When you critique, you have two people. The Editor, and the Writer. You need to have a SYMBIOTIC relationship between the two. Most people probably think, "Oh, I am the writer. All I have to do is write away, and give it to the editor," Right? WRONG.
The writer has several jobs he must do when people look over his work. These are a few of them.
1. They need to highlight to his editor what he wants looked at. Perhaps, ask about specific thinks you would want your editor to comment on.
If you throw at your editor just a big piece of literature. They are going to look at you and go wait, what? What do you want me to focus on?! Diction, syntax, grammar, flow...or should I just do everything?! Is there anything specific that you want me to see that works?
One time, I asked a friend to take a look at one of my chapters, and they sent me back the chapter, and it had a bunch of grammar fixes. I facepalmed, because that was not what I wanted. I wanted to know if the chapter flowed right.
Some questions you can ask can be like, "Is my word choice strong enough here? Do I evoke this emotion enough? Did this speech move you? Does this section make you want to get out of your reading chair and do some action?"
If you tell those critiquing what you specifically want in addition to other things they do, it makes there job easier, and it makes your writing better since they know what you want.
2. When your editor asks a question, please be there to answer. I do not think I need to explain this.
3. Do not blindly make changes/accept what your editor says. Editors can make mistakes. They may miss something, or they may not realize why you put something in your writing, which is why you need to do rule number two. Make sure you put a lot of thought into the suggestions those who look at your work say. Sometimes they may say something, and you had a reason.
IE:"Hey, you didn't say much about this guy, elaborate more."
"I wanted to help characterize him as a shady character,"
"Oh, ok,"
or
"Repetition is bad. You kept going never again..... new sentence never again..... new sentence never again.."
"I was establishing my pathos. Did the repetition add emphasis for you?"
"Yes,"
"Then it works,"
HOWEVER, BE OBJECTIVE about it. If you go looking at their comments thinking they are wrong, it will be counterproductive. You need to have a valid reason to go against what your editor says. And a simple ,"Well I think what I wrote was better," Just doesn't cut it, nor does rationalizing a possible error.
4. Take your critique like a man, and fix what must be fixed.
Your readers obviously should not have any put downs in their critiques. However, you should not hold a personal vendetta against them if they have a lot of comments on what needs to be improved. They are only doing what they can to help you. If you are going to write and ask for criticism, then be ready to take it. And do not be stubborn. Swallow your pride, and change what needs to be changed, or improve what needs to be improved. This is the most obvious, and most important part of the writer's job. You can get away sometimes with numbers 1 and 2, and sometimes it is better to not do number 3 because it is easy to screw up on it, but you cannot avoid number 4. If you ignore number 4, then don't bother asking people to help improve your writing at all.
While the writer has those jobs. The editor has a lot of things he has to do.
1. For the love of God, please do not comment on a piece after only reading it once unless you are reading for entertainment and are going to praise the writer. If you have a thought, please reread the excerpt pertaining to that idea--I'm looking at several of my fanfic readers right here.
You need to read something AT LEAST twice before you comment on the writing, and the first time, you have to read it all the way through without stopping. If you do one go through, you will miss things. So many times I have seen a question asked, or a reader thinks they see a loophole in a plot point, when close reading could have easily disproven them or answered their question. There is nothing more frustrating to a writer, then having to answer the same questions several times when all the reader needed to do was read a bit more closely. You will never find everything in one go through of a chapter.
Why am I looking at some of my readers? You cannot tell me you can read through an over 7 page chapter in 10 minutes two times.
2. Do address the specific questions your writer asks, Do I need to elaborate? You could give a brilliant critique, but your writer will still be mad at you if asks a specific thing of you and you do not do it.
3. Never ever put down a writer. Push their thinking with questions as well.
Do not say "Oh, you do not have enough description." "I would suggest you describe things better," Is a better way to do it. Do not say, "Doing this will ruin your story," say "I think what you just did might be detrimental to your story,"
Also, when you critique, you should ask questions which will make your writer think. For instance, if we are looking at description, and lets say, we are talking about a house. Don't just say, describe the house more. Say, "What color is the house, how many stories? How many rooms? How big is it?" etc.
Or, if it deals with the central contention (NOT a small thing that has little consequence, otherwise you are asking a question that does not need to be asked), maybe you could ask, "Wait, why didn't he just do this?" Then the writer can go, "Ah, people are going to think that, I have to write something that will explain that," This part can help with twists and big scenes well. It is this rule that can help make your book believable. Remember though, you should not be negative when you do this.
4. Do not criticize because the writing does not follow formula.
This is a big no no. Do not say, "Oh, I heard in school you have to follow this five paragraph format, and you have to have First. Second, For example and so on," BREAK that habit. If you go "All the good stories have long updates," you will miss out as well. Those so called formulas only inhibit the style of a writer. This will lead to a lack of creativity. If you have absolutely no good reason to criticize something other than "Someone told me," then that's breaking this rule. So if you learned any so called "rules," throw them out,
5. Do not just look at what looks like excess description, or repetitions, and say BAD!
Description and repetition can be used to help emphasize points, and ultimately establish your rhetoric. Your rhetoric is going to make or break your writing. The beauty of writing, is you can claim anything so long as your rhetoric is strong. A great example for Inheritance fans, would be the Eldurnari talk, and the hummingbirds and Oromis being quiet. While CP has a lot of pointless description, in this case, he was using Oromis halting his talk when the hummingbirds came near to show just how secretive the riders were about the eldurnari.
There are cases where this is not the case, and it really is just superfluous description. Then you can attack them for that. Any repetitiveness which would cause direct characterization or other direct revelations, are also bad. Things specifically spelled out to a reader=not good. Overuse of the same adjectives, is also bad.
6. Explain to your writer what works, and if possible, why their rhetoric works,
This is simple. Your author needs to know what he's doing right and how he is doing it. Lets say, your goal in a chapter is to characterize a really annoying character, so they do so by making them pester away with really pointless, repetitive questions. Then you can say, "I really hate this character! They are so annoying! They make me want to hit something!" Then the author knows he has established pathos, and achieved his exigence, and his purpose perhaps. Pathos is how do you put emphasis and feeling into something, this is why politicians say "My friends," it makes them feel more human to their constituents. Exigence is what the writer wants to make his reader do when he is done reading, and the purpose, is why that excerpt was written. Say why the chapter hooked you, not just oh, you hooked me from the beginning.
Those things I said are only a few things. To give a quick primer on 3 things (Which are not the end all, be all of rhetoric,) you have Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. I already explained pathos.
Logos would be like your logic and such-this is establishes by doing things such as drawing conclusions from facts.
Ethos would be establishing credibility, be it through sources, or stating your credentials.
7. Except for poetry and songs, conciseness is always good, '
While you should have a balance of simple and compound sentences. It is always a good idea to make your writing concise. Do not become overly wordy, otherwise your reader is going to become irritated at having to read so many excess words. If you see an instance where an idea has already been established and the writer writes something similar but with slightly altered wording, such as, "The dead man died," or "The weeping baby cried," or "The Look for repeated phrases like the ___ of them, or for the moment, or at the moment, etc. Many people throw in a "that" where it is not needed-mostly in dialogue. However do not mistake this with repetition, as there are times where it is for emphasis. How do you spot the difference?
Most of the time, if the repetition is emphasis, it is a paragraph where a lot of the sentences begin with the same words, such as this line from one of my previous chapters(72, Lover's Lament)
- Quote:
Notice the repetition of never again, will I. In this case, the repetition is not conciseness. Each never again has a different subject. Now if somebody does this technique four or five times in a chapter...then that gets into the ballpark of hammering them, because if you go He was....he was... he was.... and then go She had...she had....she had....., then Never again....never again.... never again....... and so on and so forth, then the technique becomes annoying and loses its power to emphasize.
8. Grammar should be the least of your worries,
Yes, grammar is important, but not as important as content. The most important thing with grammar, is putting things in the active voice. But other than that, grammar nazis are not going to help a writer improve. Most errors we make on the computer end up to be typos in the end. Oh run on sentences can be trouble too.
9. Examples. Always.
If you do not show an example of a so called error, or mistake, then do not bother elaborating on it at all.
If you say, "You contradicted yourself here," but give no example, your writer cannot either explain why he is not contradicting himself, or cannot make the changes, because there is no example.
If you say, "You repeated this idea too much," Your writer may just shrug you off if you give no examples of how they did it. They won't know if it was bad repetition or good repetition either. You always need to give an example when you talk about something that needs improvement.
10. Plot
If you like something. Say what made you like it. What did it make you do? How did it make you feel? If it was a twist, did you see it coming?
If you disagree with something with the plot, do not just say "It is bad because I think it is," or "I don't like it," and give some BS reason. This is no better than spam. You have to have a valid reason why. Saying it will ruin your story, without reason is a BS reason, and a put down, and again, spam. The same goes for if something good with the plot happens. Don't say, "I don't like this because you killed this person, and I liked that character," say, "I think that you could have elaborated more on this story angle, but you killed that character and now you cannot,"
And please do not make big deals about small things. All you are going to do, is make the writer think "Why the heck am I wasting my time answering such a dumb question, that ultimately will not effect the story, or could have been answered with close reading (Points to rule one again).
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I'd like to thank the WG editors who looked at this as I made it today and yesterday. This is not an end all, be all of critique. This is just a supplement to help look at the things WOTG highlighted in his critiquing, a guide thread. If you noticed, I did not give many things you can critique, only ways to do so.
For instance, if your author asks, can you criticize my description? Then you can go ahead and ask to push them, if they need more description, "What does the character look like? Where is he positioned in this scene? What are his surroundings? What is the weather like?" etc
These points can be applied not only to stories, but essays and even poetry to an extent. My goal in making this, was the hope that we could help assist the readers in making better contributions, and make those contributions have more weight.
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