The Art of The Critique (Part 3)

So: You've worked out how to get your work critiqued. What you will have found, in most cases, is that you have to Give critique to Get critique.

So how do I give Good Critique, I hear you ask. (Again, blame my overactive imagination.)

The first thing about giving a good critique is that it isn't a review. You aren't reading it to tell other readers about, and you aren't reading it purely for you own enjoyment. You are reading to try and assist the author in producing the perfect story.

Obviously, there is no such thing as the perfect story, but that's another matter.

What sort of things do I look for in a story?

The first level is simply: Did I like the story? Or hate it? Or did it just not grab me. Try and distinguish between whether you disliked a story because it was poorly written, or because you (for eg) are not into stories about werewolves. (or Elves.)

The next level is plot and characterisation. Did the characters involve you? Did the plot make sense, or could you drive a truck through the holes?

The level after that is technical level. What to look for there are things like:

• careless POV shifts
• passive language
• careless use of tense
• word repetition
• waffling
• telling, not showing -- (And I would appreciate if someone could provide an example.)
• grammatical errors -- (mind you, this then falls into the great comma debate, but that is another story)
• passages just 'not feeling right'

After that is the purely mechanical level -- spelling and punctuation and so forth.

The level of the detail you go into is entirely up to you. Sometimes the Author will have asked for an opinion on a particular aspect of the story. ie: "Look, don't worry about the spelling, it's only a first draft, but does the plot make sense?" or "I'm a bit concerned that my character, Joreth, comes over as a little flat."

Sometimes you will read a story, and it will require so much work that there is no point in doing a line by line edit. Just give some examples and move on. And some are damn near perfect. In which case, praise lavishly, but nitpick as much as possible.

Generally, the better the story, the more nitpicky I get. You should nitpick as much as possible, because, after all, you are trying to improve the story.

In novels, you can afford to waffle, and spend a lot of time developing non-essential characters. In a short story, you have to be tight.

An advice that I give in a lot of my critiques is 'make it shorter. Cut out 500 (or 1000, or 2000) words.' A careful read of many stories -- especially early drafts -- will discover sections (usually in the middle) that are woolly and unclear. Usually because the writer knows where she is going, but is not quite sure how to get there from here.
By shortening the story the writer is forced to make every sentence work, and the result is nearly always a more polished story.

Having said all that, not every story is the same and not every writer is the same. There are no hard and fast rules for writing the perfect story. eg: A common advice I have seen is that stories should have plenty of dialogue, but some of the best stories I have critiqued have had no dialogue whatsoever.

Next: The Etiquette of the Critique