This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
One of the most important things you can do for your writing is to get feedback. We’re simply too close to our own work to be able to see it clearly or to experience it as a reader.
Plus, getting critiques will help to strengthen your writing in general. There’s nothing like having your writerly quirks pointed out by a kind reader to help you to identify them for yourself in the future.
Some people are happy to seek feedback early on and they thrive on the knowledge that friends are waiting to read the next part of their story.
Others need to work on a draft until it’s as finished and polished as they can make it before seeking external opinions.
Whenever you decide to do it, it’s helpful to have a clear idea of what you want from the critique and to make that explicit to the people reading your work. If you are just starting out and you want some encouragement, choose people who you can trust to do give you that (and don’t be shy in explaining that this is what you require).
If you are about to submit to agents or publishers and you want super-picky critiques to help you polish your manuscript to a high shine, then you need to make this clear. Reassure your critique partners that you don’t want them to hold back.
Be specific in your requirements. If you just want help with grammar, typos and spelling then make that clear. Your critique partner will be (justifiably) cross if they spend hours working on comments you have no interest in hearing.
If you are still at the structural revision stage and are particularly interested in whether the point of view or a particular character or plot point works, then say so.
If you don’t have anything specific in mind, then you can ask your critique partners to make a note whenever something trips them up, confuses or annoys them.
For an overview of whether the story you have written matches the one you intended to write, the following questions can be useful:
Who is the protagonist?
What do they want?
Why do they want it?
Who is the antagonist?
What do they want?
What sort of story/genre is this?
What do you expect (broadly speaking) to happen in the rest of the story?
Finally, you need to be gracious and grateful for any comments your readers make, and offer to return the favour!
Who critiques your writing for you?