The Wolves And The Sheep, aka Critique Partners
Anyone who's ever had their writing critiqued knows that critiquers come with varying skill levels and focus on differing story aspects. But holy moly is there ever a difference between industry professionals and amateurs.
First, let's talk a little bit about critiques in general, for a basis.
1. The Reactive Critique
Anyone, regardless of skill level, can provide excellent feedback in the form of "this is how I felt while reading." Points of confusion, boredom, what they were looking forward to, what they thought would or wouldn't happen. Honestly this is generally the most helpful kind of critique, and requires absolutely no knowledge of writing technique or experience with critiquing.
2. The Suggestive Critique
This is where we see huge differences in critiquers, largely due to the subjectivity of writing and reading. When people take that step from "this is how I felt" to "this is how I think you could fix it," that can lead to wonderful things--or disaster. Obviously plenty of bad advice gets bandied about this way, and there's all sorts of contention on what makes a good critique, what should or should not be advised, and what the common "rules" are (for good or for ill). This is actually not what I care to get into today, though maybe in the future.
The big problem I have is that a lot of times, critiquers are very timid about what they'll suggest. I never even realized this until I started querying agents. Between the "revise & resubmit" suggestions, phone conversations, and then my actual edits with Caitlin, there's a huge difference between these industry professionals and my heretofore amateur critique partners.
I've noticed that less experienced writers offer less radical suggestions. This makes sense, because maybe those people aren't as confident in their advice. Agents, on the other hand, have suggested complete restructuring, altering or cutting whole characters, and major worldbuilding suggestions. My bottom-line observation is this:
Most of my amateur critique partners take what they are given and think of ways to make it as good as it can be. Most of the industry professionals I've met will gut the whole story to make the ideas even better.
Now I'm addicted to those "aggressive," radical critiques. I want someone ballsy enough to say an entire character or subplot needs to be altered. Rather than "maybe if you adjusted the dialogue this way, we could make the scene work better," I need the honest, "this scene doesn't work and the set-up needs to be completely changed, or the scene cut."
Because, let's face it, I have a lot of "blah" scenes that I fiddled with. trying to add bits and pieces, or tweak here and there. The book didn't get any better until I threw them out and rewrote them from scratch. It's like trying to frost a burnt cake so it's not so bad, versus simply baking a new one. Or pouring more and more sugar into really terrible coffee in the hope the sweetness will magically make it start tasting better (not that I'm guilty of that, of course not...)
Give me the aggressive suggestions ten times out of ten. Timid suggestions may be more polite and easier to hear, but they don't go as far to improve the novel.
First, let's talk a little bit about critiques in general, for a basis.
1. The Reactive Critique
Anyone, regardless of skill level, can provide excellent feedback in the form of "this is how I felt while reading." Points of confusion, boredom, what they were looking forward to, what they thought would or wouldn't happen. Honestly this is generally the most helpful kind of critique, and requires absolutely no knowledge of writing technique or experience with critiquing.
2. The Suggestive Critique
This is where we see huge differences in critiquers, largely due to the subjectivity of writing and reading. When people take that step from "this is how I felt" to "this is how I think you could fix it," that can lead to wonderful things--or disaster. Obviously plenty of bad advice gets bandied about this way, and there's all sorts of contention on what makes a good critique, what should or should not be advised, and what the common "rules" are (for good or for ill). This is actually not what I care to get into today, though maybe in the future.
The big problem I have is that a lot of times, critiquers are very timid about what they'll suggest. I never even realized this until I started querying agents. Between the "revise & resubmit" suggestions, phone conversations, and then my actual edits with Caitlin, there's a huge difference between these industry professionals and my heretofore amateur critique partners.
I've noticed that less experienced writers offer less radical suggestions. This makes sense, because maybe those people aren't as confident in their advice. Agents, on the other hand, have suggested complete restructuring, altering or cutting whole characters, and major worldbuilding suggestions. My bottom-line observation is this:
Most of my amateur critique partners take what they are given and think of ways to make it as good as it can be. Most of the industry professionals I've met will gut the whole story to make the ideas even better.
Now I'm addicted to those "aggressive," radical critiques. I want someone ballsy enough to say an entire character or subplot needs to be altered. Rather than "maybe if you adjusted the dialogue this way, we could make the scene work better," I need the honest, "this scene doesn't work and the set-up needs to be completely changed, or the scene cut."
Because, let's face it, I have a lot of "blah" scenes that I fiddled with. trying to add bits and pieces, or tweak here and there. The book didn't get any better until I threw them out and rewrote them from scratch. It's like trying to frost a burnt cake so it's not so bad, versus simply baking a new one. Or pouring more and more sugar into really terrible coffee in the hope the sweetness will magically make it start tasting better (not that I'm guilty of that, of course not...)
Give me the aggressive suggestions ten times out of ten. Timid suggestions may be more polite and easier to hear, but they don't go as far to improve the novel.
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