I've been writing a lot about getting into a critique group lately, so I thought I'd write share more about how critique groups can help you grow as an author and perfect your writing project. You may say that you've spend plenty of time reading books about how to write a novel and spent plenty of money going to writers' conferences, so why should you bother with critique groups as well?
Writing is a difficult craft to master. Learning about the craft in any way is going to help you. Critique groups, however, are personal and interactive. Most other ways of learning about writing are one-way. You absorb the information from books or classes and you apply what you've learned to your writing. In a critique group, however, people look over YOUR writing and make suggestions and corrections specifically for YOUR writing project. Once you make changes, you can then resubmit your chapters to the group to make sure that you are properly applying the lessons.
As an additional benefit, you can also see what suggestions are made for others in your critique group, which may apply to your work as well. You also have the opportunity to offer changes and suggestions to the submissions of other members of your critique group. Together, you all support one another as you write your novels and you root for each other to succeed.
How does a critique group operate? Each one will have it's own unique set of rules, but in general all work in a similar way as this example below:
1) You will be able to submit a specified number of chapters or wordcount for critique per week.
2) In turn, you will be expected to critique a certain number of submissions by others in the group. Often this will be double or triple the number of submissions that you are allowed to submit. This way, everyone will receive more critiques per submission made for each week.
Where to look for a critique group? You can start with any writing groups you are a part of, like I did. Online, Scribophile is one of the largest sites which offers critique groups for all genres, as well as other options to improve your writing. You can find other writing groups and critique groups by doing a searches online and on Facebook in their Groups section.
I have had wonderful experiences with the critique groups I have been in, and I hope you find a groups where you will be able to learn and grow as an author as much as I did.
