What Goes Around Comes Around- A Worry for Newfolk? [getting critiqued in SYW]

Some do, some don't. Read through several of the SYW threads and see what type of input people get. Generally, you have to be pretty rude to people (dismissive of input, argumentative, posting revisions every 10 minutes) before they tell you to go away. It is best to participate in order to get feedback, but it's not a hard and fast "scratch my back I'll scratch yours," but it's nice to reciprocate.

soullesshuman said:

I spent most of my posts in the novels and writing help section, I worry by the time I'm ready to post my work I'd get a 'pssssh go away' type reaction.

So may I ask, how do critiques work in AW? Do critiquers ignore new people and only go for people they know?

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You won't get a negative reaction so long as you give as well as recieve. That means, spend some time on the SYW boards, read around a bit and see the sort of way others give feedback etc, then give some crits yourself.

People are more likely to give you crits if you participate

I've only posted one thing in SYW (well, two, but I wasn't talking about my query letter!) and the piece was something inspired by one of the monthly horror prompts. I received some really great advice for the piece, including an excellent suggestion to change the ending to an earlier section of the story (Thanks, Night! ).

Before I ever posted that story, I had given several crits, and I found that I enjoyed them. If and when I post something else in SYW, I don't expect any of the authors I critted for to crit my work. Sure, I would appreciate it, and I would think it was nice of them, but it's not something I expect. I think you'll get crits when you post, so don't stress over it.

booker c said:

Not being a professional writer I really hesitate to critique anyone's work although I am willing to contribute in any way I can. Does that make sense?

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It does make sense, but critiques come in different forms. Some people go line-by-line (LBL) and pick up grammar or spelling mistakes, or make suggestions that they think might help a sentence or paragraph flow more easily, essentially giving the piece an edit. Others give their overall impressions, telling the author what they liked or didn't like and make suggestions that might help. Sometimes, they don't have anything to add because any issues they did have with the piece were already discussed by someone else. Then you have others who don't have anything more to say than they liked it, and they wanted the author to know they read it. There's nothing wrong with that, because sometimes we have to hear that someone liked something we wrote! (Geez . . . we're a needy lot, aren't we? )

The point is, you're a reader and you know what YOU like and what you don't. Critting other people also helps you with your own writing because you'll catch things they missed and that has a tendency to help you catch those same mistakes in your work. It also makes you think about how YOU would handle a certain scene, or how you would word something differently to smooth the flow.

Just try it, you might like it!

booker c said:

Not being a professional writer I really hesitate to critique anyone's work although I am willing to contribute in any way I can. Does that make sense?

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If you want to improve your own writing by leaps and bounds, crit. You'll learn more by analyzing the writing of others than you will by getting critiques.

State that you're new to it and unsure of what you're doing at the top of your crit, if it makes you feel better. But jump in, read, exercise some critical thought and give your honest impressions.

The best way to crit is to read the material as if you picked up a published book or a magazine with short fiction in it. Do you like it? Why not? How does it compare to what you would read already published? Is the opening slower than you're used to, or is it confusing? Are there mistakes you wouldn't expect to find in published work?

As you improve, you'll be able to narrow the criticisms down because suddenly you'll know why the opening is slow and why that long passage of description didn't work.

It's a learning process, but you have to start to ever get there.

Shelley