Every once in a while, in some of the social media writing groups I'm a part of, the question of "critique" partners or groups rises.
Recently, it did again, and the responses and comments were... well, if reading typed words had a volume, it would be loud. And varied.
But for the most part, votes were against critique groups.
This surprised me, especially how vehemently people spoke against such groups.
Months ago, about a year now, actually, I joined a local writers' group.
I had seen a post from a writer in social media, who introduced herself as from being from southern Alberta. When I said, "Hey, me too!" we got to talking, and realized that I lived in the community where she'd joined a writing/critique group. This was great, and I asked to join right away.
Essentially, the way it works is we send each other part of our current work in progress every month. There are five of us, now, and that means we get four pairs of eyes on part of our work every month. That's four times more that errors can get caught, plot holes can be pointed out, inconsistencies can be highlighted, questions can be raised.
The benefits are obvious.
I will be totally honest, though: It isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes I disagree with some of the comments I get. Sometimes strongly. Almost always this is because we all mostly write in different genres; none of us is in one another's target demographic, actually.
I have heard stories of people paying to belong to groups, and then really not getting their money worth. This is clearly a negative.
The biggest one, though, is people who change their manuscript over and over to suit what the members of the group suggest.
This is where it can all go wrong.
Your writing is YOURS. You know what's going to happen.
So, the biggest pro and con:
PRO - More eyes, finding more concerns, from more perspectives, so your manuscript is fairly clean by the time you go to the next phase.
As an example, in my new manuscript, the protagonist, Sharon, is washing dishes and remembering a girl she once knew as a chapter opens. Two members of my critique group highlighted the fact that we don't get a clear indication of the setting until well into the chapter. This was something problematic that I totally missed when writing the scene, and the section became definitely stronger for their suggestion.
CON - The frustration when trying to make everyone happy, particularly people with different perspectives.
The opening of The Girl with the Empty Suitcase features Danielle as a twelve-year-old. Two thirds of my critique group strongly suggested opening in a different way, with action, with immediate and obvious conflict, without the "snippet" structure I was going for.
Their advice was good, for a different book. But it didn't fit the book I was writing.
So What?
Basically, my critique group has been so valuable. They've caught over-usage of a lot of words, missed or ineffectual descriptions, typos, problem areas, changes in verb tense... all stuff I know perfectly well how to do correctly, but when writing 200-some pages over months, living in a world with fictional characters, also stuff I have lapsed in occasionally.
That doesn't mean every writing group is perfect.
But there is something to be said about belonging to a small community of writers, of others who share your love for taking twenty-six letters and arranging them in such a way as to evoke something, something that maybe even means something.
Take it all with a grain of salt, particularly if the advice you're getting flies against your vision for your book, or against your genre or style or purpose or whatever else. Take it in, consider it, make note of it, hold onto some parts and let go of the rest.
My group has been great about that. I hope you find one that is, too.
And overall, thanks largely to them, I'm a stronger writer.
What do you think of sharing your work with critique partners or groups? Is it worth it? I think so, but do you?
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