Thoughts on Novel Workshops and Critiques

I’ve been in a bunch of different kinds of critique groups over the last 10 years (10 years!) of working as a writer. I spent several years on The Online Writers Workshop, until I started to feel like I’d gone about as far as I could with OWW and was worried about creeping group-think concerning what a story should and shouldn’t be (fyi, I still highly recommend OWW to pretty much every new writer I meet. OWW made me a competent semi-pro writer very quickly).

Then I was in a couple of different groups that exchanged informal email (international) critiques. I did this for a number of years, until they finally fell apart, like groups sometimes do. I was considering casting about for two or three people I thought I could trust to be first and beta readers, with the agreement that I would offer the same, when I was made an offer by an established local novelist group.

The novelist critique group I joined does “crits-as-they-go.” I admit to being very dubious about this. In the past my groups finished complete first and second drafts and submitted them around to members, and I am having trouble seeing how to give a deep and constructive crit when I can't see the entire form of the novel. I have trouble making deep comments when I don't know the arch of each character, how the plot unwinds, what themes reoccur, and the general tone of the piece.

If the group met to exchange pages weekly, I might feel better, since I could see the shape of the novel as it develops, but instead we have these big quarterly get-togethers, with people submitting no more than 10,000 words. Some members of the group get together once a month (or two) at a library to exchange smaller, less formal crits, usually 5K. The pace seems very slow, especially if -- like me -- your intent is to write at a clip that allows you to finish the first draft of at least two novels a year (I don’t much care for NaNoWriMo, but I do believe in the “Novel in 90” concept).

When I told them at the beginning of my membership that I was use to writing the first two complete drafts of a novel and then submitting it around to the other group members, they were stunned. One member made the comment, “You must be really sure of your novel and confidant in your skills in order to write a whole draft without any input.”

Well, yeah.

My fellow group members say this “crit-as-you-go” style helps them get insights, new ideas, and interesting points of view from a critique. That it enriches their WiP as it progresses, adds extra layers of ideas and complexity, helps them correct mistakes sooner rather than later, and allows them make a novel fuller by improving the plot and story with input from the other members.

It seems to me that all this writing really slowly with constant input is a recipe to become trapped in a cycle of rewriting, editing, rewriting, polishing, changing, rewriting, editing, rewriting and on and on. I also worry that “crit-as-you-go” might have a tendency to kill the author's unique voice -- that bit of the author that tends to come out in the early drafts when the writer is less fettered by worries like editing -- and that the writer will tend toward writing the novel the group thinks he/she is or should be writing, as opposed to the novel they would have written in early draft without constant input. This is one of the reasons I finally left The Online Writers Workshop.

On the flipside, I can see how this process would catch glaring plot holes and continuity problems early, saving the author lots of headache latter, so YMMV.

What are your thoughts on how best to get critiques for the early draft of a novel or novel-in-progress?

Thoughts on Novel Workshops and Critiques

I’ve been in a bunch of different kinds of critique groups over the last 10 years (10 years!) of working as a writer. I spent several years on The Online Writers Workshop, until I started to feel like I’d gone about as far as I could with OWW and was worried about creeping group-think concerning what a story should and shouldn’t be (fyi, I still highly recommend OWW to pretty much every new writer I meet. OWW made me a competent semi-pro writer very quickly).

Then I was in a couple of different groups that exchanged informal email (international) critiques. I did this for a number of years, until they finally fell apart, like groups sometimes do. I was considering casting about for two or three people I thought I could trust to be first and beta readers, with the agreement that I would offer the same, when I was made an offer by an established local novelist group.

The novelist critique group I joined does “crits-as-they-go.” I admit to being very dubious about this. In the past my groups finished complete first and second drafts and submitted them around to members, and I am having trouble seeing how to give a deep and constructive crit when I can't see the entire form of the novel. I have trouble making deep comments when I don't know the arch of each character, how the plot unwinds, what themes reoccur, and the general tone of the piece.

If the group met to exchange pages weekly, I might feel better, since I could see the shape of the novel as it develops, but instead we have these big quarterly get-togethers, with people submitting no more than 10,000 words. Some members of the group get together once a month (or two) at a library to exchange smaller, less formal crits, usually 5K. The pace seems very slow, especially if -- like me -- your intent is to write at a clip that allows you to finish the first draft of at least two novels a year (I don’t much care for NaNoWriMo, but I do believe in the “Novel in 90” concept).

When I told them at the beginning of my membership that I was use to writing the first two complete drafts of a novel and then submitting it around to the other group members, they were stunned. One member made the comment, “You must be really sure of your novel and confidant in your skills in order to write a whole draft without any input.”

Well, yeah.

My fellow group members say this “crit-as-you-go” style helps them get insights, new ideas, and interesting points of view from a critique. That it enriches their WiP as it progresses, adds extra layers of ideas and complexity, helps them correct mistakes sooner rather than later, and allows them make a novel fuller by improving the plot and story with input from the other members.

It seems to me that all this writing really slowly with constant input is a recipe to become trapped in a cycle of rewriting, editing, rewriting, polishing, changing, rewriting, editing, rewriting and on and on. I also worry that “crit-as-you-go” might have a tendency to kill the author's unique voice -- that bit of the author that tends to come out in the early drafts when the writer is less fettered by worries like editing -- and that the writer will tend toward writing the novel the group thinks he/she is or should be writing, as opposed to the novel they would have written in early draft without constant input. This is one of the reasons I finally left The Online Writers Workshop.

On the flipside, I can see how this process would catch glaring plot holes and continuity problems early, saving the author lots of headache latter, so YMMV.

What are your thoughts on how best to get critiques for the early draft of a novel or novel-in-progress?