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How to use your critique group

eruthford

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This past year I have become a member of two critique groups. Yay! This is something I've been wanting for a long time. Now that I've been talking with these folks about once every two weeks, I've come up with a bit of a conundrum and it's this:

Trading 2,000-4,000 word chapters once every two weeks is a REALLY slow way of getting through a novel. Like it's going to take a year and a half or something.

Or, I could pick and choose my chapters that I feel I need the most help on and send them to my friends, but then I'd have to fill them in on what the characters are doing and it'll be hard to get them to comment on a character's arc or overall development if they haven't seen the intervening stuff.

So how do you handle this problem?
 

Fiender

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Uhhh, I would ask the group if they could jack up the pace, to be honest. Most beta readers I've found on AW have finished my (80k-ish word) books in a couple months at most. And, if your group isn't able or willing to make that change, it might not be the right group for you. I wouldn't recommend sending someone a random chapter of your book since they won't have all the context that leads into it (even if you try to give them a "cliff notes" before hand), and that could greatly affect their reading experience and any critique they give you.
 

Woollybear

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A beta reader is a great suggestion. The other things that might help are reading widely and learning to improve through exposing yourself/absorbing what others are writing successfully, and then applying what you learn to your manuscript, and reading 'how to' craft books on writing.

Critique groups are great, but they are only one of the ways we can improve and you're seeing one of the necessary flip sides of how they work.
 

Kalyke

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This really sounds like a "levels of edit" problem. To find some things out, you can send chapters, but to find other things out, you would need to send the entire book (finished). College classes usually make the students read a small number of pages. or chapter if you wish, in order not to overwhelm the readers. 15 people in the class sending 10 pages home with each student makes for a lot of reading. I have personally never gotten what I would "wish" for out of one of these classes. I really think, in my own case, that I would prefer a full novel reading or at least parts/sections making up 1/4th or 1/3rd or some larger section like that-- which is why I like the idea of "books" within the novel. Each of those should really be a stand-alone piece of writing with a beginning, middle, and end which can be read separately.
 

Maryn

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Grizzled critique group veteran here, the longest running one I know of. (Founded 1992.)

They don't really work for novels if the standard method is to distribute pages at the end of a meeting, critique those pages at the next meeting, and distribute new pages at its end. As you're seeing, it takes close to a year to get feedback on an entire novel if you meet every two weeks. Another drawback is that the critics are reading the novel at such a slow pace they're likely to lose track of plot and character details and won't realize the author contradicted established facts or wrote a giant plot hole.

What our group sees again and again (and what I see here, too) is that the mistakes, weaknesses, bad writing habits, etc. present in the early chapters happen throughout the entire novel. Once the author identifies them all, a better use of their time is to seek to fix them in the entire draft of the novel without bringing pages for feedback, while attending group meetings and continuing to give feedback to others. (And if it isn't complete, the author needs to ensure they don't repeat the previous mistakes as they write new pages.)

Then when you have a complete novel without the mistakes your critique group has notes in the early chapters you shared, you seek beta readers from the group. Beta reads are done outside the scope of the group, taking no meeting time, and no one is obligated to provide a beta read. Depending on the group's dynamic, you may not even ask everyone in the group to do it.

Maryn, who finds critique groups great for short stories
 
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Kalyke

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Grizzled critique group veteran here, the longest running one I know of. (Founded 1992.)



What our group sees again and again (and what I see here, too) is that the mistakes, weaknesses, bad writing habits, etc. present in the early chapters happen throughout the entire novel. Once the author identifies them all, a better use of their time is to seek to fix them in the entire draft of the novel without bringing pages for feedback, while attending group meetings and continuing to give feedback to others. (And if it isn't complete, the author needs to ensure they don't repeat the previous mistakes as they write new pages.)

"To know the vintage and quality of a wine one need not drink the whole cask. It must be perfectly easy in half an hour to say whether a book is worth anything or worth nothing."
Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist."
 

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Grizzled critique group veteran here, the longest running one I know of. (Founded 1992.)

They don't really work for novels if the standard method is to distribute pages at the end of a meeting, critique those pages at the next meeting, and distribute new pages at its end. As you're seeing, it takes close to a year to get feedback on an entire novel if you meet every two weeks. Another drawback is that the critics are reading the novel at such a slow pace they're likely to lose track of plot and character details and won't realize the author contradicted established facts or wrote a giant plot hole.

What our group sees again and again (and what I see here, too) is that the mistakes, weaknesses, bad writing habits, etc. present in the early chapters happen throughout the entire novel. Once the author identifies them all, a better use of their time is to seek to fix them in the entire draft of the novel without bringing pages for feedback, while attending group meetings and continuing to give feedback to others. (And if it isn't complete, the author needs to ensure they don't repeat the previous mistakes as they write new pages.)

Then when you have a complete novel without the mistakes your critique group has notes in the early chapters you shared, you seek beta readers from the group. Beta reads are done outside the scope of the group, taking no meeting time, and no one is obligated to provide a beta read. Depending on the group's dynamic, you may not even ask everyone in the group to do it.

Maryn, who finds critique groups great for short stories

I agree with all of this (despite being relatively new to crit groups). Crit groups and beta readers are different things, and should be treated differently. A bit like the SYW forums here, actually. You contribute to other's threads. Then you post one chapter, get a ton of feedback, and apply it to the rest of the MS. Then sometimes people volunteer to beta. You don't slowly post your entire book on the forum.

I also think crit groups are a great place to discuss the business side of writing (depending on who's in them obviously. If everyone is a happy amateur, this isn't relevant). Looking at synopses and queries, talking through different publishing paths, getting hooked into some author whisper networks. I consider looking out for each other professionally as well as creatively to be an important role for crit groups.
 

eruthford

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What our group sees again and again (and what I see here, too) is that the mistakes, weaknesses, bad writing habits, etc. present in the early chapters happen throughout the entire novel. Once the author identifies them all, a better use of their time is to seek to fix them in the entire draft of the novel without bringing pages for feedback, while attending group meetings and continuing to give feedback to others. (And if it isn't complete, the author needs to ensure they don't repeat the previous mistakes as they write new pages.)

Now that is helpful. I'll have to pay better attention to the comments I get and apply them to the chapters they haven't seen rather than do the instinctive "Right! Fixed it, let's keep the train running" thing that I want to do.

But what if you're particularly worried about the climax of the story, 80 percent of the way through?
 

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Beta readers are not crit groups and vice versa. Beta readers never read less than the finished book. They don't read chapters. They don't read early drafts. They read your polished work. They are the last line of defense to catch any serious errors with your book.
 

Woollybear

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This is one definition that goes around, but as many well-regarded authors say, there are very few rules one should cling to in their artistry, and personally, I'd argue this philosophy could apply to story development too.

In my experience, the purpose of a beta reading is decided between the author and the reader. Most writers have areas of strength / weakness; most readers have preferences in their reading material. I've used readers for very specific purposes, such as finding areas to deepen emotionality, which is one of my specific weaknesses. Another weakness is describing what people look like, and some readers are perfect for this role but not for, say, pacing. I would not be a good reader to identify weak areas involving lack of character description, as I am not overly concerned with what the characters look like.

And, one reason to seek a beta swap on the first chapter (or first three chapters) is to make certain the other person holds up their end of the bargain (something like 90% don't). Also, to ensure you are both comfortable with one another's writing, and feedback style.

As beta readers each of us is certainly entitled to stipulate that we only read finished, polished work. But we are also free to say we'd be happy to read a complete manuscript simply to identify if the climax is solid. Or other things. A strict definition of 'beta reading' implies a certain confining uniformity among beta readers--that they are experts and share some range of qualities. In my experience this is not the case.

Definitions of 'polished' varies by person too, btw. :)

Many of us are amateurs seeking to help other amateurs toward mutual benefit.

All of this is my experience only.
 
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Kalyke

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Beta readers are not crit groups and vice versa. Beta readers never read less than the finished book. They don't read chapters. They don't read early drafts. They read your polished work. They are the last line of defense to catch any serious errors with your book.

Serious errors making it to the final polished stage would mean the writer has not been editing correctly the entire way through-- The time and place to catch serious errors is in the rough draft stage. If a writer has worked on a book for several months and has not seen the serious error, then that person needs to study writing more (in whichever genre).
 

Woollybear

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erutherford--For readers to read through 80% of your novel to the climax requires more than a well-structured plot. It requires enjoyable reading -- this includes your voice, your craft, your scene-level structure, your use of tension, and so on. Improving on these things happens in good critique groups.

For the (award-winning) book I'm currently reading, the climax is happening now. But I don't particularly care what happens at this point. It can go a few different ways and I'll be good with whatever choice the author makes.* The book is worth reading for other reasons--the characters have been through hell, the world is rich, entire chapters have been spent with side characters irrelevant to the story, it's sweeping and magnificent. I haven't 'page-turned' at any point, because it is simply too rich, like chocolate, but it is also one of the first novels I've completed (will complete) this year. (It's more often the case that I'll pick up a bestseller and discover it is as formulaic as the next, and I DNF.)

Don't leave any of the good stuff on the table. Don't bank on the climax. There are all sorts of goodies you can use (inject, weave, color, shade) in all the chapters that precede it, and some of these delicious bits have nothing to do with story structure.

*I can imagine beta readers calling this is a weakness. In my opinion, it isn't. Subjectivity and all that.
 
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Cephus

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Serious errors making it to the final polished stage would mean the writer has not been editing correctly the entire way through-- The time and place to catch serious errors is in the rough draft stage. If a writer has worked on a book for several months and has not seen the serious error, then that person needs to study writing more (in whichever genre).

Errors in the sense of plot problems. Whether we like it or not, we, as writers, are often blind to our plots because we know things in our heads that our readers do not have access to. You can only catch these things in context over an entire manuscript. There's no way to tell if what happens in chapter 5 affects chapter 11 if you never see more than chapter 5.
 

mccardey

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Beta readers are not crit groups and vice versa. Beta readers never read less than the finished book. They don't read chapters. They don't read early drafts. They read your polished work. They are the last line of defense to catch any serious errors with your book.
Not quite accurate, that. Beta-readers may read the whole book or may read the first three chapters, or may read just that bit in the middle that the author is worried about, for whatever issue it is that the author is worried about.

Myself, I always begin by committing to the first three chapters. I don't often ask for the whole book because I don't often have time to beta a whole book. A good beta (and I'm a good beta, so I know this ;) ) can often need to take two or three consecutive reads of the piece before giving feedback.

That takes time, and having a lot of trust in the author.
 
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Layla Nahar

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I took a novel writing class at Harvard Extension School. We used reader feedback and selections from our works based on the principle cited by Maryn - that the problems in one part of the book will be the problems in any part of the book, and once the writer has a sense of that s/he can apply that insight to the revision throughout.
 

Liz_V

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I have a similar problem with my critique group. Our limit's even smaller, around 1000-1500 (though people routinely stretch it and so far no one's complained). Most of my short stories exceed that, never mind novels.

And yeah, it's frustrating. I get that they want to keep the time commitment low, because everybody's busy and they don't want to scare people away with too much homework. But it does make the group fundamentally useless for "big picture" feedback like did all the plot threads come together at the end, or did I properly set up the character's choice at the climax. It ends up that I use the group mainly for (a) social connections (or did when we could still get together, stupid virus!), and (b) learning by critiquing other people's stuff. I rarely take anything of my own any more. Which is an awkward imbalance, but less awkward than submitting micro-portions for feedback that isn't what I need.

I do know of writing groups that have larger limits or no limits at all, even to the point of allowing members to drop an entire novel on the group all at once. I don't think it's a coincidence that the vast majority of those groups' members are successful novelists.

Beta readers are a great suggestion if you can find them. The big advantage I've found to a writers group is that people who've committed to a group will generally follow through and actually do the reading and critiquing. That... has not been my experience with beta readers.
 

Maryn

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The big advantage I've found to a writers group is that people who've committed to a group will generally follow through and actually do the reading and critiquing. That... has not been my experience with beta readers.
Nor mine. For every five who get the manuscript, four avoid me ever after, even leaving AW (or perhaps changing their user name?). I have one fan, though.

Maryn, who heard from her just today
 

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My critique group works mainly on novels at 3000 words per sub. People use different methods like skipping chapters (with synopsis) or just taking their time. Sometimes a person in the group agrees to beta.
 

E.F.B.

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I feel this. My crit group (which only started last month) shares a maximum of 3,500 words per sub, every two weeks. The novel I'm focusing on is long and I'm acutely aware of how much time it may take to work through it at this rate, plus I'm noticing the issue of some people forgetting what happened in the previously. (Like someone asking why the character was in a certain location at a certain time when that was literally stated at the end of the last sub. :/) There's also an issue that only one other person in the group besides myself wants traditional publishing (as opposed to self pub) and we've both observed that we give the most thorough and toughest feedback in the group, especially to each other. Not to say the others aren't ever helpful in their own ways, but there does seem to be a different level of quality and amount of feedback there.

Buuuut as others have pointed out, at least the group is committed. I, too, have been forgotten and/or ditched by betas for short stories. Part of the reason I joined the crit group in the first place was that I was afraid of not being able to find people to read the novel. I'll have take that leap eventually anyway, but at least maybe the story will have an extra coat of polish on it from the group's crits.
 

Liz_V

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There's also an issue that only one other person in the group besides myself wants traditional publishing (as opposed to self pub) and we've both observed that we give the most thorough and toughest feedback in the group, especially to each other. Not to say the others aren't ever helpful in their own ways, but there does seem to be a different level of quality and amount of feedback there.

That's one of the reasons I've stuck with my current group, for all its limitations: most of the members are aiming for serious publication, mostly traditional. Some have a better understanding of what that involves than others, but everybody at least has an eye on completing something publishable. Too many groups I've tried were about writing just for personal expression, and there's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want, but it doesn't make for a good source of critique.

plus I'm noticing the issue of some people forgetting what happened in the previously.

Yeah, this. A previous group I was in had a severe problem with this, even with allowing up around 5000 words at a time. Apparently referring back to last month's submissions isn't a thing, for most people.