Children's Book Writer

The purpose of the peer-review type of critique is to provide a writer with objective, supportive feedback on the writer’s work-in-progress manuscript.  In return, you get objective, supportive feedback on your work-in-progress manuscript.

Some things that a peer critique is not:

1. It is not a means to find out “is my manuscript any good.” Of course it’s good. But a good manuscript can always get better.

2. It is not a means to find out “is my manuscript ready for publication.” Your peers can’t decide that.  They can only help you to bring your best work forward.

3. It is not a means to get ideas for new manuscripts, nor is it an opportunity for you to rewrite someone else’s work.  Your work is your work, just like my work belongs to me.

When a writer’s work is critiqued, the goal of the writer is to simply be open: to listen, to absorb, and to take notes.  The writer doesn’t argue or try to explain what he or she was trying to get across. That only takes time away from the writer’s critique session. The writer, and only the writer, has to determine if the comments made during a critique are useful and something he or she wants to incorporate into a rewrite. The proper and sometimes only comment that the writer need make is “Thank you for your comments.”

The person giving the critique needs to go beyond “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.”  Even saying “It didn’t work for me” isn’t all that helpful.  The reviewer must quantify or explain, or pose thoughtful questions for the writer to mull later on during his rewrite.  If you are new to critique groups, it is helpful to stay within some boundaries.  To start, a new critique group can follow a series of structured critiques so that everyone follows the same path, looks for the same kinds of objective things related to narrative, character, plot, story and theme, and hopefully provides a high-level of useful feedback.  The drawback to the structured critique is that some things might get missed, or that reviewers might feel like they are holding back.  As the group gets more comfortable, the structure of the critique can and should be relaxed; some members of the group will likely have a keener eye for certain elements, and might be able to provide deeper insight that the other members of the group might have missed.