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Being good at critiquing is a skill and one that takes practice. No one is natural good at looking at a piece of written work and seeing how it fits together and how it can be improved, but there are ways to become better faster. The three things that will start you on the road to being truly useful are to understand what critiquing isn't, understanding what it is, and learning to express what you've found.

The first thing to understand is that critiquing isn't criticizing. This is vital to understand. As a writer you know it takes courage to show your writing to someone else. Even if this story is the worst thing you have ever read find something positive to say. On the other hand critiquing is also not an ego boosting session. "I liked it" may be nice to hear but it's also useless. Just as you should always have something positive to say you should also always have something useful to say. Third, critiquing is not proofreading. This doesn't mean that the person will be upset if you point out a typo, but if you want to be a proofreader ask for a copy of the story afterwards. Very few writers will turn down the chance to have someone double check their grammar, just don't talk about it while critiquing.

Now that you know what it isn't it is important to understand what it is. Critiquing is at it's most basic a way to learn about our writing. It is for this reason that pointing out style, even if it isn't bad can often be useful. I notice that you like parallelism is a neutral statement but if that was what the person was going for it tells them they succeeded, if it wasn't it tells them something else. Critiquing is also a way to build up confidence in a story. This isn't the same as ego stroking. Ofter a good writer will know that there is a weakness in his story but not be able to put his finger on what is wrong. Third it is the chance to get real feedback on the effect your story has. This means that emotional reactions are almost always useful. The lion on page three really scared me, is useful.

Expressing yourself in a critique is the first place where the difficulties of critiquing on-line come into play. Keep in mind when you are writing down your thoughts that you don't know the person. This means that you probably need to be a bit more formal in your writing. Also understand that jokes don't always come across on paper and they almost never come across right when talking about someones work.

The advantage of being on-line is that you can easily show them exactly what part of the story you are talking about. This is very useful when you find a part of the story that confuses you. One friendly piece of advice though, do not rewrite for them. You mean well, but the odds are high that they won't appreciate it. Leave their words alone and simply explain what you are thinking.

The length of the story will effect the length of the critique but try to put down at least three paragraphs. These three will usually be, what I liked, what didn't work for me, and how this effected me. This order is also important. Don't lead with what you didn't like.

Overall critiquing work on-line isn't much different than doing it in real life. Be nice, be useful and be clear.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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