It’s Monday night and that means two things – pizza and my
critique group. (The pizza is for my kids, not the group. It saves the hassle
of cooking dinner on a night when I have better things to do!)
Tonight, I thought I’d share my thoughts on what makes a good group. I’d love to hear from
others too.
I’ve belonged to two critique groups in my career. The first
was a rather large RWA group in the Chicago area that I joined about 25 years
ago. I joined the second group a couple years ago when I got back into writing.
The groups are very different, as are the reasons they both
worked.
Chicago
characteristics – For the life of me, I can’t remember what the group was
called!
·
The group was large. I would guess we had more
than fifty members and we usually had 20 – 30 at every meeting.
·
We met once a month and covered 2-3 chapters
each time.
·
We read our chapters aloud, although you could
have someone else read for you.
·
It was about 50/50 published to non-published
authors. At the time, I was among the latter.
·
It was all women, which is not surprising given
that the primary focus was romance, but we also had some mystery writers.
·
The romance novelists were largely contemporary
and historical. This was the 80s and I don’t think other genres such as
paranormal were as big back then.
What made it work
I don’t think this group would have worked had we not had a
solid set of rules of conduct and President who was comfortable enforcing them.
For example, you could ask for someone to clarify a comment, but under no
circumstances could you defend your writing. e.g. “That’s not what I meant!” The
President also called out older more established writers who were a little too
harsh on the newbies like me.
For a big group like this, the structure was absolutely
necessary.
What I got out of it
I moved away from
Chicago long before I published my first novel, but in my marketing career, I’ve
done a substantial amount of writing. This group taught me the value of simply
listening when someone is reviewing my work—especially when that someone is a
paying client.
WordWeavers – my current
critique group
·
8 members – all women. We had a guy for a short time, but I think he got cold feet.
·
We meet twice a month. We started out at a
coffee shop, but decided it was tough to critique a love scene in such a public
place. Now we meet in the local library community room.
·
6 of the 8 are published in some form or
another, although not all romance.
·
Everyone in the group writes at least some
romance, although there is a strong poetry and scifi element as well. Believe
it or not, I am the only historical romance writer in the group. Everyone else
is some form of paranormal.
·
We cover 2-4 chapters each time we meet, plus we
occasionally do a writing exercise.
·
We read the chapters ahead of time instead of
during the meeting.
·
There are far fewer rules and much more dialogue.
What makes it work
Over the last couple of years, this group has gotten very comfortable
with each other. In fact, it’s such a good dynamic between the current members
that we closed the group off to new members.
While we have a great deal more dialogue during the
critiques, there’s still a lot of respect between the members. The thing I
really like about the smaller group is having an opportunity to ask questions. e.g.
Are my heroine’s motivations are clear? What emotions were you trying to go for
in that scene?
What I get out of it
Tons! Probably the biggest advantage of this small group is
the opportunity to bring current challenges to the meeting. e.g. My editor isn’t
feeling the romance in the first few chapters, but I’m not sure why. Since we
only have 8 members and we cover 3-4 chapter per meeting, we’re all pretty
familiar with each other’s stories.
I’d love to hear from others. Do you belong to a critique
group? What’s worked for you? What hasn’t?
MJ
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