Tag Archives: critique

A Group of One’s Own

October 10, 2010 – 8:50 pm

January of 2010 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the first time six would-be writers in Minneapolis got together and formed a critique group. Within five years, all seven of the eventual members sold, and six are still publishing (the seventh went back to his first love, music and songwriting). You may have heard of us: the [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Comments (4)

On critiquing

April 21, 2010 – 7:31 am

Before you start critiquing someone else’s work, you are best off asking a few questions. Not questions about the story – usually, one of the things the writer is looking for is a fresh eye, a virgin reader, someone who has no idea what the story is about or what the writer was trying to accomplish, [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Also tagged , | Comments (7)

The care and feeding of first readers

April 18, 2010 – 8:36 am

I promised a while back that I’d post on training first-readers (or beta readers, or critiquers, or whatever you personally call them). I already talked about the difficulty of finding good crit, so I’ll try not to repeat too much of that. Working with first-readers starts with finding some folks who are  a) articulate people whose [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Also tagged , | Comments (5)

Good critique is hard to find

April 3, 2010 – 9:13 am

Getting good comments on a work-in-process is hard. In part, this is because a) many writers think that only other writers can/will provide useful criticism, b) most people are not writers, and c) people may be very good writers and still be very bad at providing critique. a) and b) mean that many writers limit their [...]

By pcwrede | Posted in Writing | Also tagged , | Comments (10)