Q. On joining the novel critique group, what did you hope to get out of it – both personally and professionally?
A. The ‘professional’ side of things is a bit abstract right now – I’ve hardly sold anything, certainly not a novel, and writing is more of a hobby than anything else.
I was pretty happy with how this novel had turned out, though, and I was hoping the crit group could give me an idea whether it was worth submitting to agents/publishers, and let me know which bits didn’t work and how I could improve it.
On a personal level, I just got a kick out of having people, whose own work I’d read and respected, read my stuff.
Reading their own works-in-progress was always going to be interesting. And of course, as with 2011, it was a fun group just to hang out with.
Q. ‘Helpful’ feedback can often hurt the ego, no matter how well intended. What feedback did you expect, how did it differ from the reality, and how did you feel about it afterward?
A. I’d skimmed through the novel a couple of times in the month between sending it to the crit group and the critique itself, and I’d seen quite a few weaknesses people might pick up on.
A lot of them (eg passivity of the main character, sloppy ending) did come up in the critique, but there were a few surprises.
For example, a couple of secondary characters I thought were a bit flat ended up being quite popular.
On the other hand, a lot of the group felt that another set of secondary characters I quite liked were unnecessary to the story (which, in fairness, they were, but I liked them anyway).
- Winds of Change Cover Image.
Ego-bruising wasn’t really an issue – everyone was really nice during the critique, and I agreed with almost all the suggestions I received. They really did make the novel better, so I had no problem taking them on board.
There were a few suggested changes I disagreed with, but more often than not I made them anyway. After all, I’d written the novel for an audience of one (me) and the whole point of submitting it to the crit group was to broaden its potential appeal to the point where someone might consider publishing it. And that was always going to mean making changes I wasn’t 100 per cent keen on.
Q. Having experienced conflicting feedback, how do you work out what would be best for your book and how to apply it during the rewrite? Can you give us an example?
A. Fortunately there wasn’t much conflicting feedback, and during the crit session what conflicts there were were mostly ironed out and a consensus reached – which is what makes a crit session so awesome, a lot better than just having people send you their critiques individually.
- ASIM issue 51 cover image.
As for the conflicting critiques that remained – if it was a choice between people liking what I had already and others proposing something new, I usually just went with what I had already (with a couple of tweaks) because I am really, really lazy.
In the case of the secondary characters from before, who some people liked and others thought were unnecessary, I’ve tried to split the difference by keeping them in there but giving them more stuff to do that influenced the plot.
Q. What do you think you’ll take from this experience and apply to the next novel you write?
A. The crit group was massively helpful for planning the next book I write. Mainly because it convinced me once and for all that all of that eight-point arc/Hero’s Journey stuff is popular because it really, actually works.
Quite a few of the criticisms were the result of me half-assedly bolting an arc on as an afterthought instead of building the story around it from the get-go, which I’ll be sure to do for the next book.
Q. If someone was anticipating their first novel being critqued and uncertain of what to expect, what would you say to them to help them make it a positive experience?
A. I think the important thing is to remember you’re not there to bask in praise and have an awesome time.
You’re there to make your novel better, and that means fixing what doesn’t work, and you only find out what doesn’t work by people telling you your novel (or part of it anyway) sucks.
That’s never any fun, but it’s necessary to get something out of the group. Besides, I don’t think heaps of praise ever made anyone write better (cf Lucas, George).
The other thing I would say is that (a bit paradoxically) it’s a lot easier to take criticism if you’re going in with a novel you really like.
If you’ve written something YOU would want to read, then the critique is just a matter of figuring out what to change so the size of your potential audience is greater than one.
But if you’ve written something purely to make money from, and you’re not happy with it as a novel, then when people lay into it you don’t even have ‘well I liked it’ to fall back on and the whole thing is pretty excruciating.
That’s what happened with the first novel I put in front of a crit group. I was a lot happier with this one so taking comments on board was much easier.
Robin Shortt lives in Canberra. His stories “Bonsai and “Babel” appeared in ASIM 51 and the CSFG anthology Winds of Change respectively.