by Anne R. Allen
I recommend that new writers take advantage of critique groups in order to learn about the publishing business and the craft of writing. Writing courses are expensive and often not as helpful as a good critique group.
But there are bad critique groups too. Really bad. I’ve seen authors stop writing because of harsh treatment or even bullying in a writing group.
The trick is to find a good one that works for you. That means paying attention to the red flag warnings that show a group has gone over to the dark side. In-person groups seem the most susceptible to bad behavior, but I’ve heard of some pretty nasty stuff happening in online groups as well.
Groups of any kind can fall into bad habits. It happens in volunteer organizations, church groups, charities, community theaters, offices—pretty much any group where humans get together.
One or two members with control issues can change the nature of the group and create a toxic environment for everybody else.
If your critique group wants help, or you need some healing after a brutal critique, you can find it at The Critique MD. I highly recommend Christine’s advice!
Here are a few common deviations from the solid critique group we’re all looking for. Some can be repaired. But sometimes a group is so entrenched in bad behavior, you simply have to move on.
1) Zero Tolerance Critique Groups
These people never met a writing rule they didn’t love. They want to enforce each one with the zeal of a school expelling a 1st grade girl for a plastic butter knife.
For them it’s all about finding and shaming the rule-breakers, not improving their fellow writers’ work.
They’ll tell you the word “was” is taboo. (For more on this see my post on the “was” police) And no prologues are allowed, EVER. They’ll tell you a book can’t (or must) be written in the first person or present tense. They have a search-and-destroy policy concerning adverbs.
Humor sometimes helps (although the zero tolerance crowd won’t get it.) Mostly you have to put up your personal deflector shields and let a lot of the nonsense bounce off. For more on the nonsense, see my post on Stupid Writing Rules.
2) Group Therapy
One of the most common pitfalls for writing groups is the tendency to slip into psychotherapy. This happens most often if there are several memoirists in the group who are working on their break-up, wartime, or health issues through writing.
The line between creating and confessing gets very thin. (And some people may use their writing to dump their troubles on the group for attention and sympathy.)
Critiquers often feel they should give supportive, “attaboy” feedback, no matter what the quality of the writing.
There can also be an element of the “suffering contest,” if two or more memoirists are using the group to detail the horrors that tragified their lives.
When you’re hoping to get a little help with the plotting of your thriller or breezy romance, you can feel like you’re crashing the pity party.
You’re also going to get terrible advice from the tender-hearted members who have fits whenever your protagonist makes bad choices. They want you to stop every character from dancing with the judgemental aristocrat, fighting the fascists in Spain, or accepting the owl’s invitation to wizard school (who would be dumb enough to do that?) Plotting is not their strong point.
3) Literary Salons
These are usually dominated by readers and writers of literary fiction. There will be a couple of poets and a memoirist or two. The members may write brilliantly and have a vast knowledge of literature, but their critiques can be less than helpful.
They often veer off topic to discuss a recent article in The New Yorker.
Members tend to be old school, so won’t consider self-publishing. They may send out a few half-hearted queries comparing their work to Kerouac, Joyce, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, but probably don’t attempt to get published outside of small literary journals.
You may learn some useful things about character and setting here, and you’ll get a lot of help weeding out clichés. But on plot and structure, this kind of group can be pretty useless.
4) Golden Girls Critique Groups
A group that consists mostly of an older demographic can sometimes be dominated by people with memory issues. (Hey, age happens to all of us, with any luck!)
But this means critiques of longer works like memoir and novels can be difficult because people don’t remember what they heard in the last installment. Half your critique time is spent outlining what happened in the last chapter, and it can be tough to move forward.
What my “Golden Girls” decided to do is come prepared with a short recap of the previous chapter, so we don’t spend so much time refreshing each others’ memories.
5) Punctuation Police
Some groups ask that members bring printed copies of their work to hand out to everybody in the group. This can be super-useful if you need help with proofreading, but meetings that use printed pages can often devolve into drawn-out arguments over use of the Oxford comma.
Groups that focus on grammar will do very little to help with your overall storytelling skills, but if you want to brush up on basic skills or need a proofreader, they’re great.
6) The Moveable Feast
This is the group that never quite gets around to more than a couple of critiques per meeting because so much of the time is spent enjoying elaborate refreshments.
Providing the refreshments can become a competitive sport. If the group meets in the evening there may be some lovely wine.
Groups like this can be a godsend to a writer who’s been holed up in a writing cave for years and needs some human contact, but their feedback is usually skimpy. Critique groups that focus on food can be made up mostly of hobbyist writers who only want to share a few written reminiscences or verses with the group, but aren’t on a path to publication.
7) Reality Checkers
There are groups where the fact-checkers hold sway. These are super detail-oriented people who want a novel to be as close to real life as possible.
They want everything to be “realistic” down to knowing when and where your heroine goes to the bathroom when she’s running from the mutant raccoons on Mars. Their most scathing criticism is that your scene is “like something out of a (insert your the latest blockbuster) movie.”
They will be sure to point out that your Regency duke will have terrible B.O. after fighting off those ruffians, so the kiss the heroine has been anticipating for 30 pages would not be the glorious experience you describe.
They will never let you use the word “gun”: you must give the make and caliber every time anybody gets off a shot during the battle between the sentient sea lions and the Norwegian mafia Lutefisk-smuggling ring.
8) Performance Artists
Whether or not the members are actual poets, some groups turn out to be less like critique groups and more like competitive poetry slams. These groups can be full of people who want to perform, but tune out when anybody else is reading.
Their critiques may careen from lavish praise to savage criticism, or they may order you to write an entirely new plot, which they will outline for you in detail. That’s because they will say anything that allows them to hold the floor as long as possible.
These people can build you up one week and say devastating things the next—anything that comes into their heads—entirely without empathy. You are not real to them: you are just a bit of warm protoplasm that makes up their “audience.”
9) The Mutual Admiration Society
This group is all about schmoozing and bolstering flagging egos. It may be hard to get the meeting started because everybody is catching up on each other’s news.
Everything brought in for critique is always wonderful! Marvelous!! And every piece is worthy of publication so YOU MUST SEND IT OFF RIGHT THIS MINUTE!!!
Don’t change a thing. Whatever you write is perfect.
10) The Vicious Circle
This group is dominated by a handful of Dorothy Parker-wannabes who are waiting for the right moment to slip a verbal dagger into your heart.
They may have published a few things—which they feel makes them “experts”—but it was probably some time ago.
Maybe in their college newspaper. When they got some harsh feedback from the writer-in-residence, who may have used words like “puerile”, “self-indulgent”, and “derivative.”
Since then, they’ve been honing their bitterness till it cuts like a samurai sword.
They have a way of sighing before they deliver their scathing critiques that shows how much pain your very existence is causing them.
It only takes one or two of these—plus their devoted (and fearful) minions—to turn a critique group into one of the darker circles of hell.
A workshop like this at a well-known writers’ conference was the inspiration for my comic mystery, Ghostwriters in the Sky. I got to kill off the workshop leader who created vicious critique groups. Very satisfying.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) September 1, 2019
***
What about you, scriveners? Have you ever been in one of these critique groups? Did you make it work for you? Or did you have to make a strategic escape? Have you experienced any other kinds of critique groups that can be hazardous to your writing health?
For More on Critique Groups: here’s my post on 6 Ways Critique Groups Can Help Your Writing, and 6 Ways they Can’t.
On my book blog this week, I talk to Debra Eve of the Later Bloomer about how much reality goes into my fiction and also who I’d invite to a fantasy dinner party. Stop on by and list your fantasy dinner companions!
Update: Kudos for my book The Author Blog: Easy Blogging for Busy Authors
The Author Blog made it to the Best Blogging Books of All Time
“The Author Blog: Easy Blogging for Busy Authors”, made it to BookAuthority’s Best Blogging Books of All Time:
https://bookauthority.org/books/best-blogging-books?t=125nje&s=award&book=198409078X
BookAuthority collects and ranks the best books in the world, and this is kinda cool.
The book is available for purchase on Amazon.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
The first book in the Camilla Randall comedy-mysteries is only 99c!
GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY: Camilla Mystery #1
Murder and mayhem (and a bogus agent) at a California writers’ conference.
After her celebrity ex-husband’s ironic joke about her “kinky sex habits” is misquoted in a tabloid, New York etiquette columnist Camilla Randall’s life unravels in bad late night TV jokes.
Nearly broke and down to her last Hermes scarf, she accepts an invitation to a Z-list Writers’ Conference in the wine-and-cowboy town of Santa Ynez, California, where, unfortunately, a cross-dressing dominatrix named Marva plies her trade by impersonating Camilla. When a ghostwriter’s plot to blackmail celebrities with faked evidence leads to murder, Camilla must team up with Marva to stop the killer from striking again.
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This is an expanded version of a piece that appeared on the IWSG blog on October 22, 2018
Featured Image: ‘An Outdoor Literary Salon’, French 19th- century illustration.
How I love-love-love this one Anne. It’s vintage you, and the world should be grateful. The online beta-group I’ve worked with could not have been more valuable to me (which is to say, not close to any of these types you describe) and I’m blessed for that.
I admit, I WAS tempted to nit-pick here and there: I think you seriously underestimate, for example, the danger of a six-year old girl with a plastic butter knife, and then too, my level of ignorance is so high I felt forced to Google the name Karl Ove Knausgaard, to make sure it wasn’t a vocal joke. Too bad, he’s real… but nothing would be worse for a new writer than that last group, the Vicious Circle. Today, I don’t know, I think you and I could hang in the back and chuckle that Dorothy-Parker-wannabe off the stage. THAT would be a fun night.
Will–I would love to join you in doing battle with the Dorothy Parker wannabes of the Vicious Circle! We could even make fun of the Struggle of Karl Ove Knausgaard. Although then they might go after us with plastic butter knives. 🙂
Fab post, Anne! Kind of boils down to the basic battle between “everyone’s an expert” and “no one knows anything.” Important for authors to understand that, once past the beginner’s stage, the author is the expert on his/her own work. After all, the work “authority” starts with author! 😉
Ruth–I agree that the “authority” starts with the author. Nicely said. 🙂 Critique groups can help beginners learn the ropes, but only if the members have empathy and are open to learning. The problem comes with the people who don’t know anything set themselves up as experts.
If you’re there for the feast, that’s about all you’ll get out of it.
They have a way of sighing before they deliver their scathing critiques that shows how much pain your very existence is causing them. – Don’t you just feel sorry for people like that? They must be very lonely and miserable.
Alex–Sometimes a writer needs a party, and that’s fine if you’re not really looking for a critique. But you’re so right that the people who give cruel critiques have sad little lives. And they almost never get successfully published.
Re number 4. I’ve written four memoirs- which amazes me- and I have to refer to the TOCs in all of them so I don’t repeat myself. I sometimes forget what I’ve read or written in the middle of reading and writing it!
A troll visited my blog a few months ago. He fit your last description to a tee. A young man, who shouldn’t be that bitter, yet. He told me my writing was “masturbation on the page,” and he was thinking of leaving reviews on all my books on Amazon, but, nah, he didn’t want to be “mean.” Haha!
Oh, well. I considered the source. Somewhere he had written: “The sun beat down aggressively.”
If the sun is going to be that mean to someone, they have a right to be cranky.
ChezGigi–I love your attitude! When trolls visit here, I delete them, but then wonder for days if they had anything of value to say. (They almost never do. They’re usually obviously drunk or ill.) But I never thought of looking to see what they write. You’re right that your poor troll who felt oppressed by the sun itself is probably having a very unhappy life.
I think we all have to keep a “book bible” or a “style sheet” where we keep track of what we’ve said and how we’ve said it. We all forget what color hair a character has or where she grew up. Even younger authors need to keep track.
Since my books don’t have plots, I haven’t had to worry about that, but I do forget which pieces I’ve already used in a book. Never thought it would get this complicated when I began writing in earnest.
As for the troll, that’s exactly why I replied to him. I had taken moderation off my comments because of all the peace and quiet, and his comment posted. He was articulate, but angry that I didn’t respond to a snarky comment of his on Quora and blocked him instead. He was so over the top over a VERY minor slight, it was a little scary.
I gave him a chance to say what he had to say, which was irrational nastiness, but I won’t do that again.
(I found your replies by accident when I found an article about Never Say Never Again, the last Connery Bond movie. I need to check the boxes!)
Good gracious! What a sad little man–or perhaps sad little boy.
He is a strange bird. I feel sorry for his wife, although most people reveal their darker sides at some point before the “I do’s!”
Funny comments as well as a delightful post! Thanks, Anne. My group–from which I am currently on hiatus–simply seems to demand too much of my time during most of the process. Every week, pieces from two of the five members, with a prepared critique. And never being able to do anything on Wednesday night! There are useful comments, but the timing of it only intermittently seems to coincide with my needs…it is indeed hard to find the perfect group! 🙂
Margaret–I sounds as if your group is too much like the Punctuation Police. Way too structured. My group used to meet every Wednesday (I wonder if that’s a pattern) but now we meet 2 Wednesdays a month. And no homework! Just read a piece out loud and give oral critiques. It’s worked for us for over 20 years. Maybe you could suggest that the group relax the rules a little?
I did but they opted for looking for new members to keep going rather than slow down the pace. *shrug* Live and learn!
Margaret–Then it sounds as if it’s time to move on. That whole set-up sounds way too restrictive and busy-worky to me.
I’m fortunate to have found a good writing group (long after the one in college — a writing class — put me off asking anyone for feedback).
What makes this group work is the moderator. Before he moved away, Don ran the group with a firm hand and a few simple rules.
The setup is that people bring in five pages of their WIP, a copy for each of us. Read, then briefly critique, with this in mind.
1. Concrete feedback only. If a character is unlikable, it needs to be shown on the page, not in your head.
2. Obviously no personal attacks.
3. The author is not allowed to defend or excuse. Doesn’t mean they have to accept the advice, but this is not meant to be an interrogation.
4. If someone already brought up a point, it’s permissible to say “I agree” (so the author knows that there might be a consensus) but you don’t need to explain it again. We know.
In turn, Don felt free to cut someone’s critique off and ask us to move on. This was especially important on nights when there’s a dozen people, which means it’s a three-hour night. Fortunately, he was pretty good at this without sounding like a drill sergeant.
It might help that we have a mix of writers who were doing commercial fiction, essays, memoirs, and articles, and we have a range of experiences so we could talk from authority on some subjects.
Bill–These are all important rules for any critique group. Thanks for sharing them. I agree there needs to be a moderator. I moderate my group once a month, and sometimes I have to crack the whip when critiques go too long and we have a full house. Sometimes people get stuck in a “loop” when critiquing and keep repeating themselves.
Oh my gosh, Anne. When you do a shoutout, you seriously do a shoutout. 🙂
Thank you so much and onward with the critique awesomeness. Wahoooo!
Christine
P.S. Holy cow!
Christine–I’m happy to have found your great blog! It fills a much-needed niche. I have one suggestion for improving it, though. Put your name on the blog! If there’s a space for a subheader, put something like “Christine Carron is the Critique MD.) It’s okay to toot your own horn!
lol. 🙂 Got it, Anne. I will add it to my blog improvement list. Tooting horn forthcoming. 😉
Hey Anne,
Great post (no surprise, there). Over the last couple decades I’ve been in most of these groups, & your presentation of them gave me a few good laughs (the wounds have healed, or you might have had me sobbing).
And brava for promoting Critique MD. Excellent new site for folks dealing with critiques.
Oh, and how did you possibly intuit my next oeuvre featuring a Norwegian mafia Lutefisk-smuggling ring?
Best,
Charlie
CS–Okay, I have to admit I’ve been snooping. But I’m sure your next Scandahoovian epic about the Norwegian Mafia Lutefisk smugglers is going to be a blockbuster.!
😀
Great post, Anne — and thanks! for the reference link to Critique MD — have spread the word to all clients who are swimming in critique group waters…as well as this post of yours, with the pointers to other posts.
I ‘did’ writers groups years ago, and encountered too many of the types you list here, but finally found a group that was serious, educated, devoted to learning about writing, and fun. We ‘lost’ members regularly because they would move forward, publish, and get a life. But then, many returned when the ‘new’ book arrived, demanding attention and support.
Thanks for coming through again and giving me an excellent excuse to ignore Sunday chores!
Maria–I think Critique MD will be a breath of fresh air for your clients. They can feel so battered by bad advice.
Our group has changed a great deal too. People go on to fame and fortune and others give up. My first publisher forbade me to go back to my group because he felt they were editing my book by committee and he only wanted the inhouse editor to be in control. But when the company collapsed, I was grateful they took me back. They still provide a good reality check.
Sunday chores? Oh, you mean that pile of dirty dishes and the baskets of laundry? Yeah, maybe later…
I tried a traditional critique group, I really did. They were nice people and helpful, but I found the pace of working with them to slow to the point of plodding. No matter if four of us or ten were in attendance at our twice monthly gatherings, five double spaced pages were all we were allowed, not even a chapter. That just didn’t work for me.
I’ve found a write every day, online writing group that works better for me. There are four of us. Two of us have written multiple novels of genre fiction, one has had some literary fiction short stories published and is working on both her MFA and her first full novel and one is pushing toward her first release. We email each other with a bit of what we’ve worked on each day, if it’s relevant. If not – one of our group does a lot of technical writing after hours for work related issues – we just say we wrote that day. Critique isn’t a requirement unless asked for. We’ve gotten to know each other and our stories pretty well, so suggestions are often made and considered.
More important, we talk about our plotting issues, our writer’s block, and we bounce crazy ideas off of each other. The major plot element of my last book? I can thank a member of this group for. It was gold. Oh, and it was the newer/younger author who hasn’t been published or self published yet that thought of it. Great ideas can come from anywhere.
Perhaps a group like that – no pressure, just write – would work for a lot of people.
Anne–It sounds as if you’ve got a great kind of hybrid group: part beta readers and part critique group.
As we publish and become more professional, we need to deal with a lot of issues other than craft, and it sounds as if you’ve got that covered with your group. It sounds wonderful!
I gotta be honest here, I know there are great critique groups out there. I read people’s comments (above) so, yes, they exist. But where I’m coming from is: I’ve entered a lot of contests in my day and when I would receive a glowing review from one judge and a horrible review from another, I just said, “no way” am I joining a critique group. Instead I went the route of hiring a developmental editor who knows her stuff, so that I could get experienced feedback with regard to the flow and content of the novel – from someone who edits the genre I write. Yes, it’s very expensive, but man, has it been worth it for me, and it is how I learned how to write.
Great post, Anne. Thank you.
Patricia–What works for you, works. And it sounds as if you found just what you need..
For people who can’t afford that kind of personal teaching, a critique group or beta readers can work, but the writer needs to learn how to cherry pick what’s helpful. One member may be good with grammar; another with character; another with plotting. So with a good group, the diversity of opinion can be a good thing.
I totally get you, Anne. And not everyone can afford the thousands of dollars it costs for editing and personal critiquing. I feel lucky that I was able to do that, believe me. And one of the most important things is what you said about “cherry picking”. I’ve listened to so many “don’t do this or that’s” and revised my entire manuscript only to find out that I really didn’t have to do that in the first place! Live and learn has worked well for me!
Such an incredible gem of a post! I do not have a critique group. I have not located one since my move to Michigan. Unfortunately my move has also eaten up a lot of my writing time as well. I love coming here. You are amazing. Thank you for sharing with humor and truth.
Kelly–Many thanks. 🙂 It’s great to hear that our work is helping people.
I hope you’re enjoying Michigan. I was born there (in Ann Arbor) but we moved when I was under a year old, so I don’t remember a whole lot.
You make too much sense as usual, Anne. Thanks for a grounded look at what goes in critique cliques. When I first took this commercial writing thing seriously, I thought joining a local writer group would be the ticket. I walked into a room with about twenty oddballs coveting in a cavern below a closed-down bar. It was like stumbling into a support service for the schizophrenic society.
The mean girl “facilitating” the gathering should have had a plastic butter knife. Getting critic-skewered by a flexible filleter would have hurt far less than the cold steel shiv she stuck into some. Get this – her name was Lisle Bich. I thought that was a pen name but it wasn’t. I came away with some good character actions and a great character name. 🙂
Garry–Uh-oh. Sounds like you walked into a “Group Therapy” critique group with Nurse Ratched in charge. What a nightmare!
But you’re right that “Lisle Bich” is up there with Nurse Ratched as a great character name. I hope you’ve put her in a novel and taken some revenge. 🙂
What a great post, Anne! I think I must have struck lucky with my critique groups over the years, as I’ve never had the misfortune to join one like you describe. I’m sure they exist, though. I wonder what it is about writing that gives people a sense of entitlement, which, when they don’t receive what they consider their due, turns to bitterness. Sad, sad, human beings.
Geraldine–Thanks! I do think most critique groups are pretty good. But like that girl with the curl, when they are bad, they are horrid. 🙂
I think writing may draw more unwell people because it looks so “easy” and all you need is a pen and paper. But all thwarted creatives can fall into bitterness and anger–whether it’s dance, acting, painting, or whatever. We all need to create. But it’s upsetting when that creativity isn’t recognized.
Tried logging in through Twitter ( ToDiaspora here ), but had issues. So logged in through Facebook.
The bit about reality-checkers gave me a bit of a chuckle, mostly because these are the people that drive me the most bonkers. In such situations, it seems like a bit of a losing proposition to communicate that you’ve intended some portions to be not completely lifelike.
There is another problem, in that I used to be a Cyberpunk writer back when YA dystopia was still trending in Young Adult. But now I prefer writing short stories, and often ( which still having a Cyberpunk setting ) leave you with an entirely different feeling from Cyberpunk.
So then if a writing group got used to say, my novella Uploaded Fairy, it will be difficult to convey how ( especially now that my politics are very different ) how I’ve somewhat graduated out of that kind of overtly dark science fiction, and prefer playing with language.
And yet on another level, I’m also going back to my oldest writing style, which was closer to what I tend to call “Cyborgs And Paladins”.
Although there is some cross-over with medieval fantasy (fuedalism) and Cyberpunk.
Hope that helps!
Whoops I can’t edit: what I mean by playing with language, is I’m creating an entirely new constructed language based on Japanese and French.
Sarah–You’re creating a whole new language! You’re another Tolkien! I think it’s important to establish yourself with short fiction if you’re writing literary or otherwise non-genre fiction, rather than trying to get an audience with novels. Best of luck with all of it!
Your books sound interesting, Sarah. And I love that you’ve chosen Alita as your avatar (I think!)
I beg permission to use your Regency Duke with valor-earned BO for my posthumous memoir. Of course, I would give credit to you in the fine print.
Anthony–I think writing memoirs posthumously is always a good plan. 🙂 Valorous dukes make a pungent addition.
I actually run an in-person writing group and my only ‘rule’ is ‘don’t be a dick’. Sure, point it out if someone has used four million adverbs on one page. But remember the author can still go “nah man, it’s just my style”. We don’t just do positive feedback, because sometimes you’ll read something and not get it, or just not like it, but as long as the author can use it to improve their work, then it’s good to go. Thankfully, I’ve managed to curate a group of people who will give their feedback with the spirit of “ignore this if you want, it’s just my opinion”, and the authors can take it or leave it! And they keep coming back…
Icy–It sounds as if you’ve found a formula that works for your group. Definitely positive feedback should be the #1 thing.
I learned that when learning to direct actors. Always accentuate the positive in notes, even if it’s just to say “You remembered your lines! You didn’t fall down!”
The ‘Golden Girl’ comment is thoroughly nasty and ageist. As someone in ‘that demographic’ as you so ‘nicely’ put it, my memory is just fine, thank you. I would be quite capable of remembering what was written on the previous page in a novel IF I were to join a group. That kind of attitude is part of why I wouldn’t even consider it.
J.R.–The Golden Girls is MY critique group. Or was before we realized we had to fix things. I’m a member of the Woodstock generation. Some members of my group are in their 80s. We are damned good writers. But we had to start bringing synopses of our last readings because we were spending so much time on recaps. Lighten up. Being old is hard enough without becoming a member of the permanently offended community. 🙂
Amusing yet scary post! lol
Patricia–I think we have to learn to laugh at ourselves before we can improve our surroundings. If you can see the humor in some of these more unpleasant group dynamics, you know you’re not the one with the problem. Then you can move on or learn to cherry-pick the useful advice.
Excellent post Anne. I’ll be on the lookout for these kinds of critique groups. BTW, as a new author, I took your advice and joined one of these groups–a good one. At first, I was a bit defensive and sensitive but I must have gotten a good group. The criticism was constructive and nobody crushed my spirit. In fact, I received one piece of good advice from an author and screenwriter who knew a great deal about the subject matter of my book. He said, “Kid, I like your style, but you need to get the reader interested early on…and not plod down the path going from A to B to C and hope you hook the reader. That’s what we do on TV–get them interested early on.” He was right and I haven’t forgotten such good advice.
Ken–I’m so glad to hear you found a good critique group. As I said, a good group is the best way I know to learn to write. And most of them are at least adequate. My 10 above are the exception. But it sounds as if you found an exceptionally good one! Congrats.
I’ve been incredibly lucky with critique groups over the (many) years; can’t say I’ve been in a bad one. Courses and workshops are quite another thing. Way back I was in a hostile short story course at The New School in NYC which halted my fiction writing for a couple of decades. Fortunately, I did journalism and other nonfiction while my “self” grew a thicker skin. And there was a two-week workshop in Port Townsend in which the attendees made it into a full-ego-contact sport. (Four other summers up there were terrific.) It’s all about (A) person-ality and (B) a good and aware teacher/leader. Terrific post, Anne.
SK–Spot on! My worst experiences with groups have been in classes and workshops, too. “Full-ego-contact-sport” is a great way to describe them. I do think a good moderator is the key to a good group. And a bad moderator can make a groups more toxic than any anarchic group just flailing around. A bitter “failed” writing teacher can destroy a fledgling writer. In most groups, you can at least have some differing opinions.
A good write club doesn’t have rules, but guidelines to improve writing. They share the reasons in helpful way:
They’ll tell you the word “was” is taboo.
• For emerging writers, the lesson is to show the action, not explain it to the reader such as a present participle to form continuous tenses. Example: She was trying to stay calm and hit good shots, trying to hit it straight every time. This is telling, rather than showing—Her hands shook as she grabbed the club. She swung it over her shoulder while concentrating on hitting it straight.
• Or, we discourage use with a past participle to form the passive voice—One of the students was punched and kicked to the ground and the other was stabbed twice in the chest. We encourage more action-showing verbs and less passive-telling verbs (not to eliminate all adverbs) to engage the reader to turn the page. In short, Resist the Urge to Explain (RUE) as they say in publishing. Explaining can be insulting to a reader as when someone explains verbally something to you face to face.
And no prologues are allowed, EVER. The reason is at best, readers are ignored prologue, and at worst, they turn the reader off or the reader skips it all together. It is better to disperse background information throughout the narrative with other back-story devices or flashback scenes. WHEN TO USE? When the data chokes the narrative with too much background details, and when without it, readers will be missing something. FOUR MAJOR TYPES OF PROLOGUE: each with its own specialty: “future protagonist”, “past protagonist”, different POV, and background. Prologues have a purpose. Emerging writers need to learn how to write a prologue, rather than to use it as another quick explaining tool.
A book can’t (or must) be written in the first person or present tense. I tell my write club members that 80% of all published books are written in the third person past tense for good reasons:
• First person has intimacy, but limitations. What is gain in immediacy is lost in tension? The emerging writer tends to add more words than the story needs and has a tendency to write like a diary (which it is not), to include trivial events that are not relevant to the story with no plot function, and the technique is poor especially when trying to stay true to their memories and experiences. And they get caught up in the everyday boring details of the character’s lives and their form is loose and disjointed, characteristics of novices. When the stories require the passage of time, first person causes breaks in the thread of the plot.
• Third person past tense can move back and forth in time and the intimacy can be achieved through dialogue (first person, present tense). It creates tension, creates complex characters, manipulates time and can utilizes all twelve tenses to create a more complex story.
They have a search-and-destroy policy concerning adverbs. Yes, I have heard members say “No Adverbs, ever!” Adverbs are a part of the English language and should be used effectively.
• First, many emerging writers use adverbs instead of using more powerful words, such as, very good instead of excellent. The writer’s tools are words like paints to a painter. The more we understand the colorful effect of using the precise words, the better the end result.
• Second, they use adverb for explaining (RUE), especially in dialogue. “You can do it.” George said encouragingly. Encouragingly is explaining, “You can do it.” It is also redundant. 2) “George, you’re going to drive me crazy,” she said angrily. It is explaining and redundant, but also the reader has to go back and reread the dialogue in an angry way. You NEVER want the read to stop and think. You want your story plot to flow without readers stumbling over sentences.
• Third, ‘no adverbs’ is designed to discourage excess usage of adverbs by emerging writers. Too much of good thing is never best. Less is more. The same goes with adjectives. My sister adopted two, beautiful, large, white dogs from the local pound.
June–This is a fun, lighthearted look at the foibles of critique groups. Obviously you didn’t appreciate the humor. But thanks for putting in all this time to elucidate the unspoken subtext.
2) Group Therapy: One of the most common pitfalls for writing groups is the tendency to slip into psychotherapy. This happens most often if there are several memoirists in the group who are working on their break-up, wartime, or health issues through writing…Critiquers often feel they should give supportive, “attaboy” feedback, no matter what the quality of the writing.
There are ten million self-published books on Amazon. The chances of financial success or recognition are similar to winning the lottery. So, the path to publication is for the determined, talented ones and the ones who have time and money to market their book. A writer’s group is designed for the writing side of the business.
Saying that, painters paint to express themselves and so do writers. Oxford dictionary of Art: “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”
Some artists are innately talented and others are not, but that does not mean people should not express their emotions through their favorite medium. And who are we to tell someone they have no talent as long as they are enjoying the process? Not every painting will end up in a New York Art gallery showing.
In regards to sharing their break-up, wartime, or health issues through writing, some of the best successful novels came from true stories with a creative approach. (Zorro is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley from a true story of man’s life of Joaquin Murrieta, a peace-loving man driven to seek revenge his young wife was gang raped and died in Joaquin’s arms. Swearing revenge, Joaquin hunted down all who had violated her. He embarked on a short but violent career that brought death to his Anglo tormentors. The state of California then offered a reward of up to $5,000 for Joaquin “dead or alive.”) Some of my memoir writers have the most interesting characters.
Lastly, a good monitor refutes the tender-hearted comments by reminding members happy stories such as sunny days at a picnic are boring, but a picnic with rain, ants and conflict over who get what sandwich are much more interesting.
3) Golden Girls Critique Groups: A group that consists mostly of an older demographic can sometimes be dominated by people with memory issues.
I find this little insulting as my members go as high as ninety-five and have never come across this issue. In fact, most of my members in their eighties are prolific self-published novelists.
This is not a problem of memory, but problem of explaining. A good monitor reminds members book readers read between their busy lives and the reason they stop at the end of chapters. When they pick up the book again, there is no author explaining or reminding them where they left off. So, our members don’t spend any time refreshing each other’s memories. They focus on line editing and story structure.
5) Punctuation Police
Again, this is the monitor’s duty to warn members to use spell check, grammar check and other online software for technical errors, such as Grammarly and Prowritingaid.com. If listening members see such errors, they are told not to correct them, but underline for the reader to correct themselves. That is not the purpose of a write club. I education members on Line and Structural editing, the main purpose of the group so everyone is an expert ????.
6) The Moveable Feast. We are a part of the local library and no food is allowed.
7) Reality Checkers There are groups where the fact-checkers hold sway. These are super detail-oriented people who want a novel to be as close to real life as possible. A good monitor reminds listeners fact checking is Copy Editing ad done at the book publishers and not the purpose of this write club.
8) Performance Artists: They will say anything that allows them to hold the floor as long as possible. These people can build you up one week and say devastating things the next—anything that comes into their heads—entirely without empathy. These people should also be controlled by the monitor.
9) The Mutual Admiration Society…It may be hard to get the meeting started because everybody is catching up on each other’s news…Whatever you write is perfect.
Any club is part social club and the support is especially important to the independent activity of writing. Though, a good monitor makes sure it is done prior to the start time, and never start off with introductions that consume valuable times.
In regards to “what you write is perfect. I had attended a write class where the monitor wrote every person an individual email focusing on the best part of their writing. From those comments, I became a prolific writer. However, the more I learned about the craft of writing, the less I wrote. So, criticisms do need to be softened with positives. The objective is not for people to write less, but more and well. It is a balancing act.
10) The Vicious Circle: …They may have published a few things—which they feel makes them “experts”—but it was probably some time ago…. Again, these people should be controlled by the good monitor.
June–You have written a whole blogpost here. I hope you’ll feel free to post it on your own blog.
This post is a tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted look at some of the foibles of critique groups. I’m sorry you didn’t appreciate the humor. I know humor is subjective.
There are links (highlighted in red) to longer posts dealing more seriously with these subjects.
Thanks for taking so much time to comment!
Anne, this was hilarious and I loved every word. I live in a rural area and the chance of finding a large group of people who write is slim.
I do know one writer who’s written over 70 romance novels, many of them rather trashy, and I sort of write books you’d find in a church library, so she kinda hates me. Has honestly yelled at me in the grocery and in the library. 😀 So—not a good match there.
I tried driving to the big city to meetup with some writers. It was incredible. One sweet kid there was literally illiterate. He wrote his stories in a pocket note pad, making small squiggles he’d invented for writing. Only he could read them.
A woman in that group had self-published a small book of poetry. As in: She had typed or hand-written poems on plain paper, cut it down to small-book size with a scissors, stapled it together with a small army of staples, and covered the entire thing with cardboard encased in duck tape. These people were serious.
Again, not a good match.
It would be wonderful to find a small, committed (in the good sense) critique group.
Katharine–Oh, my! You’ve run into some groups that sound way loonier than my satiric ones. Also kind of tragic. An illiterate writer who invented his own language might make the subject of a poignant short story. And the poet with the duct-taped book–OMG, what a fun character for a lighthearted mystery. The one who yelled at you in the grocery store…maybe she could be the corpse? Haha. Thanks for some fascinating additions to my list of bad critiquers.
I know this might have soured you on critique groups, but there are good ones online. Maybe you can find one out here in Cyberia. Best of luck!
The most pleasant writing group I experienced for a short time had a leader. He encouraged members to identify what they particularly enjoyed or valued in each writer’s draft. This positive feedback helped members identify what was working well in their material.
Then one member had a meltdown about the comments she received. The outcome? The leader announced his retirement, and the once harmonious group split into two warring ones. Both were short-lived.
Marsha–I think critique groups need a moderator. Our group has two moderators who take turns. But people have had meltdowns. Three people have left after only a few sessions because they simply didn’t want critique. They wanted praise.
But what a tragedy that you lost your wonderful moderator to an unwell person, and then the group fell apart. It’s amazing how one bad apple (or one good one) can change the tone of a group entirely.
What a fantastic blog post, Anne!! I love it!! Thanks for making me smile, as well as my head shaking. You’re a gem!
Aurora–I’m glad you enjoyed the humor. I think writers need to learn to laugh at ourselves, or we won’t get far in this business.
You’re right. On the other hand – that isn’t only for authors… Many people should learn to laugh at themselves… 🙂
I have been in a few of those. Was burned and it took me a long time to find another group. We do veer towards the positive, but we still give critique, just one or two concerns with questions and loads of positives. We don’t tell anyone to send stuff out. We just err on the side of encouragement.
Tyrean–“Erring” on the side of kindness is always a good idea. I believe in always giving two positives for every negative. That way people can hear what you’re saying. Otherwise, they’ll hear it as an attack and shut down.
I was happy as I read the article to find the local writers group I attend (Authora Australis, in the land down under), suffers from none of those problems – and is even nicely resistant to them. I think the key thing is the atmosphere of respect and mutual support. Our moderator is great, but we often have too many people and have to split into two groups to get through all the critique part – and they function just as well.
I also think it helps that we also do a 10-15 min fun writing exercise, decided on the spot, and read the results out at the end.
A recent change was to do this exercise first, as the critiques could otherwise eat up too much time and energy.
We prefer to work from print-outs, shared, but that’s partly because we often have to stop for an ‘aircraft pause’ as one flies overhead (we’re under the Sydney flight path). But we all recognise that ‘proofreading’-type feedback is of low value, so those are generally just made on the paper copy and handed back and not given aloud.
We also have a very diverse range of writers and topics. I think the only thing we don’t ever tackle is erotica!
I can also heartily recommend the Online Writers Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror if you’re fortunate enough to be writing in any of those genres. It works because its lifeblood is critiques – you have to give to get. (It’s annual cost is very reasonable IMO.)
Anyway, great article, and also lots of interesting comments!
I should have proofread my comment better. “It’s” instead of “Its”, oh my! 🙂
Luke–Many thanks for the info on the Online Writers Workshop! That sounds like an excellent choice for writers who don’t have an in-person group.
You brought up one of the major problems with a good critique group–too many members. There’s a famous group up the coast from me that’s been going for 30 years or more. A number of famous bestsellers have emerged from the group. So everybody wants to join. They have to split up readings so everybody gets a chance, but the meetings don’t last all day.
Handing in the proofreading comments rather than voicing them is a great solution to the proofreading problem!