Writing Advice: Giving Critique

Finally the followup!

Four months ago, I wrote about how to be a good receiver of critique and promised to write about how to be a good giver of critique the following month. Then I forgot, and so this followup is coming four months late.

To that point, the most important part of giving critique is to, y’know, actually give it. Ask the requestor if there’s a schedule you need to meet—often people will be getting back several critiques at once and/or have a revision schedule for publication—and then deliver on time. If you’re running short of time, communicate! Ask whether they’d prefer a more comprehensive critique, say, two weeks late, or whatever you’ve got by the deadline. But do your best to return your critique in the timeframe promised.

Anyway, with that out of the way. The thing that I always ask my RAWR students to keep in mind when giving critique is that the point of a critique is to help the author improve the story. It’s important to understand that this does not mean “to help the author make the story more like one you would have written,” or “show the author how much better a writer you are than they are.” Every story is an attempt by the author to communicate something to the reader in a particular style, and so as a critiquer, you have to understand what it is they’re trying to communicate and help them make that communication more effective in the style they’ve chosen.

It’s useful to ask, if they don’t volunteer the information, what exactly they’re trying to communicate with the story. Or, alternately, what’s cool about the story to them? What sparked them to write it in the first place? That helps you understand what you should be looking to help bring out in the story as you read it.

(Some authors may not want to tell you this, insisting that you read it as a regular reader would, in which case what they want to hear is what you think is cool, or what you think the point of the story is, so be prepared with that information as part of your critique.)

I usually find it helpful, time permitting, to read through the story once without critiquing and then read through it again to make notes. This is easier with shorter work than with a novel, but do as you can. Then think back through it. What were the best parts? What parts seemed to drag? What parts didn’t seem clear? A lot of the value to the author is going to be your experience of the story. As you know from being a writer yourself, working on a story in small chunks means it’s often hard to know the effect of the whole piece at once. This includes remembering what the reader knows at any given point; often the author will assume knowledge they haven’t written into the story yet, or had written in but then took out while editing without realizing the effect it would have on the story.

After the first read, write down your impressions, and then it’s time for the deeper second read. Here’s where you can take those impressions and dig down into what specifically is creating them. We have a list we share with our RAWR students of areas to focus on in the critique. You don’t have to use all of these, or only these, but it’s a good list to start from:

o   Engaging: did you want to find out what happened next?

o   Setting: did you get a good sense of where the story took place?

o   Characters: do you feel you know who the characters are without too much explanation? Do they behave believably and consistently?

o   Description: does the author paint a clear and enjoyable picture?

o   Language: is the story a pleasure to read on a word-choice and sentence level?

o   Dialogue: how well does it fit in the world of the story?

o   Story: how interesting was the story concept, and how satisfying was the ending?

o   Plot: did events progress and follow in a logical and interesting order?

It’s important, as you’re writing out these critiques, to remember that your goal is to help the author. Using negative language usually isn’t helpful, phrases like “I didn’t like” or “this didn’t work.” Try to figure out why you didn’t like it, or why it didn’t work, and then say something more constructive, like, “this feels out of character” or “I had trouble following the action in the fight scene, and I think you can clarify it without losing the exciting pacing.”

There will be moments when you may want to convey your emotional reaction to the prose, but try to keep it in that context. For example: “I hate this character in this moment, but that means she’s effectively written! If you wanted us to hate her.” It can be helpful to let the author know how you feel at certain points in the story so they can gauge how successful their prose is (maybe they wanted that character to be sympathetic; then they can ask you, “if you knew X and Y, would you feel differently?” or “what would it take for you not to hate her?”).

As you read through their story, you will, as a writer yourself, inevitably think, “I would write this part a different way!” Remember that you are not trying to write this story for them; you’re trying to help them write it. That said…sometimes another perspective on a writing problem can be helpful. One phrase we teach our RAWR students, which I learned at Clarion, is, “If this were my story…” This allows you to make a suggestion without putting the direct pressure of “I think you should do…” on the author. Another phrase I use often is, “I think you have an opportunity here to…” This again phrases it as an optional change. And it’s always best to explain why you’re suggesting a change, and what effect you think it will have. You could also make a more general suggestion for an effect you think is missing, for example, “I think that before this scene, it might be helpful for the reader to have another example of how this setting is hostile.”

When in doubt, read back your critique and ask yourself, “Is this a helpful, constructive suggestion to help the author improve the story?” If you can’t unequivocally answer yes, it might be an opportunity for you to reword your suggestion or edit down your critique. At least, if it were MY critique, that’s what I would do.