Section 04 · Critique Groups
Critique groups for childrens writers
How a critique group is started, what a useful critique sounds like, and the ground rules that keep a group alive past its third meeting.
A critique group is a handful of writers who swap pages and honest commentary, on a schedule they keep. This page explains what the swap is for, whether the book must be finished before anyone reads it, how beta readers differ from a critique group, and where writers in the Carolinas actually find each other.
The short answers: no rule says a manuscript must be complete before you join, though the case for waiting is stronger than most beginners expect, and beta readers do a different job, later in the life of a draft. The editor behind Kidlit.com, who has written about both, is blunt on the main point: all writers need other eyes on their work, even those whose earlier attempts went badly.
What does a critique group actually do?
The point of critique of any kind is to get other eyes on your work, and ideally eyes that belong to writers who know what they are talking about. A critique group, or a single critique partner, the name hardly matters, is a set of writers who exchange work and commentary, ideally on a regular basis. Some writers love a local circle that meets in a room. The same arrangement works over the Internet or the phone, which matters when the nearest person writing your category lives two counties away. The format counts for less than the return: the same readers, back again with fresh pages.
Why the same readers matter more than the format
A group works best, in the account the Kidlit.com editor gives, when the writers convene regularly and commit to one another, so that a core holds together across many projects. That is not sentiment. Partners who read you for years become familiar with your writing, your stories, your strengths, your weaknesses and your goals, and that familiarity is what lets a critique get down to business instead of restarting from zero each time. A stranger can flag a clumsy sentence. Only someone who has watched three of your manuscripts knows whether this one shows you improving or you hiding. When you try a group out, you are shopping for that continuity first and the chemistry second.
Finished manuscript first, or chapters as you write?
Groups set their own threshold. Some want every member to arrive with a completed manuscript. Others take work in progress, sometimes pages still warm from the printer, and the editor's advice is to talk the question over with your partners and settle on whatever appeals to everyone. Her own lean, stated on the same page, is to finish the draft, revise it alone for a few passes, and only then bring readers in, because a novel changes so much while it is being written that early notes often land on a book you are about to abandon. If you take that route, our guide to working in revision passes shows how to give each solo round one problem at a time.
A comment thread that ran like a critique group
The smallest unit this desk has seen critiqued well is one sentence. After a post about opening lines, readers of Kidlit.com, a blog about writing for children, began posting their own first lines in her comments and asking for feedback, and people were critiquing opening lines on her Facebook page too. She answered by turning the comments into an exercise: post one first line, say whether it opens a picture book, a middle grade novel or a YA, and comment on three lines from other writers on your way in, a chore the earliest posters were spared. She critiqued a few lines herself, and the one that drew the most comments won a critique of its first 250 words from her. The whole exchange still sits under her first line critique post.
The job beta readers do differently
The distinction the editor draws is about depth and timing. A critique group meets regularly, reads whatever you hand it, and drills in, whether that means a full manuscript or twenty versions of one chapter while you fight a scene into shape. Beta readers take the whole manuscript and respond to it, with less writing, revision and craft advice attached. Their value is being new. Suppose you have written a murder mystery and want to know whether the red herrings still work: partners who have read four drafts know the ending and cannot judge the trap fresh, while a beta reader can. In her account, most of the professional writers she knows run both in sequence, a standing group first, then a few beta readers once the manuscript is revised and polished, for quick feedback and a last read before it goes to an agent or editor.
Where Carolinas writers find each other
For finding partners, the Kidlit.com editor's suggestions are unglamorous: look online, through the Verla Kay Blueboards or the SCBWI, or meet someone at a writer's conference, and if a partner does not work out, find another. Closer to home, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators describes itself as providing resources, professional connection and community for writers, illustrators and translators, and it keeps a regional page for the two Carolinas. What such a page carries at any given moment changes, which is why this magazine describes the structure rather than the listings.
If the first partner does not work, find another
Beginners should not strain after a full bench on day one. The editor's advice is not to worry about a pocketful of beta readers and a dedicated five-person group right away: one partner trains the three skills the practice runs on, giving feedback, receiving it, and incorporating it. Two habits from that first line thread travel into any group. Name the writer you are addressing, so nobody has to guess who you mean, and check back later for the answer, because critique you never read is decoration. So, before the week ends, copy your first line onto a card, write picture book, middle grade or YA beside it, and hand it to one writer whose judgment you would accept on your worst sentence. Ask for one specific reaction, not applause. If your circle holds no such person yet, the guide to starting a critique group from nothing begins exactly where you are.
In this suite
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Starting a critique group that lasts past meeting three
A lasting critique group gives writers other eyes on their work, regular swaps of pages and comments, and partners who know your strengths, weaknesses and goals across many projects.
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Giving and taking critique without breaking a group
Critique groups rarely break over a blunt note; they break over lopsided exchanges, fading meetings, and feedback aimed at the writer, and the repair is habit.
Every guide in this suite reads against the Critique Groups arithmetic, and two neighbouring suites extend it: Craft & Revision and Illustration.