Hi everyone, Rebekah here!

I’m very excited about our first critique group session on Saturday, and I hope you are too!  If you have not read Michelle’s post about time and location, as well as caring for your “Wise Reader”, please do so.

For this first session, if you have something you’d like critiqued, please bring an excerpt of a specific section you want help with, up to 5 pages in length.  Please double-space your excerpt and use an easy-to-read font like Courier or Times New Roman in size 11 or 12.  Also, keep excerpts for this session rated PG-13 or under.  We’ll cover some other things about more mature content at the meeting.

On Friday, I’ll get up a post with our ground rules for our critique sessions, but first we want to cover some basics about critiques.

First, critiques from others by no means take the place of your own edits and revisions.  Critiques are simply opinions from others to help tighten your writing when you can’t see objectively.

Use the critique sessions to your advantage, though.  Start getting to know the other participants, find people who write like you want to write, who write similar stories.  Make those relationships and connections that will be vital when you need someone to read-through an entire novel, or when you need someone to do critiques over and over again.

Creating a relationship with another writer is important, and sometimes tricky.  You must make sure that you are not always just asking for favors.  You have to return those favors.

Because Michelle and I are both tight on time, we’ve collected some links to others who have already said very thoughtful and important things about being a part of a critique group.  Please take the time to read these over before the session on Saturday.  Let us know if you have any questions, either here in the comments, or at the meeting.

Critique Groups & Writing by Pamela Smith Hill

Skinning the Onion: A Layered Editing Checklist by L.A. Freeland
Layer 1: Basic
Layer 2: Middle
Layer 3: not yet published
Layer 4: not yet published

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