The Day Job: Making a Writing Group Work

One time when I was in a writers’ group, a member submitted a manuscript that he was a little nervous about. He said it had some four-letter words in it. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but he was conscientious. At the next meeting, the critiques progressed swimmingly until we got to that manuscript. The first critiquer pulled an air-sickness bag out of her briefcase and gave it to him. “That’s what I think of your story,” she said. She wasn’t joking.

For most writers, part of their writing process involves seeking feedback. At first that might mean giving the manuscript to a friend or spouse, and sometimes that works out, but you’re darned lucky if someone that close to you can also give you an informed and honest opinion about your work.

You’re much more likely to find helpful advice if you can get into a good critique group. The basic requirements for a good group are simple to list, but they don’t come together all that often (stories of critique groups gone tragically sour are legendary). Here’s what you probably should look for in a group:

• They meet regularly (this encourages productivity).
• They’re not too big (you won’t get to submit often) or too small (not enough diversity of opinion).
• They have shared goals (if you want to be published, then you need a group where publishing is the goal).
• Everyone participates by submitting work and critiquing others.
• Everyone genuinely wants everyone in the group to succeed.
• No jerks allowed (there’s a million ways to be a jerk in a writing group).

Joining a group that is already going, that has the attributes I’ve listed above, and that has writers you respect, and hopefully will come to respect you, would be ideal, but that’s not always the case. As I mentioned, it’s possible you could get into a group where another writer considers handing you a barf bag to be an appropriate critique. If there isn’t a good group around, you may need to form one of your own, and if you do, you will want to set the ground rules.

What you should do in a writers group:

• Read each manuscript with the idea the draft is a draft, not a finished product.
• Look for what the draft is trying to do or trying to become.
• Look for what is being done well first.
• Be honest about what doesn’t work for you and why it doesn’t work.
• Comment on the draft, not the writer.
• Critique the piece on its own terms. (A light comedy is not a serious tragedy and shouldn’t be judged as one. Critiquing a haiku because it isn’t a sonnet doesn’t help.)
• Use every critiquing session as an opportunity to teach yourself more about the nature of writing.
• Get something out of it for yourself.

What your shouldn’t do:

• Rewrite the piece.
• Patronize.
• Show off at the writer’s expense.
• Hold back what you honestly feel.

Remember:

• A piece can be critiqued on multiple levels from the global, “Does it make sense?” or “How did it affect me?” to the minutely local, “This comma use is incorrect.”
• Every piece will be critiqued differently depending on what it is trying to do and how it is trying to do it.
• It’s okay if you don’t know exactly what to say about a piece. Fumbling around trying to articulate your feelings can be just as useful to the writer as a crisply pronounced judgment.
• A lot of critiquing involves interplay between what the piece is trying to do and how it is trying to do it. Oftentimes weaknesses in a text are caused by a dissonance between these two attributes. Oftentimes the writer will be unclear on what the piece is trying to do, and you discussing it will help clarify that for the writer. This means that a critique can oscillate between the philosophical and the technical.
• Every writing problem, eventually, becomes a technical one. How do I make the scene work? How do I make a convincing transition? How do I characterize convincingly? How do I introduce the conflict? How do I word the ending?
• Oftentimes the critique will be about writing that is not on the page. Missing words. Rearranged words. Different words. The reader doesn’t know what those words will be. Only the writer can supply them, if she/he can.

Not everyone needs a writers’ group. A very rare few are good judges of their own work. Some writers are afraid that a writers’ group will kill their voice, that they will start to write stories to avoid criticism rather than pursuing their muse. I haven’t seen that happen. It certainly hasn’t happened to me, but I understand the fear.

The Internet provides more resources for being a part of a writers’ group. I often use the collection of articles at the Science Fiction Writers of America website for advice, including the very helpful Turkey City Lexicon, which is both funny and a writing education at the same time.

Oh, I ought to mention that at the meeting where the writer received the air-sickness bag, we immediately voted her out of the group (it wasn’t the first time she’d behaved counterproductively). We finished the meeting by critiquing the rest of the manuscripts. Unfortunately, the meeting was in the house of the woman we’d just voted out of the group. The atmosphere was a bit…well…awkward.