All About Give and Take

A member of our critique group has sent pages out, and we’re very excited to read their material. It’s great to have something to analyze besides our own words once in a while.

The obvious way you benefit from being part of a critique group is that you have extra sets of eyes on your pages. Getting feedback about your work is crucial. But, you can also learn a lot from being the one providing the feedback, if you put forth the effort to do a quality job of it.

Good critique isn’t proofreading. It gives the author a map of where their words took you at each stage of the journey, where you felt different emotions, when you had felt like the logic didn’t add up, which moments were your favorites. Why you love (or love to hate) the characters. And by articulating these thoughts about another’s manuscript, you’re sharpening tools for use in your own writing.

Do you have a critique group? Use the comments to tell us what you like best about belonging to it.