I Is For Invaluable

Jennifer met with her critique partner today...

One of my critique partners and I met today and wow, did we get a lot accomplished in three hours!

We meet approximately every six weeks or so. Sometimes we’re purely social, but most times we try to combine at least a little work into our coffees. Today was an exceptional day.

She’s getting ready for her debut novel to be published and she’s setting up all of her marketing and release pieces, so we went over her website and created a list of suggested changes. We put together some things for her to do on social media and we plotted her next three-book series. We also fleshed out my plan for the new book I’m currently working on, paying special attention to conflict, which is my weakness. And we played with some marketing ideas for me to drum up sales this month for one of my books. We even took a photo that we’re both going to use for “behind-the-scenes” stuff.

Critique partners are invaluable to me as they all have particular strengths that cover my own weaknesses, and it’s great to be able to make use of them. The relationships work the best when that’s true of all parties and when all parties are receptive to ideas.

So now I’m home working on these new ideas (which is why this blog posting is so late—sorry!) and looking forward to our next meeting!

Critique Partners

For NaNoWriMo (the annual National Novel Writing Month) I’ve been rewriting a novel which I first wrote in the 1970’s. In those pre-internet days, I’d never heard of critique partners. I did have what is now called a beta-reader but she was a non-writer friend who read my chapters and helped me brainstorm ideas for the development of the story.

I hadn’t even looked at this particular novel for years; now, having read it again, I’ve realised how much it needed the help of a critique partner. Okay, it was published exactly as I wrote it (without any editorial input), so maybe the style of my writing was ‘normal’ at that time. Now it simply makes me cringe!

I started writing romance again about five years ago and know I was still writing in my ‘old’ style to start with. I only have to look at my first ‘fan-fiction’ stories and the first novel I wrote to realise that. Then I started to change my style.

Why? Because I found two great critique partners. I've never met them - I'm in the UK and they're in the USA, but during the last couple of years, we’ve worked together (and become friends too).

Writing, as I know from when I was writing my early novels and knowing no other writers at the time, can be a lonely job, and it’s good to have a friend who is prepared to read your work and give you his/her honest opinion. The word honest is important. I don’t want just positive feedback with a few ‘nice’ comments, although a comment of ‘Great, this really worked well’ does wonders for one’s confidence. But at the same time, I want a genuine opinion and, if necessary, hard-hitting comments.

A good CP can help you to improve both your storyline and your writing style. They can highlight your word or phrase repetition, overuse of passive verbs and adverbs, and telling rather than showing. I was guilty of all of these but didn’t actually realise it until my CPs told me. I’m sure they could list plenty of other errors too!

Sometimes (often?) we can get too close to our own story and characters. A critique partner comes to it with fresh eyes and can point out the things that you may have overlooked. They can look at the big picture and tell you what is working and what isn’t, where the plot holes or anomalies are and whether the pace of the story is too slow or too fast. They can also help you to brainstorm when your story runs into a sticky patch.

It works both ways, too. Critiquing someone else’s work has the double bonus of helping yourself as well as (hopefully) helping them. I have learnt a lot about what works and what doesn’t from critiquing.

Now I’m going through the process of critquing my own 1970’s novel, and the errors I made in the original are jumping out at me. Before I worked with my CPs, I doubt I would have noticed any of those errors.

So this is a tribute to my critique partners – with a million thanks to them both for their help, support, encouragement and friendship!