Self-editing, or that one-hundredth rewrite of the same paragraph can only go so far in polishing your manuscript. Sometimes what you truly need is another pair of eyes, an impartial reader, a critical mind to review your work. The person who says, "I'd love to read your stuff," is not the one to be your critique partner. Nor is your mother, your child, your spouse or your co-worker. You need another writer, someone who won't try to please you, who doesn't want to prove you can or cannot be a writer. You need someone whose opinion you trust, who will share constructive suggestions and ideas with you. One person reading, editing and critiquing your work is a critique partner, two or more and you have a critique group.
A critique group brings together two to no more than six writers to help each other. Usually, a group of three or four persons seems to be the work the best because the more members in the group, the more work. Working with too many critique partners can become unwieldy.
To start a group, select several writers you know and trust and invite them to join a critique group. Select a meeting time and place. Then, decide what "business format" your group will take. Some groups exchange a chapter at a time, others a few pages at a time either at the meeting or prior to the meeting. They might mail copies to members, email or post it on the Internet. Some read the material at their meetings, others work on it between meetings and only discuss it if there is a problem that warrants the group's attention. Our critique group studies a book together. At a typical ninety-minute weekly meeting, we discuss our current work, plot problems, blocks, or where we think we are heading. We exchange pages or chapters to take home and return the following week. We may work on an exercise, hold a plotting party, interview our characters, or study a chapter in a book.
One of our most successful and fun meetings involved a "field trip" to a nearby community where we shopped in antique stores and had lunch. During the meal, we interviewed two of the writers about their characters. Why would they eat at this restaurant? What would they order? Are they hearty eaters or pickers? What dessert would they choose? What sort of interaction would they have with the servers, or with other customers? From our discussion, each of the writers constructed an entire scene and had enough ideas to build a scene before and after the meal. They couldn't wait to get home to their computers.
Should your critique group have all the same type of writers and the same level of expertise? That's up to you. My group has two inspirational writers and one person who writes historical and contemporary fiction and non-fiction. We have different levels of experience and expertise, and we find that works well for us. Other groups prefer to have everyone working at the same level or on similar projects. The groups function differently, but each have the same goal, to help each other learn the craft of writing and polish their manuscripts before an editor sees them.
Some pointers for working together:
Respect your partner's work. You have different styles of writing and his word choice or sentence construction may sound foreign to you, but they are his. Suggest but don't re-write. The object of the game is to improve, not butcher.
Respect your group's time together. You are not a support group for one person's problems. Remember your goal is to work together to hone your skills and develop saleable manuscripts.
Be professional. When you give someone your work to read and critique, hand them your best effort, clean, double-spaced with indented paragraphs and correct punctuation. Take their suggestions to mind, not to heart. You do not have to agree with the critiquer's marks or changes. It is still your words, your sentences and your book. However, if more than one person makes the same comments or changes, you should look seriously at following their suggestion before submitting the piece to an editor who will undoubtedly notice the same passage.
Trust your partners. No one is going to steal your idea and write the same book you are working on. In our group, all three of us happened to have a bed and breakfast inn as a setting once. But, each work was entirely unique, each set of characters very different.
Brush up on style and proof-reading. Learn how to mark a manuscript, what symbols to use to indicate where a new paragraph needs to be inserted, when a word is misspelled or misplaced, when a passage needs clarification. You don't need to suggest different wording, simply call the writer's attention to the error or passage and let him re-write it.