The community here has done a bang-up job of making suggestions for finding a writing group in last week’s Open Mic comments, but I’m going to add my two cents here. It’s been a while since I talked about writing groups.
And the first thing I have to say is that it is not necessary to have any sort of writing group at all. Mind you, good beta readers and/or a good critique group can be amazingly helpful and useful, especially to a beginning writer, and they can speed up one’s skill acquisition enormously. However, I wrote and sold my first novel without benefit of a writing group, and I know several professional writers who cannot tolerate writing groups or beta readers. (This is especially true for a particular type of writer for whom having someone read the story – even a partial draft – makes them feel as if they have told the story, and therefore kills their desire to write it.)
Unfortunately, writing groups can be destructive as well as helpful. The problem may be one of the other members who tears down everyone else’s work under the assumption that this makes him/her look smarter and better informed (and makes their own writing look the best in the group by contrast…they think). Or the problem may be that a writer is simply unsuited to working within any sort of writing group.
Note that I didn’t say “critique group.” There are three functions that all writing groups provide in differing degrees: Criticism, emotional support, and social/community. Every writing group slants more heavily toward at least one of the three. This always affects how the writer perceives the usefulness of the group for them, because, naturally, different writers need different things from their writing group.
Social/community groups are usually pretty easy to spot. They usually start with one or two writers meeting up for coffee or a drink after work, and then other writers hear about it and join them and it becomes a regular meetup of friends. Or someone decides to organize a once-a-month tea for friends, who all just happen to be (or want to become) writers. Or one of the other types of group decides they need to get together to just hang out, without doing any “writing work,” i.e. critique. In such groups, the talk inevitably turns to the business and the difficulties that various writers are having, but the emotional support (“That story is really good; it just wasn’t right for that editor. Why don’t you send it to…”) and criticism/suggestions (“Didn’t you say Maria had a little sister? Why isn’t she home that evening? Maybe that’s why you’re stuck.”) parts just come up in casual conversation. They’re not the purpose of the gathering. But even the strictest critique group has a social aspect, though it may be just a ten-minute break at mid-session for cookies and refilling beverages.
A writer’s social group is not the place to find in-depth critical comments; however, they are a really good place to meet other writers who are interested in a more critique-focused get-together.
Emotional support is particularly important for beginning writers who aren’t sure of their skills and for more experienced writers who are working on a “stretchy” piece. It is, therefore, an essential part of any critique group, but it tilts into the area of “this group’s primary focus” when all comments are either implicitly expected to be positive or (in a few cases) explicitly required to be “gentle and supportive.” I’ve known several writers who got a lot of good out of one of these “positive critique” circles early on, but the ones who started selling their stories either outgrew their original group and left, or ended up starting a second, criticism-focused group to supplement the first one.
A writer who is in need of reassurance about their work or their skill level, or who just needs to see some live-audience reaction to their work-in-process, will probably be happiest with this sort of positive-comments-only group, but they may also get some of the same effect from a social/community group. It’s also the perfect group for many hobby writers, who get to have fun sharing their work with an appreciative audience without worrying about negative reactions. A writer who is looking for ways to improve and for people who will help them spot flaws in their work is likely to find this sort of group enormously frustrating and unhelpful.
A true criticism group has the greatest potential both for helping a writer improve and for being destructive. Crit groups focus on helping each writer develop their individual technique, spot (and fix) basic flaws such as plot holes and inconsistent characterization, and generally make everybody’s stories more effective (and hopefully more saleable). How they do this varies, as does an individual writer’s reaction. Some groups go to the opposite extreme from the emotional support type, ripping apart every story without mercy and without acknowledging anything the author did right. Others adopt or develop a set of “writing rules” and evaluate every story based on how closely it adheres to those rules, rather than on how well the story works on its own merits. I have known writers who thrived under both types of group, and I have known writers who couldn’t work for years after having been exposed to a couple of meetings of these types. Most of the crit groups I’m personally familiar with are more of a neutral middle ground – the members point out what they see as problems (and often disagree over whether something is problematic or not), point out bits they particularly like, and offer suggestions only when asked for them (it is, after all, the writer’s job to write the book, not the crit group’s).
One of the most important features of any writing group (but especially the critique and support varieties) is the personalities of the members. It is next door to impossible to accept critical comments – positive or negative – from a person one dislikes, and it is equally difficult to comment effectively on a story written by someone one dislikes. In groups that are primarily social, it depends on the size of the group. If you have twenty or thirty local writers getting together at an annual convention, it is usually fairly easy to avoid anyone one cannot stand. If it’s tea for four or five people, it’s a lot harder.
Thank you for writing about this and linking to the previous posts. Thanks again also for others for suggestions and sharing your experiences. This blog was certainly a notable part of what prompted me to finally start writing something. I have been following it for several years, even though I haven’t commented often.
In my case, most of the different options sound good in their own ways. Some sort of social or emotional support would be great, to see that I’m doing something right, and also give some gentle pressure to continue writing to have something to show in the next meeting instead of feeling that there’s all the time in the world. Although the effect of deadlines on different people is a whole different subject, which I have also seen discussed in various places.
The merciless ripping apart sound pretty terrible to me, but certain amount of criticism seems useful, so the middle ground sounds good for me. Noting typos or “this scene transition was a bit unclear” kinds of feedback at least are something I would be looking for, probably also bigger things such as whether the main character’s motivation and goals were understandable. Knowing that e.g. certain scene or character was liked (or split opinions) would also be useful, though I’m not sure if it would also be stressful to hear that someone doesn’t like something major.
I think it was on this blog where I saw it said that on the feedback giving end, not mentioning that you liked a certain spot could lead to the author removing it in the next revision. In that case the positive feedback would have been quite useful, in addition to being motivating for the writer.
Maybe the next step for me would be to see what the suggested online critique websites have to offer.
“Knowing that e.g. certain scene or character was liked (or split opinions) would also be useful, though I’m not sure if it would also be stressful to hear that someone doesn’t like something major.”
One thing I’d mention is that liking is good, but the reason for liking is better. I.e., constructive criticism, that gives you more substance than just subjective preferences.
I always emphasized to editors that I trained that they needed to be constructive. Here’s a condensed version, if interested: https://kevinwadejohnson.blogspot.com/2016/07/constructive-criticism.html
Thoughts:
One important type of emotional support is encouragement to “Keep writing!” This may be implicit in all emotional-support groups, with some of them making it explicit. This is chiefly what I’d want an emotional support group for.
One rule I’ve encountered is “Only give criticism when criticism is asked for.” This would be for social and emotional-support groups that try to have critiques as a sideline; criticism groups tend to have implicit or explicit “you must regularly offer sacrificial lambs.”
Requested criticism might be for help on specific points, or even a request for ideas rather than a “critique” as such. Or the request could be to point out potential weak points and problems that the writer isn’t seeing.
In my experience, pointing out flaws and problems in another person’s writing is easy, while noting what the writer did right, especially at a more-detailed level than “this is good!” is hard. This can cause critiques to slip into rip-it-to-shreds fests, with rule along the lines of “must include something positive in the critique” to prevent such slippage.
In the writing group I used to work with (which spun apart because of the pandemic), the organizer encouraged everyone to make their critiques a “sandwich,” starting and ending with something positive, with the “here’s why this bit didn’t work as well as it might have” in between. And I totally agree that how criticism is couched matters.
No matter how thick a skin you think you have, it’s never helpful to be torn down relentlessly.
Online criticism groups are useful because you can throw your fits in privacy.
I also note that you can take notes. Taking notes is useful for emotional distance. You aren’t trying to figure out whether they are right, just what they said. (It is also useful for determine how many people saw a problem. They may be wrong about the fix. They may be wrong about the problem’s nature. But they are certainly right that there’s a problem if most of them thinks there’s one.)
Good points — especially Mary’s note that a consensus of crits can pretty conclusively show that something’s wrong, without necessarily being right about the solution.
As Deep Lurker says, it’s easier to register problems than good stuff. But once you get into the habit, it’s both useful and fun to point out the positive features of a story. I like Bob’s sandwich metaphor.
Thank you, Patricia, and all who commented! This was a fantastic post with many helpful comments. Coming from the perspective of a beginning writer, you have all given me a lot to think about.
Candice
“When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
—Neil Gaiman
I think a useful thing to learn to spot in critiques is the difference between “I like this kind of thing but I think it could be done better” and “I don’t like this kind of thing and wish you would do something else.”
Critiques of the latter kind are not, for me anyway, particularly useful. One critic wanted me to take all the fantasy out of a science-fantasy story, to which I could only say “That’s some other story; maybe you should write it.”
If it’s an elfy story and you really hate elves, perhaps you have to limit yourself to detail-work critiques (sentence structure etc.) on that one. You’re unlikely to be able to fix large-scale problems with the elfy story if you’re stuck on “don’t tell this story in the first place.”