Guest Post: My Take on Critique Groups (C.M. Michaels)

I’m going to be experimenting with including some guest content on my blog, primarily authors talking about their books. If you’re interested in participating in that, please drop me a line.

Here author C.M. Michaels talks about critique groups:

In my opinion, the ability to get real-time feedback from people knowledgeable about your genre that you trust explicitly””but who are still willing to offer constructive criticism””is the most helpful tool in a writer’s arsenal.

For a critique group to be successful, each of the conditions summarized above needs to be met.

Composed of people you trust ““ I’ve seen a lot of online critique group sites pop up recently. These sites make the formation of groups far easier, but they miss out on one of the most essential requirements for collaborative input to be effective. Trust. I’m not just speaking of the risk that someone you have never met will pilfer your amazing idea for a new book (or even actual chapters), which is all too real. The lack of trust also makes you more defensive and less open to receiving even well intentioned feedback that they share. Selecting a critique group comprised of close friends and relatives alleviates both issues.
Composed of people knowledgeable in your genre ““ So you’ve taken the first step and found a group of close friends and relatives who are willing to join your new critique group. That’s wonderful! Are all of them familiar with your genre? If not, I’d suggest that you keep looking. That may sound harsh (especially if they volunteered for your non-paying gig) but if they aren’t fans of the genre the pushback you receive could have as much to do with their dislike of your type of book as with what you are actually writing. Even if they are just uninformed about the genre rather than being biased against it, they still don’t have any benchmark to gauge your book against. Contrast that with someone who has read all the popular series you aspire to emulate. They can give you candid feedback that draws upon a mutual understanding of the essential elements for a book in your genre to be a hit.
Composed of people willing to offer constructive feedback ““ This makes the selection of your critique group members far more difficult, as you need to ensure that the relatives and close friends you select are going to be willing to share negative feedback and take you to task. Getting a bunch of “this is great” comments may boost your ego, but it does nothing to improve your novel. No one is inherently excluded””your parents, sister, brother, boyfriend, may make great group members””it just depends on the nature of your relationship. And you also need to be open to receiving constructive feedback from them. If your boyfriend tells you he kept falling asleep during your prologue, as he didn’t see where you were going with your in depth knowledge dump on the Greek pantheon, will you listen to him and make the chapter more focused, or will it start a fight between you? Be honest with yourself. Having people tell us our creations are less than perfect stings. Make sure you select people you will not hold a grudge against.
Able to provide real time feedback – We all know it’s much easier to make major storyline changes before the entire draft is written, and input on dialogue, narrative voice, syntax and character development received for one chapter can be leveraged as you work on future chapters. So in order to be effective your group needs to meet regularly, once every 1-2 weeks. As an added bonus, meeting frequently also gives you intermediate deadlines to target, since you need to have written something for them to review. Posting the chapters out on a Skydrive a couple days in advance of each meeting will give everyone a chance to read it beforehand and come prepared with their input.

Comment on this post to be entered in a Rafflecopter giveaway
for a $50 Amazon gift certificate. Look for other stops on C.M. Michaels’ blog tour for additional chances to win.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.

2 Responses

Goddess Fish Promos says:

December 16, 2013 at 4:28 am

Thank you for hosting

Reply
CM Michaels says:

December 16, 2013 at 4:39 am

Thank you for hosting me today! I will reply to comments this evening.

Reply

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Links from Blogging 101 Class - General Social Media Links

July 30, 2011

As part of the Blogging 101 class I just finished up teaching for Bellevue College, I organized a bunch of my links into a handout. Here is the General Social Media Resources section.

Mentioned in class:
(We didn’t actually get to this, but it’s a good way to track which of your links are getting shared.)Way to shorten URLs and monitor which are being reshared: http://www.bitly.com
(Also didn’t get a chance to hit in class, but is a good way to see if your name is available on various social networks as well as a pretty comprehensive listing of such networks.) Way to check your name on social networks: http://namechk.com/
Way to look at your social media presence: http://www.klout.com
Cartoon History of Twitter and Social Networking: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/cartoon-history-social-networking_b6160

Technical:
10 Social Media Mistakes We Bet You’re Making: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-social-media-mistakes-we-bet-youre-making-2010-9
10 Things Social media Marketers Should Know about Millennials: http://socialtimes.com/socialmedia-marketing-millenials_b31715
Best Free Social Media Tracking Tools: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/02/18/social-media-tools/
Five Myths About Pushing Social Media Marketing Content: http://socialtimes.com/five-myths-about-pushing-social-media-marketing-content_b55978
How to Actually Become Friends with Social Network Connections: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-make-powerful-connections-through-social-media-2011-1
How to Crack the New York Times Popularity Code: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/20/how-to-crack-the-new-york-times-most-emailed-list.html
What Social Network is Right For You? (2010): http://lifehacker.com/5472223/which-social-network-is-right-for-you
Winners and Losers of Social Networking: http://mashable.com/2011/04/12/social-networks-infographic/

Food For Thought:
Fantabulous Lists of Social Media Case Studies: http://socialmediatoday.com/igiedrius/268023/fantabulous-lists-social-media-case-studies
Google+ discussion of Wal-mart’s use of social media data:
https://plus.google.com/109581870574956225297/posts/2KKuJAUUruo
How governments are using social media: http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/government-social-media/
Innovative Uses of Social Media: http://mashable.com/2011/04/07/innovative-pr-social-media/
On Social Media, Most People Don’t Want to Be Heard: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2030594/social-media-people-dont-heard
Six Verbs You Need to Understand for the New Web:
http://www.spinsucks.com/social-media/six-verbs-you-need-to-understand-for-the-new-web/
What Social Commerce Can Learn From Social Gaming: http://socialcommercetoday.com/what-social-commerce-can-learn-from-social-gaming/
Why Social Accountability Will Be the New Currency of the Web: http://mashable.com/2011/07/28/social-media-influence-accountability/
3 C’s of Social Networking: Consumption, Curation, Creation: http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=briansolis/233806/three-c-s-social-networking-consumption-curation-creation
5 Social Good Sites Aimed at Youth: http://mashable.com/2011/07/22/social-good-youth/
How 3 Cities Are Crowdsourcing for Revitalization: http://mashable.com/2011/07/20/crowdsourcing-city-tech/
5 Innovative Food Truck Social Media Marketing Campaigns: http://mashable.com/2011/07/21/social-media-food-trucks-marketing/
25 Terrific Social Media Infographics: http://socialmediatoday.com/pamdyer/266010/65-terrific-social-media-infographics

I’m glad to discuss any of these links in comments here.

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Networking with Purpose and Sincerity

March 15, 2011

It’s natural for writers to want to spread word of our work. We all realize that, short of hiring a publicist, we’re our own best champions. But if we go too far, or are too single-minded in that pursuit, we can come off as boorish and arrogant.

To do it successfully, keep some things in mind.

Push the good stuff. In an ideal world, everything you have appearing is amazing and wonderful, but if your experience is closer to mine, some stories are stronger than others. Pick the best, and when you’re mentioning that you’re eligible for something, point to those and not to an exhaustive list of everything published that year. Presumably you’ve got a bibliography available somewhere on your website (here’s mine, for example), and if anyone wants to see everything you produced, they can check that out.
Pay it back, in spades. Want other people to feel inclined to spread word of your stuff? Then make sure you’re doing it for them. If you read a story you like online, point other people to it in a blog post or on whatever social network you use. Drop the author a note and say why you liked it. Don’t sit back and expect glory to come your way, whether or not it’s well-deserved. Make nominations and recommendations, and vote. Go to other people’s readings. If you’ve got to pass up an opportunity, try to steer it towards someone that needs it. You don’t need to be insincere about any of this. Praise the stuff you like, and if you’re having trouble finding it, you should be looking harder.
Monitor and maintain connections. Pay attention to other people’s events and celebrate their victories. Just be a decent human being, and life will be better overall (at least, in my experience. If you’re a personality type damaged by human interaction, take all of this with a suitably-sized grain of salt.) This is part of paying it back, really, but it’s more than that. It’s being aware of the people around you. I stress it because I’m bad about it and it’s something I’ve been trying to be extra mindful of lately.
Listen more than you talk. This helps with maintaining connections. Remember that sometimes communication isn’t about what’s being said, but about the act of performing it. Time is one of our most valuable commodities – to say to someone that you want to share yours is a valuable thing. (But at the same time, remember that other people’s time is just as valuable to them. What you view as quality time spent with them, they may think of as time they could be spending on something else.)
Eyes on the prize. As with so many other things in life, time spent doing this is time spent not writing. If you’re thinking of networking as a career-building activity, make sure you’ve got an actual career to build on. The greatest network in the world won’t do you much good unless you’re actually producing something.

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