How To Take A Critique

(For Beginners)

Hey, so you wrote a novel (or a short story). Great! Even better, you've screwed up your courage and you're now ready to ask someone (other than your mom) to read it and give you feedback.

Are you scared?



Maybe you're asking selective people you know to read your MS, or maybe you have joined a critique group or workshop where your story will be read and commented on by people you don't know very well, if at all. Each and every person will have different skills and perceptions, and may or may not be very diplomatic about how they dispense their judgment and/or advice to you. One thing they all have in common, though, is that they did take the time to read your story. That's no small favor. So remember to say thank you, even if you don't like what they ultimately have to say.

Picking a critiquer

You want to try to pick people who will be useful. This means that you don't want someone who is going to read your entire 180K word MS and have nothing more to say than, "I liked it". Yes, that feels all nice and warm-fuzzy, but it doesn't help you. Nor do you want someone who is going to throw the MS at your head and exclaim loudly that it sucks. Not only doesn't that feel nice, but if the MS is 180K it could really do you some damage. The reason you don't want either of these two types of critiquers is the SAME, though: they aren't useful.

Getting critiques from friends, family, and coworkers is all well and good, but may or may not give you what you need to make your MS better. And you DO want to make your MS better, right? Because if you're just looking for an ego-boost, you're in the wrong business already. Not even best-selling authors turn in books to editors and have them exclaim, "Why, it's perfect exactly the way it is!" and send it to press just as it is. So get over the idea that your work is flawless -- none of them are. (Though I'm trying...)

Some people can give you basic reader-type feedback about what they liked, where the story was slow, etc. Some people are macro-critiquers and can talk thoughtfully about plot and theme and dramatic structure. Some people are micro-critiquers and will pick apart your punctuation and grammar while completely missing the fact that you've unwittingly killed off the same minor character three times and it's *not* a zombie novel. All these types of people are useful, and having a balance of them is good. Understanding what type of critiquer someone is, and what sorts of things they normally read on their own, will be very helpful to you when interpreting their criticism. If you hand off your Forbidden Vampire Love novel to someone who only reads hard SF, you are going to get different advice from them than from someone whose fiction diet has lots of Laurell K. Hamilton in it. How insightful the advice is that you get will depend a lot on how well your story matches a particular reader (and readers vary from a narrow range of interests to quite wide). So, if you can, try to understand something about your critiquer's background before you hand off your MS to them.

As you do this more, you will hopefully develop a relationship with your regular critiquers that will make a lot of this much easier for you.

The Critique Itself

You've been working on your novel for a really long time now. Do you know what that means?
    - It means it's personal.
You know what else?
    - A good critique isn't personal.

Critiques can be hard to take. You need to get used to the idea that criticism of your story, no matter how harsh, isn't criticism of you. (Unless you've got a bad critter who mocks your story, your hairdo, and then leaps around on your desk making chimp sounds, but that's not about you being a bad writer, that's about the critter being an asshole).

Some thoughts on this:
  1. It is inevitable that you will have invested a lot of yourself in your story, and I'm not just talking time and effort. You need to put yourself into it in order to get something worthwhile out again; it's just the way creativity works.
  2. Critiquers are not you. They aren't invested in your work they way you are. This makes them useful, because it gives them the distance and objectivity to spot problems that you've been too close to see. This is also what makes critiques hard: they will find things wrong that you didn't know were wrong.

So, as the critiquer is speaking, sit back and listen politely. Don't argue with the critiquer. If you need them to clarify a point they are making, ask nicely. It's not necessary that you make the critiquer agree with you, nor that you ultimately agree with the critiquer. If a piece of criticism totally hits you in the gut, leave it alone for a while. If you have an opportunity to talk to the critiquer later, when the spot's less tender, you can always ask more about it then.

The most important task of the critiquer is to tell you something useful -- not to say something nice so you feel all warm and fuzzy, but also not to make you feel like you've been ground into meatpaste and spread on the pavement for the fire-ants. If the critiquer is doing their job, they will give you their thoughts in a straightforward, non-antagonistic, non-coddling way. If they have insightful feedback (whether or not you agree with it, whether or not it hurts to hear it), you don't want to jump all over them because then they won't crit for you again. A good critiquer is worth their weight in gold. Seriously.

If the critiquer doesn't have their crit written out for you, take notes. If they do, consider taking notes anyway.

After The Critique

One: You can't make every reader happy.

Tearing apart your MS and trying to accommodate every single piece of feedback you've gotten will turn your MS into the written equivalent of a lumpy gray wad of overchewed gum. Not only can't you do it, you shouldn't do it. Nor should you jump right on major revisions before you've had time for the critique to really percolate through your brain for a bit.

Two: Despite Rule One, every piece of advice you have been given is valuable

...whether or not you ultimately decide to listen to it. Look at each individual point raised in the critique (you did take notes, right?) Do you agree with it? A little? Not at all? Do you understand why the critiquer said what they said? It's important to try to understand as best you can how a critiquer reached the conclusion they did. For example:

Criticism:      "The story jumps around too much, and I had trouble following the action."
You Know That:  Some readers like to have very linear structures to the plot. 
Consider:       Would a more linear structure work for your story? If not, is there a way
                you can make other changes that would make the shifts easier for those 
                sorts of readers?

Three: It's okay to say No
...to a suggestion or piece of criticism (though not to the critiquer's face), but you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand without trying to understand why the critiquer said it, because it may be symptomatic of a larger problem that the critiquer couldn't quite manage to pinpoint or express directly.

Criticism:      "Little Bobby Snuggum would never do this sneaky and underhanded thing! It's
                out of character and it threw me out of the book."
You Know That:  Little Bobby was secretly under the influence of the Evil Wizard Gumfurspood,
                which is why he did what he did.
Consider:       Something needs to change to clue the reader in that the reason Little Bobby is 
                behaving out of character is because of something happening in the book, and not 
                because of inconsistent character depiction.

Also, remember that although readers are often correct when they say something is broken, they are also often wrong when they tell you how it should be fixed.

Don't ignore a valid piece of criticism just because fixing it would be really hard. Sometimes, in the process of trying to get things right, you have to be very mercenary towards your own writing. Being prepared to cut stuff out, even if you're very fond of it, is a necessary part of becoming a good writer. And in this electronic age, you can always paste the deleted text into a new file and save it for some other time, some other story.

It's your story. When you're done with it, it should still feel like your story but be better, shinier, spiffier, and altogether improved. The critique is there to help you, and learning how (and when, and why) to use feedback is a very good skill to develop.

Comments and suggestions for revisions/additions always welcome. --Suzanne
see also: How To Give A Critique