Chico Writer’s Group

In putting together a “rules and guidelines” for critiquing, I’ve done a fair amount of surfing to see what other writing groups have developed as their “rules” for critiquing. As we go along, we can develop our own and implement them, but for the time being I’ll share what a Creative Writing professor suggested (and implemented in her classroom) with me and provide some links I encourage you to read as I don’t want to plagiarize these works.

Tips: Round robin. Every reader speaks without piling on, constructive criticism, before the author is allowed to speak. Every author brings a copy of his/her work for each member and you read aloud before critiquing. Grammar issues can be marked on the paper and left alone unless they are so numerous they preclude understanding.

Constructive criticism means you do not try to write the story for the author. No “hey, I know what should happen next! Aliens should come down and …” Don’t take it personally when I say this is something you can work on. It took me years in novel writing groups to squelch this tendency of mine. Some of my colleagues are still notorious for doing it. What you say instead is: “What do you want to have happen here?” or “Where are you going with this?”

Here is an article that talks about the entire critiquing process from preparing your work to be critiqued to reviewing the work and then giving the critique: How to Critique by Rick Walton

Even more in-depth than Rick’s piece, Victory Crayne (I’m curious if that’s a pen name!) writes this article on critiquing: How to Critique Fiction

I really enjoyed this “how-to,” which is a writing group’s rule book, as it uses humor in large doses: Schroding Petshop Rules

And finally, V. Anne Arden writes an article “But I don’t know how to critique” that offers the critic and the writer some invaluable tips and information.

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Page last updated 12.14.2009.