Critique Groups

Writing Groups have been around for a long time. Writers share their work, offer criticism, and (hopefully) improve. Eventually their writing is good enough to be accepted for publication.

What Happens at a Critique Group?
A typical critique group involves up to a dozen people and meets monthly (or more often). You bring part of a chapter (10 pages is common), a short story, a query letter, an essay, or some other piece of writing you've completed. The piece is read aloud, either by the author, or by somebody else. After that comments are offered, both good and bad. This can range from a line-crit where punctuation and spelling is examined, to an overview where the critiquer focuses on general things such as a flashback or a particular character. All criticism is supposed to be helpful.

Being part of a critique group can be hard. People are going to say things about your writing, some of which might not be pleasant. People are going to make judgments (something not always welcome when people are taught to be non-judgmental). But it is one of the few ways around to hone your craft and technique. Besides, and here is an important lesson: they are only criticizing words on a page (or at least that's what they should be doing). But if you're going to try to succeed in the storytelling world, a thick skin is a necessity.

My Experiences with Critique Groups
My first critique group was in Indianapolis. We had an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) who was the editor of the Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI or "oowee-poo-wee") Literary Magazine as our moderator/host. We met every week, though you were only on the hook for work every third week. You sent him your manuscript, he would make copies of it, and at the meeting pass it out. You would mark it up, and then the next week offer your criticism. Nothing was read aloud.

This was for the people at the most basic level. You had had English Composition, and maybe even Creative Writing in High School or College, and had progressed beyond there. You had subscribed to writing magazines, bought several books on writing, at least two different style guides, and consumed books by people writing in your genre. You were prepared.

My second critique group was also in Indiana. This was the Story a Month Club. You had a piece for every month, though we met weekly. The critiques weren't as detailed as in the first group, but the level of writing was a lot more advanced (there were several published authors in this group). In this group you read your story/chapter out loud. This was, as one of the members put it, because language was oral and meant to be heard. Part of what we were doing was training the ear to 'hear' the problems, and then find how to fix those problems.

I ended up in two critique groups in the Puget Sound area, joining both in 2004 as a result of the Maui Writer's Conference Panama Canal Cruise. They meet on different nights about two weeks apart. One gets into a line crit (going over every line); the other steps back slightly and looks at structure and flow. Both are very valuable.

The 'Dark Side' of Critique Groups
A while back I joined an online fantasy writing critique group, and submitted a couple of short stories. My work was savaged. It was like a feeding frenzy during Shark Week on television. Only a stubborn belief that I knew something about how to write kept me going. I soon realized that these people viewed other writers as competition. They treated everybody that way. The only criticism they'd accept were accolades and praise about how good they were. The only criticism they'd offer was of the harshest kind where you could do nothing right. Unfortunately there are a number of people like that. This is why an online critique group can be a real problem (no moderator to hold people like this back). I haven't really been back to that group, though I monitor it as they get into discussions about technique and copyright.

What's Supposed to Happen
The group I meet with on Tuesday nights is typical of my other experiences. I'll bring in 10-11 pages of my current WIP (work in progress). I'll have copies for everyone in the group. When my story comes up somebody else will read it aloud. It's amazing how many problems you hear when somebody else is reading. Afterwards we discuss the story, taking it in turn. Everything is fair game: spelling, punctuation, verb tense, sentence structure, scene structure, even plot details. When you do something right, they say it; when you goof up, they point it out, and offer solutions. This latter is a very important point, because that's when you can learn something. When someone who has written over 100 television or movie scripts wants to teach you about how to do dialogue, you listen.

By the way, the proper response to feedback in a critique group is to nod your head, and say thank you, even when a voice inside you is screaming that they didn't get the point of what you had written.

A critique group is fun for another reason. For a couple of hours you are together with people who are interested in the same thing you are interested in (writing). You end up in discussions that range all over the place, from how other people did things, to markets, agents, elements of the craft, and so on. It's fun. Usually I'm so pumped when I get home that I'd rather sit down and write than have dinner. I certainly don't have any interest in adding to a blog (which was why there was no post yesterday). Hmm, this is the same reason a Writer's Conference is fun.

What about if you write in a specific genre? You might be the only person in the area writing vampire western romances, and everybody else writes cozy detective mysteries. I hate to say that writing is writing, but in this case it is, and you can learn a lot about the craft by attending. My Tuesday night group has a mystery writer, a fantasy writer, a literary fiction writer, and an SF writer. And yet we're brought together by the writing. We have difficulties, some of the concepts the SF writer embeds in a story goes right past those people without a background Science Fiction. But that's one of the hazards of a critique group (you should hear what another SF writer says if you happen to skewer one of his pet ideas/authors, so having a diversity can be a good thing).

Where can you find Writer's Groups? Here in the Pacific Northwest you have at least three alternatives. First, Pacific Northwest Writer's Association can try to hook you up. Go to www.pnwa.org and take a look. Second, Writer's Digest does much the same thing. And third, some bookstores have Writer's Groups. Barnes & Noble is one that I personally know of. You can go to a writer's conference and hook up with people there. If you live near a college or university with a writing program, make inquiries there. The chances are there's a writing group affiliated with the college/university.

I'm not saying a person can't get better on their own, but there is a lot of bad writing out there, and a critique group can help eliminate that million or so words of bad writing every author has inside them instead of letting it get repeated over and over.