Story Sensei

As many of you know, I belong to the American Christian Fiction Writers organization, and a topic came up on the email discussion loop that I wanted to tell you guys about. Sometimes, an ACFW member will email the loop asking for a quick critique, and usually people are more than willing to take a quick look at a piece of writing. One member did that last week. In response, another member raved about his ACFW critique group, and encouraged other members to take advantage of ACFW's free critique group service. What ACFW offers for every member is their free critique group program. A coordinator will assign a member to an online critique group. The groups are usually small, no more than 5 or 6 people, and most of them are smaller than that. The groups are matched according to genre, if you prefer. You can also request a group that can keep up with your writing speed--critiquing one chapter a week or one chapter a month, whichever you can keep up with. If a group doesn...

Give useful feedback. Don’t just praise the writer and not make any kind of useful comments in a manuscript. That isn’t helpful. Critique groups and partners are meant to help writers grow, not just pat them on the back. You want to be both encouraged and challenged by your group/partner, and encourage and challenge them in return. Good writers always want to be challenged to improve their writing. Even multi-published, best-selling authors are constantly learning new things about their writing craft to improve and grow. Listen to the feedback people give you. What’s the point of being in a critique group if you’re not going to listen to anything people tell you? Be open to hearing things—sometimes hard things—about your writing. Realize that it’s meant to help you become a better writer. And then do something about the things people tell you. Don’t just smile, nod, and go your merry way. Work to improve your writing and make it better because of the feedback you get. On the flip si...

Once you join a critique group or find a critique partner, there are a few things you should keep in mind. Critiquing, just like writing, is a time commitment. If you get feedback on your manuscript, you’re expected to give feedback in return. If your critique partners give fabulous, detailed, valuable feedback, you are expected to also spend as much time giving detailed feedback on their work. It just isn’t fair if your time commitment isn’t the same as the other people in your critique group or your critique partner. Don’t be a leach, and don’t be selfish—give back as much as you receive. Don’t be argumentative. No one likes a whiner. Even more, no one likes a belligerent writer. You can expect to get bad feedback or kicked out of a group if you insist on arguing with your critique partners. Take time after you get a critique to calm down and get some distance (physical and temporal). When you return to it, you might find that the comments are more helpful than you initially though...

Finding the right critique partners Finding the right critique partners is kind of like marriage. Lots of dating to find someone (or several people) who fit you best. Try out a group/partners for a few months first. You’ll be able to tell after a while if the group is a good fit for you. You’ll want to match on several different levels: 1) Does the group/your partner submit chapters for critique as often as you do? If they submit more often or less often, it might not be a good fit. You don’t want to spend all your time critiquing several their chapters when they only have to critique one of yours in the same time frame. Similarly, they might resent if you submit many more chapters than they do in a month, and they’re forced to critique more for you than you critique for them. 2) Does your group/partner “get” your writing and are they able to give useful feedback? If your critiquer(s) are giving feedback that is completely off base because they don’t really understand y...

Are you in a critique group or do you have critique partners? If you don’t, I strongly suggest you find one. Why do you need a critique group/critique partners? While it’s true that there are several published authors who don’t have critique groups or critique partners, there are far more who do. Writers always can use feedback to help their writing be stronger. They can help you with punctuation or grammar errors, and can help you flag things like passive verbs, telling, backstory, etc. If anything, critique partners help you catch inconsistencies in the story like your heroine’s eyes changing from blue in chapter two to green in chapter fifteen. Or having your hero sprain his ankle in chapter one and it miraculously heals by chapter three. Critiquing other people’s manuscripts can also help you improve your writing skills. In pointing out weak writing in your critique partner’s work, you can also be aware of weak writing in your own. You don’t have to worry about anyone...

Critique Partners and Groups: Viable Help, Coffee Clutch, or Cheerleading Section? by Ruth Logan Herne Click here for part one Examine your group, its principles, goals and desires. If they don’t match yours, be brave enough to change. Move on or seek an outside critiquer in addition to your present group. This can be done without hurt as long as you’re discreet. After all, your present partners may work fine with someone else. The mixed dynamics of your group could be skewed and you might be the “skewer”. In any case, make the changes necessary to be the best you can be. Don’t settle, don’t simper, don’t pause on the way out the door if that’s what you need to do. Set your goal and work toward that aspiration with focus and strength. If you’ve got what it takes, it will happen. I firmly believe that. So get off the wall, dust off your butt, do what has to be done. There isn’t a facet of this industry that allows wallowing, even to the greats. Generally speaking, those who wal...

Critique Partners and Groups: Viable Help, Coffee Clutch, or Cheerleading Section? by Ruth Logan Herne The title says it all. Is your critique partner or group an asset? Are you the best you can be to them? Are they a boon to your writing? Do they point out problems while encouraging you to make necessary changes for possible publication? Or is your group a social club? Long minutes of fun, casual conversation, a glass of tea, some writing talk, a bit of gossip, lamenting, followed by an abbreviated critique time? Maybe they love your work so much they can’t find a thing wrong with it, it’s just so good, oh, my goodness, why on earth aren’t you published, you know you should be!!!!! Ahem. Critiquing is an art and discipline like any other part of writing. It’s a lot like raising children. The whys and wherefores of other people’s flawed children are obvious to us. We have an outside view and can understand why ‘Johnny’ does what he does because his parents: 1. Never got u...