Hey everyone! So sorry that this post is later then I expected it to be. A little over a month late. The holidays were crazier then I expected and then, you’ll never guess what. I moved! So I had to pack up all of my stuff and then move into my new place and get used to the area and that’s why this post is so late. I hope it’s not too late for everyone and at least you know we still only have two posts left in this series. So without further ado….
Writer Resources and Tools: Critique Buddies
Critique buddies. They’re an interesting concept that I only hear about from other writers sometimes. I think it’s something that is helpful for every writer and I don’t think anybody has just one of them. I call them a critique buddy because that’s what I heard them called by an author at a conference once but I think there more like writing buddies then critique buddies although you can ask them to critique your writing for you.
If I were to sum up what a critique buddy was in one sentence, I would say that they were someone to help you write your story.
Critique buddies can be as helpful or as out of your writing life as you feel like you need. A critique buddy can help you with anything the two of you are willing to help each other with. They can help you edit several chapters of your book or they can help you to know when to delete a chapter or character completely from your story. They can help you bounce ideas around when you’re stuck or they can help give you advice about things that might be interesting to add to your story. They can tell you when a concept doesn’t make sense and help you flesh out the story a little bit more. Critique buddies can be anything you both feel like you need.
My personal favorite part about critique buddies is that a critique buddy doesn’t have to be another writer. In fact, a critique buddy doesn’t even have to be a reader.
A misconception that I’ve run into a lot with a lot of different writers is that if they want help with their book they need to ask another writer or even a very widely read reader. This simply isn’t true. It’s true that if you’re editing for publication you might want a widely read reader or even a writer to go over it and correct things you might have forgotten. But that’s not 100% true all the time. Sometimes you just someone to bounce ideas off of or you want to explain a point in the story to someone and see if they can find any plot holes in it. At times like this you can ask just about anyone that you trust.
Several times I have gone to my friends who aren’t big fans of reading and don’t often read or write except for school essays and things like that, and I’ll tell them a little about my characters, my plot and then explain a specific scene I’m thinking about writing. More often then not they’ve helped me find a character motivation hole or a plot hole that helps me to know that I either need to scratch the scene completely or add a different scene somewhere before it that gives my character the motivation that they need.
I’ve also had critique buddies who are writers or widely read readers who I ask to read my writing for grammar or sentence structure errors and to tell me if they think something is missing from my story that would make it interesting or publish worthy. Often times these conversations are more positive then negative because they are people I know, and trust and they help me to realize what I do well as well as things that need to be improved upon. These kinds of evaluations are the right kind of evaluations that give me the motivation to continue writing a story.
Critique buddies aren’t often hard to find. You could ask anyone around you. I’ve asked people in my neighborhood, my family, my friends, and my roommates to be critique buddies at one point or another. Having a variety of critique buddies has also helped me to have a wide variety of views and opinions on a particular story or even a specific section of a story. This is a good skill for most writers to have. It gives you the chance to learn new things as a writer.
I hope that this weeks post was helpful. Next week’s post is being written and will be on time. After this series I’m moving updates back to Saturdays because I’m back in school again and updates on Friday are a little harder to manage then Saturdays. I hope that this post was helpful and that next weeks post will be helpful too. Next week I will also be announcing the new series. If you liked it give this post a heart, a reshare, or subscribe to the blog page. Thanks so much and don’t forget…
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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