How to Give an Author a Useful Critique

Over the years I have participated and still participate in several critique groups where we share our work seeking feedback. Based on that experience, I have put together a short guide on what seems to work as a roadmap for evaluating somebodies work. You are welcome to use it and your ideas for improvement are welcome. One suggestion would be for you to turn this into a checklist and make copies, then use the checklist as your perform your read-through critique.

1. If you can, read each piece twice – once for broad comprehension and emotional response (just like a reader would), and the second time for detailed critiquing purposes. Write down first/emotional reactions after the first reading, and during the second reading write down the detailed comments immediately as you come across them. Typically somebody in each critique group is a stickler for grammar so leave the heavy lifting around line editing to that person, but do document things like alternative (and hopefully better) word choices, or blocks of unnecessary text that improve the story by its absence. If you don’t have somebody who will zoom in on grammar, then make appropriate mark-ups as part of your second reading

2. In presenting comments to the author, start with the things you liked. The author needs to know what worked well – characterizations that rang true, specific lines that are enjoyable, positive reactions to the story and character arcs, spot on descriptions, good pace to the story, strong beginnings and scene/story endings, ability to hold the reader’s interest, dialog that is natural and appropriate, originality, etc. Don’t say “I liked this story” without backing it up with why you liked it. Specifics are always more valuable than generalities. I once got a critique that consisted of “I didn’t like this.” Why? “I don’t know, I just didn’t.” Completely useless input.

3. Next present suggestions for change. Don’t present them as criticisms. They are suggestions on how to make something that’s good even better. Suggestions encompass the reverse side of all the things listed in step 2, as well as difficulties noted in voice, wordiness, anachronisms or modernisms that are inappropriate for the time frame of the story, continuity errors, scientific/factual errors, problems with the timeline of events, things that pulled you out of the story, things you didn’t understand, alternative POV characters if the one chosen seems sub-optimal, suggestions for starting/ending the story at a different point if you detect weakness or flatness as a result (this happens more than you think – when you write a story, sometimes you are developing it as you go along. The tendency is to explain the background to yourself so you understand the context better, and then you launch into the action. In this circumstance, the background should be tossed and the story should start where the action starts), problems with the balance between showing and telling, long blocks of exposition that are difficult to digest, “as you know, Bob” moments, pronoun confusion and lack of said tags, things that you couldn’t accept or believe based on the information revealed in the story, things that distance you from the action/character and thus reduce the impact of the narrative, variety and structure of sentences, active vs passive voice, etc. If you can, for the bigger issues you noted, offer a suggestion on how the author could address them

4. Since in a critique group you generally only have a limited time to give your verbal critique, go through all your comments and pick out the ones from both items 2 and 3 above that are most important that you want particularly to relate to the author. The rest you can better communicate through written comments/mark-ups.