Writing Groups: An Essay by Dan Wells

[Necroben]

I don't think there is a guide per sè.  It was more of how some people chose to formate their critique.

Thoughts while reading

General overview

Words of, and this is debatable, Wisdom

And a little encouragement, if one so desires.

At least this is how I interpreted the trend.  I could be wrong.  Hope that helps.

[Silk]

Just do whatever works for you, I guess.

What I usually do (because, you know, I've been critting so often lately - next couple of weeks I'll be back at it, I swear) is mark up the manuscript with sentence level stuff and email that directly back to the author, so I'm not using discussion space for "oh em gee you spelled this wrong".

Then I just write down my thoughts as they occur while reading the MS. That done, I'll skim through the discussion threads and add a last paragraph where I (dis)agree with people as I see fit.

[Renoard]

Okay one point of confusion on my part.  I was of the impression that most submissions were very early drafts.  I'd expect a large number of typos in that.  Doesn't remarking the grammar and spelling get in the way of following critical content of the piece at this point in it's development? (e.g. plotting, mood, characterization)

I guess I'm over thinking given that I haven't gotten anything to read yet.  (I'm waiting for the next cycle on the 8'th)

Is most of the critical commentary done here in a thread or privately?

Will I be lynched for tending toward reader response? }>

[Silk]

I don't know how early some of these drafts necessarily are.

We've had the "to edit/not to edit" debate to death in some other thread (sorry, I don't remember which it was). Personally, I'm still convinced they're useful, and they don't take much time in the grand scheme of things, so I'll continue to do them.

I can't see how doing so might actually get in the way of critiquing the larger issues, except perhaps in a face-to-face workshop with limited discussion time, which isn't an issue here (and why I keep all the boring, "this line is awkward/this is a typo stuff to private email). People seem to appreciate when I do it, but you totally don't have to if you don't want to. The "bigger" issues are inarguably what most of us are mostly focused on.

Most of our critiques take place on the forums. I believe this was covered a bit more thoroughly on the "Rules of Reading Excuses thread".

[ryos]

As far as how early the drafts are - I personally get my submissions in as good a shape as possible before submitting. To me, this means fixing everything I'm certain is wrong (leaving things I only suspect might be wrong to be discovered or not by the readers). For me, this also means smoothing the language.

Again, that's just what I do; others may differ in opinion on that point.

[jwdenzel]

As far as how early the drafts are - I personally get my submissions in as good a shape as possible before submitting. To me, this means fixing everything I'm certain is wrong (leaving things I only suspect might be wrong to be discovered or not by the readers). For me, this also means smoothing the language.

Again, that's just what I do; others may differ in opinion on that point.

I'm with Ryos.  You guys all have really good feedback available to me. I don't want to waste your time with having you nitpick stuff I should be able to find on my own.

That said, grammar, passive voice, and other stuff like that can easily be fixed. I appreciate if you point it out (especially the passive voice stuff, which I'm working hard to get rid of),  but mostly I hope to get "big picture" feedback from you.  So  I try to fix all that other stuff in advance.