[stylist] Having Friends Read your Work

Mon Aug 14 11:10:44 UTC 2017

Here is how I handle critiques. I finish the story first and go through it several times to check for inconsistencies and the like. And then I send it to a few people that I know will look at it and make suggestions. I don't Jennerally send my work to just anybody. I send it to those I know will read it because I work hard on it and I want them to pay attention to it. Are usually give them a time limit and say get back to me in two weeks and then I leave them alone and let them do their work. Then I look through what they give me and in most cases I will make changes sometimes I don't make any changes and then I work on doing some re-writing. That's how I deal with it and I usually have good results. I don't send it out to to many people because I really want the people I choose to have time and know that their work and responses matter to me. And I also want to know that they know I'm waiting for the work to come back to me.

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> On Aug 14, 2017, at 5:56 AM, Tessa via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Vejas
> I would send material to someone even if they didn't like that sort of thing if I knew they'd give me a decent critique. 
> 
> Personally, I loathe vampires, if someone sent me a piece on vampires to comment on, my first statement would be to make it very clear that I am seriously biased against the subject matter so take my critique with that grain of salt. 
> 
> I'm sure everyone does their crits differently and examin different aspects of the writing. By saying my friend expected an hour long crit I'm saying she expected something with some thought and a lot of comments in it because that's the kind of crit she gave. You should get back what you give, though of course that's not always going to happen. 
> 
> When I do a crit for the writer's group I belong to, I read the story and make a brief comment. Then I sleep on it. I reread the story doing a line by line crit making comments as I go. And then I read it a third time just to be sure I've said what I wanted to say, that I've done so with some tact if I didn't care for the piece and to add additional comments if I've missed something. I'm lousy on grammar and punctuation so don't comment on that, but I will mark typos and proof reading errors but mostly in our group I'm the detail person, if the bug eyed monster in paragraph one has six leggs and ten leggs in the end of the story I'm usually the one to ask where'd he get the extra leggs. 
> 
> So the times I mentioned may not strictly be spent in commenting but also in reading in depth. This is just what I do, I don't know what others do and people might wish to comment on their critiquing style.
> Also it depends on what you want to get from your crit, if it's just something like that's great, then a quick read is all your readers need to do.
> Tessa
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Vejas Vasiliauskas via stylist  <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> To: Writers' Division Mailing List  <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Date: Sunday, August 13, 2017 9:00 pm
> Subject: Re: [stylist] Having Friends Read your Work
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Tessa,
>> I really like your advice, on sending it to a select few people and having questions at the end. It actually surprised me that people would expect a 1 to 2 hour critique and would have thought 10 minutes was short but closer to the norm... Maybe that's me being a product of the millennial generation.
>> Another question for you,  or anyone else: Would you send any writing to a friend who likes to write but  you know they don't like reading about that material?
>> Thanks,
>> Vejas
>> 
>>> On Aug 13, 2017, at 03:09, Tessa via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Vejas
>>> This is very true. Last year I was at a class reunion and several people expressed interest in reading my work, I sent them material and have since heard back from one person. As you say life often gets in the way. The other issue is that friends in order to stay friends are sometimes hesitant to give you their honest perhaps unpleasant oppinion on what you wrote so they don't say anything. Unfortunately I'm not a short story writer for the most part. These days what I do is give people the first chapter of something and if I don't hear from them I don't send them anything else. Also I try to make it very clear that I want criticism, what they liked, what they didn't like and why. I think some people find this very hard to do, they just read and can't seem to get their heads around the idea that this is a work in progress and that believe it or not the author might be wrong and that feedback even if it seems unpleasant is welcomed. 
>>> A few years ago I was talking to a person who wanted to write, I spent considerable time critiquing a piece of her work with the expectation that she would do the same for me, and I told her specifically that I did not want a comments limited to that was great. Unfortunately I got two lines of exactly that. A lady in our local writing group says she spends at least an hour or two critiquing someone's work and is extremely disappointed when she realizes that person may have spent 10 minutes on hers. But I guess that's how it goes sometimes. 
>>> One idea you might try is to add a list of questions at the end of your story for your reader to think about, something to get them started and give them an idea the sort of thing you want to know about what they read.
>>> Tessa
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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