Robin Shortt – On Getting and Giving Good Crit

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.
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.
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.

Read more interviews.

Robert Phillips – On Getting and Giving Good Crit

Robert Phillips was the first member of the CSFG Novel Critique Group to put his novel up for review this year.

Afterward, I asked Bob to comment on his experience, both in receivng critques and what it means for his novel, and about critiquing the next couple of novels thrown to the lions.

This is what he had to say…

Hi Chris

The main thing that impressed me about getting my book critted is the volume of comments I received, both verbally and in written form (over 20 pages).

It has given me plenty to digest. However, I have decided to set 2088 aside until later in the year, while I get on with other projects.

The main thing that struck me, as a result of the crits, is that my main character is somewhat dated.

When I created him over 20 years ago, he was probably born about 1970, and went into suspended animated circa 2000.

Clearly, I’m going to have to advance his timelines by about 20 years, which means refashioning the character to some extent.

Of the 2½ fantasy novels that I’ve reviewed so far, the main things that strike me is that they’re all well written, but the authors seem to have a mania for inflicting grievous bodily harm on their heroes/heroines.

Does this mean the authors secretly hate their main characters and would like to destroy them?

Cheers
Bob

On being critiqued

Last night, a critique group gave my recently finished novel a well-deserved roasting.

Don’t get me wrong – I’d expected it – and the feedback was very constructive.

I wrote the story without a solid idea as to what it was going to be about – letting it unfold and change as I went. 

I don’t know if that was a mistake, but the story I began writing certainly became something entirely different by the end – and it showed.

There were plenty of opinions about all sorts of aspects of the story, sometimes even coming from opposite directions. It told me about the problems even if the proposed solutions varied.

One of the most useful things I found was that people sometimes saw things in a different light from what I’d intended.

I was surprised two or three times when I realised what I thought were minor points had such big impacts for different people – things I plan to fix (or use better).

What I didn’t anticipate was the encouragement I received for a totally unedited first draft.

Although it has (some fairly big) problems, it was largely regarded as a very readable, fast-paced story with enough going on to make people keen to know how it ends.

With any luck I can keep that aspect when I rework it.

Overall, I came away with a lot of new ideas and a fresh view of a story I was otherwise too close to look at objectively.

I’m not entirely sure I’d throw a first draft at a critique group again, but I’ve got no regrets either.

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