Before taking on a casual critiquing project for someone or attending a formal critique group session at a college or bookstore, consider the following suggestions for combining praise and criticism in your evaluation of written work.
What Readers Need to Know Before Critiquing Written Work
1. Time: Readers need to know how much time can be allotted to individual works. When more than one person shares work, projects and time may be restricted out of necessity. For example, each writer may share one piece of work or each writer may have 10 minutes devoted to his or her work, etc.
2. Purpose: Writers need to inform readers what they want to know. Perhaps they want proofreading, content editing, a general reaction, or something specific, such as whether or not a character is believable. Find out ahead of time the purpose for the critique.
3. Genre: Readers need to be aware of the genre of the work before they start reading in order to critique it effectively. For example, there’s an entirely different mindset when reading a horror story than when reading short romantic fiction.
4. Audience: In addition to the genre, it’s also important during a critique session for readers to find out the intended audience. Is the writing intended for submission to the local newspaper, a national magazine, a literary journal, for a class assignment, or as part of a book proposal to a literary agent?
What Readers Need to Look for in Critiquing Written Work
5. Form: Readers should note misspellings and obvious grammar mistakes as they go, but not make suggestions until after they’ve read the entire manuscript. Sometimes apparent mistakes are actually intentional aspects of the story, such as an odd way that a character talks or a seemingly confusing plot device.
6. Content: Items to notice in the content include ratio of dialogue to exposition, character development, appropriate amount of detail and description, readability, well-defined central conflict, and a catchy opening sentence and satisfying conclusion.
What Techniques and Attitudes Readers Need for Critiquing
7. Notes: With the permission of the writer, notations should be made directly on the paper and discussed afterward.
8. Manuscripts: Readers must return manuscripts to the writer. It’s highly unethical (and sometimes illegal) to “borrow” ideas or pieces from another writer’s work. During the critiquing process, writers become even more vulnerable by sharing unfinished, uncopyrighted versions of their writing.
9. Sympathy: Award-winning poet and memoirist Alice R. Friedman says that sympathy is essential to being a valuable reader. “Critiquing is a difficult process for the writer and the reader. As the reader, you need to ask yourself ‘Am I sympathetic to the concept of this piece of writing? Am I sympathetic to the writer?’ If you really don’t like someone, you probably aren’t going to like anything he or she writes.”
10. Depersonalize: Readers shouldn’t make comments or criticisms personal. They should talk about the characters in the writing, not about the writer – even if it’s a memoir or personal essay.
11. Positivism: Readers should start with positive aspects of the writing first, and then find a neutral way to express what they didn’t enjoy about the piece. In general, it’s best to balance negative and positive comments evenly.
12. Impartiality: Award-winning poet and short story writer Estelle Lipp says remaining impartial is crucial to critique. “I don’t apply my own personal preferences for writing styles or genres so that I can approach each piece on a level playing field with no bias.”
Don’t hesitate to help out someone who wants a manuscript reviewed. Just try to give them exactly what they ask for while simultaneously balancing praise and criticism. For more information about manuscript critique, read How to Prepare Manuscripts for Critique.
 |
