On Thursday September 18, members of Tooele Writers gathered
in the Tooele library to discuss critique groups. Laura Bastian, president of
the writer’s group, gave the presentation.
Information included a list of critique-group how-tos from
magicalworlds.net. The full list can be found online here, but
some of the ideas were to establish the type of writing the critique group
would accept, including the necessary formatting. Avoiding cliquishness, giving the types of
critiques you would like to receive and focusing on the story elements
(dialogue, plot holes, character development, etc.) are also important.
Some critique groups use a timer to keep discussions
manageable and fair.
One of the most important things to remember when joining a critique
group is to ask the group to answer questions about the things you’re looking
for.
Laura also showed the group how to use some items of the
review section in Microsoft Word. Besides simple ‘track changes,’ authors can
merge the comments they get back from beta readers into one document and use
the ‘accept’ and ‘reject’ features to sift through the comments they want to
keep or delete.
