READING CRITIQUES

by Beth Bernobich
(c) April 2001

To write, you need feedback. That feedback might come from informal manuscript exchanges or from organized critique groups or workshops. So, you submit a story or novel and you wait for comments. (Nail chewing is optional.) Finally, the critiques arrive but are you ready to read them?

Preparation.

First a few rules about reading critiques.

Before you open the first e-mail or read the marked up manuscript, know what kind of feedback you wanted. Maybe it's a first draft and you needed structure comments instead of line comments. You might safely store the prose suggestions for later and concentrate on the overall comments.

Ask yourself what kind of story you wanted to write. Think of the impact you want to make and the audience you want to reach. Suggestions for making a story more better for literary magazine might not apply to a light humorous fantasy.

Pick the best time. Never read critiques when you are tired or stressed. Never read critiques before that first cup of coffee or green tea in the morning. And never read critiques just after reading a rejection letter. Yes, you need a thick skin in this business, but let's not be masochists. Pick a time when you can distance yourself from the criticism and can focus on the suggestions.

What You Wanted vs. What They Said.

So you read through all the critiques. You pause, somewhat confused. Perhaps you had hoped for clear directions such as "scene 34 needs three more paragraphs to establish Baron Vishnish's motivation," or simpler comments of "Goodwife Joan gave the red book to Mary twice in scene 12." Often you do get those kinds of helpful comments, but all too frequently you get twelve people telling you six contradictory things about your story. ("It's too slow, and I saw the ending from paragraph one." "The pacing is too fast, and I was completely confused." "Hey, did you consider making the third character into a psychopath?" And so on.)

Think back to what kind of feedback you want, and what kind of story you wanted to write. Now pick and choose the comments that will help you do that.

Picking and Choosing.

If you know the critiquer well, you know their attitudes and their quirks and their strengths in providing feedback. With larger groups, the critiquers are often strangers. How to winnow out the good suggestions from the bad ones?

The easiest approach is to count up the different suggestions. Where several readers agree on a problem, you know that section needs attention. But that approach seldom works consistently, and even then you can't apply the rule without careful consideration. Here are some things to keep in mind:

You might have one person complain about your fight scenes. Check her credentials. If she's a martial arts expert, do more research and reexamine the scenes.

Someone might suggest that you rewrite the ending completely, expanding it by ten more pages and two more scenes. The actual suggestion might be completely off-base and would take the story beyond its natural stopping point. However, if several others find different faults with the ending, perhaps you need to make the resolution clearer. Not different, but stronger.

Or, five people might say that the pacing is too slow and that you should cut the second scene. Maybe. Or maybe you need to work on the emotional build up so the scene does the job right.

Sometimes the decision to follow advice comes from intuition. Everyone loves the introduction except one crank, er, reader. But that criticism resonates with something that has bothered you ever since you wrote the story. You pay attention to that critique.

You use numbers, research, and finally instinct.

Finally, everyone uses a different approach, and what I've written here works for me. As I say with my own critiques, take these as starting points, keep what works, and never mind the rest. As with everything else in writing, the only true rule is whatever works. §