Critiquing others' work
I've been spending a lot of my time lately critiquing the writing of other people. I'm good at it. I can easily identify passive writing, telling vs showing, character and plot inconsistencies and contradictions in storyline. I hope I'm also good at telling the author what needs to be fixed without making them feel like they're useless.
It wasn't always this way.
I have a low threshold of tolerance for rubbish, and that includes rubbish writing. I've always been like that and not always been tactful about it. It's worse if the story is a good one and I can see the author can actually write - they've just got it very wrong with this story. I annoys me. It means they've been careless. (This doesn't mean I don't do this myself. I do, and I appreciate that others will call me on it. Well, I appreciate it after I come back from my three-day sulk.)
I've had really tough critiques done of my work and felt absolutely devastated by them. I remember one story where I wrote a date rape scene--an older woman coerced a young man into having sex with her by manipulating him emotionally. Neither character was the main character but the scene was necessary for the main character to gain certain understandings about the type of people he was friends with and what was important in his life. I had warned the group there was a 'rough' scene in it. If the scene was unnecessary for the plot or was badly written, that's fine. But those weren't the things criticized by one member of the group. He called into question my morals and values and whether or not I should be a member of the group because of that scene.
That's not how a good critique should be written.
Even knowing that, though, I've given harsh critiques myself. I try never to make my comments personal at all but sometimes they've been taken that way anyway. I once emailed an author regarding a story I read. It was part of an anthology that I'd bought because of one of the other authors in it. The first story I read was brilliant, then I read this author's work and was so disappointed by it, I had to respond. Being the over-achiever that I can be at times, I took some time to analyse the story and pick out the sections that worked and the ones that didn't. The thing that disappointed me most was that I could see that this author could write but, for whatever reason, had been particularly inconsistent with their writing of this story. I sent my response to the author privately and received a reply demanding to know if I was going to make my comments public. Truthfully, what would be the point in that? My purpose in giving the feedback was to point out to the author that they had talent but had, effectively, been very lazy in writing that particular story. They could do better.
It was only afterwards that I realized my comments could have been construed as an attack. Yeah, with some things, I'm a very slow learner. I still feel bad about any upset I might have caused but, honestly, that author now writes very strong stories. No way would I be able to pick the types of errors I had in that earlier story.
I've worked hard since then to make sure any critique I write contains language that can only be considered professional. I don't always succeed. The last time I failed spectacularly, though, was at a writing course when I made one writer cry. In my defense, the writing was weak, and she refuted everything everyone said about her 'baby'.
I've been a member of one of my crit groups for more than ten years now. We all know each other well and can be as harsh as we want to be with our crits without causing any angst other than frustration at not knowing how to fix it. In some ways we've become predictable. I have a few stories that need fresh eyes.
I joined Scribophile a couple of weeks ago. It's a group of writers from all over the place who present chapters of their works for critique by others. In order to post work to the site, you need to earn points by critiquing others' work. There are guidelines and avenues for complaint and many more avenues to thank critiquers. I'm really enjoying it even though it's time consuming and I've fallen behind with my own writing.
It's a little nerve-wracking, though, because I don't know these people. I don't know if something I say, that I think is quite reasonable and necessary to know in order to improve the story, is going to upset someone else. I try to create "Sandwich" crits: critiques that begin with praise, contain suggestions for improvement and end with praise. I also try not to mark up every single error I see unless there are only a few to begin with.
So far, everyone I've critiqued seems to have taken my comments with grace. Likewise, the crits I've received on my work have been thorough and insightful. I've been getting to read some terrific new work, most of which is very close to a publishable standard. It's like getting a whole heap of new books for free. Having to do crits on them isn't a problem: I annotate any novel I read anyway so it's really no different.
On that note, I think I'll go back to Scribophile and finish a crit I began this morning.
It wasn't always this way.
I have a low threshold of tolerance for rubbish, and that includes rubbish writing. I've always been like that and not always been tactful about it. It's worse if the story is a good one and I can see the author can actually write - they've just got it very wrong with this story. I annoys me. It means they've been careless. (This doesn't mean I don't do this myself. I do, and I appreciate that others will call me on it. Well, I appreciate it after I come back from my three-day sulk.)
I've had really tough critiques done of my work and felt absolutely devastated by them. I remember one story where I wrote a date rape scene--an older woman coerced a young man into having sex with her by manipulating him emotionally. Neither character was the main character but the scene was necessary for the main character to gain certain understandings about the type of people he was friends with and what was important in his life. I had warned the group there was a 'rough' scene in it. If the scene was unnecessary for the plot or was badly written, that's fine. But those weren't the things criticized by one member of the group. He called into question my morals and values and whether or not I should be a member of the group because of that scene.
That's not how a good critique should be written.
Even knowing that, though, I've given harsh critiques myself. I try never to make my comments personal at all but sometimes they've been taken that way anyway. I once emailed an author regarding a story I read. It was part of an anthology that I'd bought because of one of the other authors in it. The first story I read was brilliant, then I read this author's work and was so disappointed by it, I had to respond. Being the over-achiever that I can be at times, I took some time to analyse the story and pick out the sections that worked and the ones that didn't. The thing that disappointed me most was that I could see that this author could write but, for whatever reason, had been particularly inconsistent with their writing of this story. I sent my response to the author privately and received a reply demanding to know if I was going to make my comments public. Truthfully, what would be the point in that? My purpose in giving the feedback was to point out to the author that they had talent but had, effectively, been very lazy in writing that particular story. They could do better.
It was only afterwards that I realized my comments could have been construed as an attack. Yeah, with some things, I'm a very slow learner. I still feel bad about any upset I might have caused but, honestly, that author now writes very strong stories. No way would I be able to pick the types of errors I had in that earlier story.
I've worked hard since then to make sure any critique I write contains language that can only be considered professional. I don't always succeed. The last time I failed spectacularly, though, was at a writing course when I made one writer cry. In my defense, the writing was weak, and she refuted everything everyone said about her 'baby'.
I've been a member of one of my crit groups for more than ten years now. We all know each other well and can be as harsh as we want to be with our crits without causing any angst other than frustration at not knowing how to fix it. In some ways we've become predictable. I have a few stories that need fresh eyes.
I joined Scribophile a couple of weeks ago. It's a group of writers from all over the place who present chapters of their works for critique by others. In order to post work to the site, you need to earn points by critiquing others' work. There are guidelines and avenues for complaint and many more avenues to thank critiquers. I'm really enjoying it even though it's time consuming and I've fallen behind with my own writing.
It's a little nerve-wracking, though, because I don't know these people. I don't know if something I say, that I think is quite reasonable and necessary to know in order to improve the story, is going to upset someone else. I try to create "Sandwich" crits: critiques that begin with praise, contain suggestions for improvement and end with praise. I also try not to mark up every single error I see unless there are only a few to begin with.
So far, everyone I've critiqued seems to have taken my comments with grace. Likewise, the crits I've received on my work have been thorough and insightful. I've been getting to read some terrific new work, most of which is very close to a publishable standard. It's like getting a whole heap of new books for free. Having to do crits on them isn't a problem: I annotate any novel I read anyway so it's really no different.
On that note, I think I'll go back to Scribophile and finish a crit I began this morning.
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