Giving and taking critique without breaking a group

A critique group breaks less often over a blunt note than over lopsided ones, meetings that quietly stop, and feedback aimed at the wrong target, and the repair is habit, not tact. This page sets out the habits: meet regularly, give more than you take, aim every note at the page, and know where critique partners end and beta readers begin.

What critique is for

The point of critique of any kind, as kidlit.com states it, is to get other eyes on your work, ideally eyes that belong to writers who know what they are talking about. The why is simple: a page you have lived with for months stops showing you what it says, and a writer reading it cold sees the words on the paper, not the version in your head. A critique group is that arrangement made standing, writers who exchange manuscripts and commentary, ideally on a regular basis. Meeting in person is optional; the same blog notes these groups work well over the Internet or by phone, so a group spread across both Carolinas and a group at one library table are the same animal.

What keeps a group together?

The blog's answer is unglamorous: writers who convene regularly and are committed to one another, so that a core group stays together across many projects. Continuity does the work. Partners who have read you before come to know your writing, your strengths, your weaknesses and your goals, and that memory is what lets a group get into the nitty gritty instead of re-explaining the book at every meeting. The commitment question starts at the stage of putting a group together. Where do you find people? The blog points beginners to the Verla Kay Blueboards, to the SCBWI, which it names as a place writers find partners, and to writers' conferences. When a pairing fails, its advice is plain: find another one.

Give three before you take one

A working model of this etiquette played out in one comment event: when kidlit.com ran a first line critique in its comment section, the price of admission was feedback. Anyone posting an opening line was asked to react to three first lines from other writers before their own went up; the first handful were excused, having nothing yet to react to. The ground rules, compressed:

• React to three first lines before posting your own.
• Say what the line is, picture book, middle grade, young adult or something else, since a reader judges an opening against its category.
• Address the writer by name; the comments were not threaded, so an unmarked remark landed on nobody.
• Scroll back later to see what came back on your own work.

The line drawing the most comments earned a 250 word first page critique from the blog's author, and first time commenters sat in moderation until released. The ratio is the lesson: a group where everyone gives three and takes one never runs dry.

Aim the note, not the person

Because that comment section had no threads, responders were asked to make sure a writer knew a remark was meant for them, a name and a few dashes in front of it. The room version of the rule matters more. Put the criticism on the page, where the writer can act on it, not on the writer: a note that says where the reading stopped hands the author a place to work, while a note about what the writer always does hands them a verdict. Extend the same patience you were shown in moderation: silence after you hand over pages usually means the reader is still reading, not that a verdict is being composed.

Partners, or beta readers?

A critique partner or group, in the kidlit.com author's distinction, meets regularly, reads whatever you hand over, and drills in, the whole manuscript or twenty versions of one chapter; the arrangement is meant to be hands on and intense. A beta reader takes the whole manuscript once and reacts to it but may not give as much craft or revision advice, and that is the point: new eyes. Its example is a murder mystery: partners who already know the whole story may no longer be able to judge your red herrings after a few revisions, while a reader meeting the book cold still can. Most professional writers the author knows keep both: a regular group through the drafts, then a few beta readers after the manuscript is polished, a last read before it goes to an agent or editor.

When to bring the manuscript in

Groups set their own gate. Some want a completed manuscript before they will read you, others take work in progress, sometimes as it comes off the printer, and the blog's counsel is to settle that question together. Its own lean: feedback while you are still creating can be useful and exciting, but it is even more useful to finish, revise on your own for a few passes, and only then bring your partners in. A novel changes so much while it is being written that a note on an early chapter may answer a book that no longer exists. Say which stage your pages are at when you hand them over.

Taking the notes, and sitting with them

Receiving critique well is not a soft skill; it may be the one being watched. The kidlit.com author reports parting ways with more clients over revision than over any other issue, because an agent can only guesstimate a new writer's ability to revise from the manuscript in hand. So when the notes come back, sort them and work one problem at a time, and give the book the distance the blog prescribes: revise more than you think you need to, put the manuscript away, come back to it in three months. Too little revision is the commoner failure, though you can also revise a manuscript to death, stripping out voice, freshness and spontaneity when you hurry.

A first line night

Take the comment event's format to your next meeting, scaled to a room: everyone brings one first line and reads it aloud, each member reacts to three other lines before defending their own, and the line that draws the most reaction has its first page, 250 words, read cold at the next session.

kidlit.com is a craft blog on writing and publishing for children and teens, written in the first person by a literary agent who has taken on clients. Its posts answer reader questions, among them what beta readers and online critique groups are for and how to approach revision once an agent asks for a full manuscript, and its comments have hosted shared critique events like the first line exchange above.