At some point in a writing career, an author will need a critique. Many authors join a critique group as soon as they join a chapter of their genre’s writing organization. Some chapters have critique group committees that match authors wanting critiques with groups looking for members. Other authors fall into critique partnerships through conversations with writing friends sharing the need for feedback. There’s a lot of trial and error involved in establishing a critiquing relationship. Some groups never truly solidify while others last a lifetime.
So what makes a critique group work?
Let’s assume the authors involved have a good grasp of the language in which they are writing: sentence construction, punctuation, the standard rules for formatting a manuscript, etc. Strunk and White is a good resource, as is your local community college, should you need a refresher in the basics of English. There’s also the Internet, and countless Websites devoted to grammar usage. Most publishers have a house style, but there’s no need to worry about a publisher’s stand on the serial comma if you don’t even know what that means.
Yes, a critique partner will point out typos, spelling and punctuation errors, but the main purpose of a critique is to make an author aware of a manuscript’s 
strengths and weakness, as well as those of the author herself. We are often too close to our creations to know where we’ve missed putting on the page the details in our head. A good critique partner will do more than tell us our manuscript is pretty; s/he will realize what’s missing and point it out. A good critique partner will pick up on characterization that’s gone awry, or a plot that’s wandered off on a tangent. A really good critique partner will challenge an author to dig even deeper for ways to enhance a story’s theme, or its emotional resonance. A really really good critique partner will demand an author avoid cliches, stereotypes, lazy, thoughtless writing, and pour more into his or her writing than ever before.
A good critique partner is invaluable.
A bad critique partner is not.
As with agents, it’s better to have no critique partner than to have a bad one. What you don’t want from a critique is to have the critiquer imprint his or her vision on the story you’re struggling to tell. If you’re unsure on any story aspect, an overbearing critique partner can easily ruin your concept – not to mention your confidence – by rewriting your words in his or her voice. Romance editors say time and again that the manuscripts they are seeing are proficiently perfect, but are lacking personality. They have no voice or soul – and too often seem to be written by committee.
That’s the biggest danger of working with a critique group – having your voice edited out of your work. When new authors begin critquing with new authors, it’s often a case of the blind leading the blind, or stories being written by the rules learned in workshops, rules with which the authors have no practical experience. Strong voices are diluted. Unique voices are homogenized. The very spark that would grab an editor’s attention is written out of a story by critique partners who don’t know what they’re doing.
For authors who have not found a successful critique group but still need feedback, writing contests can be a solution. There are many chapters in the Romance Writers of America, for example, who run contests that include critiques. These are usually only offered on a few chapters, but often times that’s all an author needs. Also, many judges will sign the scoresheets, or at least list their credentials – if not their names, making it easier for a contestant to gauge the value of their remarks.
Some critique groups meet in person on a regular schedule, whether weekly or monthly. Some critique groups read their work aloud, while others exchange printed manuscript pages. Some critique groups “meet” online and either critique pages pasted into the body of an email, or work on attachments using a word processing program’s editing feature, or even share their work through Google Docs. There’s no right or wrong way to get together with a group or a partner. There are even communities online with dozens, maybe hundreds of members who post their work to message boards seeking feedback. How comfortable an author is with doing that is an individual choice, and a matter of trust. There are unscrupulous people out there, some desperate enough to be “published” that they will plagiarize another’s work.
There are also authors who don’t work with critique partners at all. They may use beta readers, readers who are not authors, to test drive their work, or they may have once worked with critique partners but have moved on. Maybe they write too fast due to deadlines to wait for feedback, or maybe they’ve learned to trust their own instincts and don’t want any fingers but their agent’s and editor’s in their fictional pie. Or perhaps they share certain scenes with trusted friends and ask for specific feedback when something feels off.
The need for critiques is as individual as an author’s voice, and can change over time as the author grows more confident in his or her own abilities. But an author should never accept a critiquer’s opinion as law or the last word. An author is the one responsible for the manuscript that reaches an editor’s desk, and it’s vital that the words the editor reads are the author’s, and not those of a well-meaning but misguided critiquer.
