So you took my advice in Finding Critique Partners. Now what?

Scheduling

Two important things to discuss when working with new critique partners is how often you want to plan on swapping material and how much you plan to swap each time. Life happens and schedules change. Emergencies crop up. It happens to all of us. But it’s good to go into the partnership with a plan and a goal, otherwise one (or both!) of you might end up frustrated on timelines and turn times because it wasn’t clearly discussed ahead of time.

When setting up a swapping plan with a critique partner, don’t forget to take into account the obligations you’ve already made to other critique partners. Swapping 3,500 words with five different critique partners every week is a lot of reading & critiquing, which can cut into your own writing time. Spending too much time critiquing and not enough time actually writing could leave you in a situation where you have nothing to send for feedback.

When setting expectations, it’s also important to know how you read and critique best. Some writers prefer to swap full manuscripts and get 350 pages of feedback at once. I get massively overwhelmed combing through all the feedback at once. I tend to procrastinate and prioritize critiques lower when doing full-manuscript swaps. I’ve swapped single chapters, sections, and full manuscripts. I’ve learned for my process, I do better and can keep up better with single chapter swaps quickly or multi-chapter sections every few weeks/once a month.

As mentioned in my Finding Critique Partners post, NEVER do a full manuscript swap with someone you’ve never worked with before. There’s nothing more deflating than spending hours working meticulously through in-line feedback on a 300-page manuscript with a three-page overall feedback letter to get your own manuscript back with ten comments in line and a paragraph of general thoughts.

Ask and ye shall receive

When sending my work out to critique partners, I always like to provide guiding feedback of areas where I would like feedback/areas of concern. Giving your critique partner areas of concern to address is a godsend. It gives them guidance of what type of feedback to focus on. (See more with specific examples of questions below.)

This is not to say these are the only questions your critique partner should address. A good critique partner will analyze a story through a broad scope to give you the most overall picture of where you’re at: what’s working, what needs work, and what is plain confusing. A good critique partner doesn’t just point out issues; they offer suggestions on how you might approach revisions. Being able to say “this doesn’t work for me” doesn’t help anyone. But saying “Your antagonist feels a little one-dimensional here. Have you considered giving her a motivation for why she’s so mean to the main character? Perhaps the MC slept with her husband?” is a lot more useful. Even if the author doesn’t end up using your exact suggestion, it can help pinpoint what needs to be fixed and spur revision ideas.

Types of critique feedback

Some people (ahem, me) like getting feedback on my WIP as early as the marketing materials and/or outline to make sure the fundamental plot works before diving in. Other writers like to write their messy first draft and self-edit before sending it out to any external eyes.

Find your process. Experiment with different stories. What works for one project doesn’t necessarily work for your next one. There are, generally, different stages you should consider sending your work out for critique on. Depending on your process and your path to finding your story, you might do multiple rounds in one or all of the following stages. Develop your relationships with your critique partners—they are your greatest champions and support. And trust them when they tell you it’s ready (or when it isn’t). Your agent or editor is going to make you do at least one (or three) further rounds of revisions once you turn it in. (Be careful not to let this be an excuse to get impatient, though. If you don’t spend enough time revising and polishing, you won’t make it past the slush pile.)

In order, consider the follow rounds of revisions:

Developmental feedback

This covers items such as theme, story, plot, POV, and character. Your critique partners are studying the elements that weave throughout the length of the novel, looking primarily at the story over multiple scenes/chapters. This isn’t to say they shouldn’t provide in-line comments. Pointing out specific examples within the context of the manuscript is a huge help when providing feedback.

Here are examples of questions I asked my critique partners on my opening chapter when in this stage:

Do you get a sense of the MC’s story goal, motivation, and conflict (internal and external) in the opening pages, as well as the story stakes?
Can you see in these opening pages what her character flaw and strength are?
Is she a character you are rooting for? Can you relate to her?
Do you start to get a sense of the other characters introduced in these pages? What are your initial reactions/impressions of them?
Are there any places where there’s too much backstory? Or not enough?
I’m curious if the narrative style helps reflect her situation in chapter two.
Do these opening chapters flow well and have good pacing? Does anything feel unnecessary for the opening setup?

Technical / line edits

Once you’ve gotten your story, plot, and character down, it’s time to zoom in closer and look at your manuscript on the page and paragraph level. Things to look at in this round of revisions include voice, dialogue, pacing, and show vs tell.

Here’s the list of feedback questions I sent my critique partner this morning. It’s extensive so I’m not excepting all this feedback on every page, but it’s a quick refresher/guide of what I’m hoping to fix in the next round of edits:

How does overall pacing feel? Do the opening chapters push you through quickly and hook you in?
I think I’ve cleared out any head hopping but please flag if you notice one.
I want to make sure the narrative voice suits the MC. Her position in life, her education, the feeling of her character. If anything feels odd, please mark it.
I also want to make sure the tone is steady and fits the character and plot, if you can flag anything that feels out of place.
Any thoughts you have on each of the chapter titles (great, meh, doesn’t fit) I would love. I want to make sure they’re part of the hook and her voice.
If any chapters feel like they start too early or end too late, I’d love to know.
How are the chapter endings? Do they leave you wanting to continue on?
I’m definitely curious on the balance of description/exposition/dialogue. And please mark anything that’s too much summary.
Please flag anything telling that should be shown instead.
If you notice any infodumping (or any missing backstory needed for context), please note.

This is a good time to start looking at filler words, adjectives, adverbs, and other word choices at the line level as well.

Copy edits and proofreading

This is my least favorite but the most important to remember before sending to an agent or before self-publishing. The fastest way to lose a reader is to send a sloppy manuscript full of typos, wrong words, and overused clichés or comparisons. I cannot stress this enough, as much to myself as to you because honestly? By the time I get done with developmental and line edits, I’m usually pretty tired of my story. I’m tempted to send it out and move onto the next idea since I prefer the brainstorming part of writing. Don’t fall to the temptation. You’re almost done!

It’s really hard to self edit, so make sure you have at least one or two really technical critique partners saved for this stage. You can have the computer read your story out loud to you to catch a lot of the mistakes, but you still know what you’re story is supposed to say.

This round is a lot more self explanatory, but things to double check include punctuation, wrong words like peek versus peak and their versus they’re versus there, spelling errors, etc.

Sleep on it

You’ve sent your work out to critique partners and just got an email from them with their feedback. Now what?

My golden rule is to always sleep on feedback. Read through it once, close the file, and walk away. Come back again tomorrow. Give it a chance to digest. NEVER respond right away.

Why?

Because in that situation and mindset, you’re much more likely to be defensive and combative at your critique partner’s advice. DON’T DO THIS!!!! A good critique partner is not out to tear you down. They are there to help you and your story. If you get defensive and try to explain why you made certain choices, your critique partner will likely choose not to critique for you going forward.

This doesn’t mean you have to take all the advice they give you. But you don’t have to explain to them why you don’t think their advice fits. Take their advice to heart and then move along.

This, in general, applies to questions the critique partner asks as well. Use common sense here. A lot of times, I pose questions to the critique partners. It’s either something that comes to mind or a confusion I have as a reader. You don’t need to reply to these types of questions your critique partners mention. They are usually rhetorical, guidance for you to consider for clarity’s sake in revisions. Use their confusion as a clue you likely need to reword or rephrase something.

If you’re confused by a critique partner’s feedback, that’s different! It’s always okay to clarify. You want to make sure you understand what they’re trying to say so you don’t accidentally change the wrong thing.

Some critique partners are a lot more collaborative than others and willing to brainstorm ideas and changes with you. Feel them out! I love having a sounding board when I’m stuck on a certain part of feedback and know they’re right but don’t know the best way to revise to fix it.

What to do with conflicting feedback

I will confess: I have sometimes ignored critique feedback even when I have had multiple critique partners tell me the same thing. I liked it the way I wrote it. While it’s good to stay true to your writing and your story, in these situations, I almost always eventually concede that they were, in fact, right. The result of my stubbornness is simply extra rewrites and revisions and time spent tweaking something that people told me from the beginning wasn’t going to work. (Or worse, getting feedback from an agent on my full request rejection that matched what CPs told me from the first draft.)

I’ve also had critique partners tells me something didn’t work. For example, that a certain character wasn’t needed because they didn’t serve a unique purpose to the story. My critique partner was right. But instead of cutting the character, I found ways to give that character more purpose, which helped fix an issue I was struggling with in the plot. Same outcome, different approach!

But what happens when you have conflicting feedback? One critique partner thinks your story is too busy (guilty) and another thinks you need to add a subplot of the main character’s relationship with their sister. Make sure you understand why they are giving you that particular feedback. Do they find the sister character more relatable/that idea to them is more interesting than your main plot and that’s why they suggested it? Or do you truly need more subplots to strengthen a muddle in the middle? Sometimes, what you initially think is conflicting feedback is feedback that addresses two different concerns.

If the feedback is truly conflicting, get another opinion! This is why I like having at least three critique partners at every stage of revisions. You need a majority vote! Ask the third CP’s opinion and see what they say.

Rinse and repeat

Have you gone through all the critique feedback you’ve received for your current draft? Excellent! It’s time to sit down and formulate your revision plan. And then, lucky you, you get to start all over again with the next round. Because as we all know, writing is revising.

Critique Feedback