s face it, we all want to hear how great our work is. There comes a time, though, when a writer learns that if they are to advance they need to hear the truth, even if they want to hear back patting. So we cope.

If a writer truly wants to only hear back patting then there is a problem, particularly if you want your group to be a critique group and not a fan club. You should not lie, or minimize the truth, but it is often acceptable to decline to comment on works by that person, or even focus on one problem rather than listing everything you find.

The goal of critiquing should be to make corrections to technical problems, such as grammar and spelling, as well as larger problems, such as breaks in the suspension of disbelief, sloppy dialog, and all sizes of plot holes or redundancies. If you read only one line in this section make it this one: The goal in critiquing is to correct the story’s problems and still preserve the author’s personal style.

A critique should fortify and improve the text. Think about what you are saying. When I say “I think this could be better/tighter/stronger” I’m not saying “I can do better”. While a critique is your opinion, it’s not about you at all, it’s not even about the author of the story you are critiquing. It is about the story that is right there in front of you.

I write crits for my group, let them sit for a day or two, then look at them again. I am also very careful to keep my language neutral, directed at the text not at the author. I’ve had to comment on some pretty horrible stories before and I am always very careful to use “This story” instead of “you”. “I think this story fails” not “You’ve failed with this story”.

To balance that I’ve also read some amazing stories that have swept me away so much that I didn’t notice problems that other critiquers in the group found obvious.

Critiques are NOT a place for personal vendettas or biases. Not all stories that end up in the crit pool are going to be your style. But blowing a story off because it deals with a subject matter that you don’t like, or because it’s a genre you don’t like, is not really fair when you’ve committed to giving an opinion by sending your own work in. Further more, if someone has given you a vicious critique, or has wronged you in some way in the past a critique forum or group is NOT the proper place to take your emotion out on them.

It’s also not a place to blindly suck up. It’s vital to me, to function in a group, to believe that I am getting honesty. If you give me a compliment I want to know it’s genuine. If you give me a harsh crit I want to know it’s because I can write better than what the target story portrays, not because I was hard on your story last time around, or some other unrelated reason.

The only emotions present should be from the story and to the story, not between the authors.

Over all the critique should be useful. “This story is confusing” is not terribly helpful. “This story is confusing because I don’t believe that Character A ever would have walked into that cave to begin with…” is useful. Pointing out typos and grammar errors is always useful. If you cannot put your finger on why something in the story doesn’t resonate well, you can (regretfully) admit that. But always try to pinpoint why the story has failed.

And I always try to point out at least one good thing about the story I am critiquing. Sometimes commenting about nothing but problems overwhelms the writer and makes them resistant to changes.

Section 2: Receiving a Critique

Groups are different. Some have forms to reply with. Some are round robins, or “crit 2 for every 1 you post”. Some are blind. And different ones work for different people.

To be a good recipient you must first know what you want out of a critique. There is nothing wrong with adding “This is completely raw, point out everything” or “This is an almost final draft, I just want a typo check”. It’s okay to not be ready for a harsh critique. It’s okay to want nothing but raving and glorious compliments. That’s really what we all want. But as I said above, there’s a point where to improve your craft you have to admit, at least to yourself, that you may need something besides praise.

You also need to be prepared to not get what you want, or what you need. People’s opinions and preferences are different. A person who loves splatterfests might adore your story, while someone who is tired of the genre might be harder to please, because well, they don’t enjoy it as much. Writers also have different styles and are at different levels of their career. One might come down hard on you for POV shifts or use/overuse of adverbs, while others won’t care a bit about that and instead will jump on mix ups like its/it’s and compliment/complement. We writers always bring our own personality and preferences to a critique and that may prove to be useful, or useless to you on the receiving end of the crit.

Most importantly, the proper response to a critique is “Thank you”. Commenting back and correcting the critiquer is as good as saying “You’re wrong” which can even lead to “I know you just took time out of your life to help me, but you’re wrong and I’m right, so you wasted all that time that it took to read and comment on my story.” I know in most cases replying to a critique isn’t meant this way. But it comes off this way. Nothing will build up a wall of resentment against you faster than correcting or complaining about other people’s critiques.

If you need to ask questions, to get a critiquer to clarify something, do so very cautiously. Often if they say there is a problem with the story just saying so denotes that there is. Even if the critiquer can’t pin point it the confusion can point to a communication problem between you, the writer, and your reader. But if you need help to pin point it before you comment back think about where the other writer is coming from. That difference I mentioned above, that writers are always coming from different preferences and different points in their career development? That is always something to keep in mind.

If you have already taken into account the critiquer’s motivation and experience and still need to ask a question, then do so, but make sure you are asking a question, not making a correction.

Finally, a critique is always an opinion. It may be a well thought out and experienced opinion, but it is still an opinion. You are free to get upset by it (as long as you rant and rave alone, or to a real life, private confidant, not on a public message board, not to the critiquer or even in emails, which can easily be made public or recorded without your knowledge or consent). You are free to toss out everything a critiquer says, because YOU are the author and ultimately the success or failure of your story rests on YOU.

It is no one else’s job to write, edit or research for you. The final choice, and the final responsibility is with you.