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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30658
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30658
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This is absolutely a problem with critique groups. On of the fundamental facts for 90% of critique groups is that your critique partners are not your natural readership. Most of the critiques I give start with "This is not the kind of thing I read, but..."

We would all like to think that if a piece is really good then everyone will like it regardless of genre. But if that were so, everyone in your critique group would be reading Dickens and Conrad and Dostoevsky, and unless you are really lucky in your critique partners, they probably aren't. So, in critique groups, you are going to be reading a lot of stuff you would not normally read, and your stuff is going to be read by a lot of people who would not normally read it.

What this means is that 99.99% of the things your critique partners suggest that you do to fix your manuscript are going to be bad ideas. If an editor who specializes in your genre and whose career prospers or fails based how well the titles the acquire sell, then you should probably listen to their suggestions. If it is anybody else, you should completely ignore them unless their suggestion comes to you like a bolt of inspiration out of the clear blue sky.

But if you are not to take the advice of your critique partners, what is the point of belonging to a critique group? The point is not to fix the manuscript you submitted. It is not even to discover its individual flaws, though that may happen. The point of belonging to a critique group is to sharpen your own critical faculties so that you become a better self-critic.

It is by becoming a better self critic that you acquire the skills needed to bring your work to a publishable standard. It is how learn to tell when you are being lazy or vague or self indulgent in your writing.

This is why I always say that there is more value in giving critiques than in receiving them. As an ordinary reader, you either skip ahead or put the book down through the boring passages. As a critique reader, you are forced to read the and to try to figure out why they bore you so you can explain it to someone else. This is how you learn to read like a writer. And to write like a writer, you first have to learn to read like a writer.

Critique groups are not about fixing your MS. They are not even about finding flaws in your MS. They are about learning to read like a writer.

This is why I make it a rule for myself never to give suggestions to critique partners. I tell them what worked for me and what didn't and try to explain why, and leave it at that.

Original score: 5