Critiquing

Recently a bunch of people have been discussing critiquing. ( asks about best and worst experiences, on family and friends as critiquers, on brutal honesty)

There are a lot of guidelines out there, but I thought I’d make up a few of my own. Thoughts?

CRITIQUING:

1. Engage your reading comprehension.
Cat people may or may not be the epitome of cliche, but if the novel in question has no cat people, commenting on them makes you look like an idiot. Especially if that’s the entire content of your critique.

2. Don’t blast the entire premise.
Just because you think that magic and technology can’t coexist, or that all of magic can’t be trapped by an evil sorcerer, doesn’t make it true. If it isn’t believable to you, try to figure out why. Specific complaints may help the author anchor her setting better.

3a. Don’t ask people if English is their first language.
It’s rude and insulting. (Or hilarious, if the writer in question makes a living by writing in English, and you’ve already demonstrated a lack of ability to tell adjectives from nouns.) Instead, make specific corrections, either in line edits or by pointing out a few things the writer consistently does wrong.

3b. British spelling is not wrong when done consistently.
If you’re a USian in an international group and you see odd uses of “u” and “s”, think before you “correct” it.

4. Don’t complain about the genre.
If you only read and write hard science fiction short stories, and you decide to critique a fantasy novel, try to rein in your personal distate for the genre’s conventions. If you can’t, find something else to critique.

BEING CRITIQUED:

1. Don’t immediately ignore the supposed idiots.
Did several people draw the same erroneous conclusion? Maybe you’re giving the reader too little detail, or the wrong detail. Maybe the non-catlike species needs to be better described. Maybe your setting could be more solid.

2. Consider the source.
Has the critiquer been helpful in the past, or elsewhere in this critique, or to other people? Or does he write bizarre and useless comments to everyone?

3. Remember you aren’t perfect.
Did you forget to run spellcheck? Skip proofreading for typos that spellcheck missed? Did you notice an awkward phrase and decide to leave it, since you’ll be revising later anyway? Use the same awkward phrase twice because you were too lazy to rewrite one short paragraph?

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