How to Critique by Laura Jayne
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:08:13 -0700 Subject: [crit] Critiquing essay
I realize all of you know how to critique. You have done an excellent job at making me a better writer! I did an assignment for a Web composition class on critiquing. I am posting it here, just for funsies.
I hope you like it.
Laura Jayne
How To Critique
First, make yourself comfortable. True critiquing takes some time.
Read the piece through once, jotting down stylistic and grammatical errors. Clear, concise prose begins with basic spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
I began by studying newspaper editing. If you don't tell me who, what, where, when, or why somewhere in the first few paragraphs, you've lost me, and I'm not alone. A writer has to "hook" the reader, or the story goes unread.
Secondly, feel something. Anything. If you feel nothing, that was most certainly not what the author intended (unless you are reading a technical manual). Find the emotion in the story. How did you feel about the character(s)? Did your emotions change through the story?
Did you understand the plot? Are the characters cardboard cutouts, or can you see them eat, breathe, move? Did the ending make you cry out, MORE!
All stories start in the middle. Something happened before, and something will happen afterward, unless the story ends with Armageddon . Do you know enough about what happened before the story began to understand what is happening now?
The next part is the most difficult. More than just proofing or editing, critiquing takes into account where the story is now--and where it could go. That is one hell of a leap, and one far beyond that of a copy editor. Could a character be fleshed out a little? A setting described more? Is an entire plot point superfluous? Has the author bothered plotting at all?
The question you are asking yourself is: How muddled is this? How clear is it to me, not just in what is going on, but in the themes and feelings the writer is trying to convey?
Don't beat up on your author. The idea is to make something publishable, i.e., interesting to the reader, not to keep the author from publishing at all. Don't write the story for the author, either. If you do, you are taking on the writer's job. Begin with the proofing. Be gentle about that, too. Despite the era of proofreading software, it is still very difficult to catch your own errors. However, a spell-checker is a bare minimum an author should do before posting a story. Anything else is sheer laziness.
Move on to the body of the story, pointing out what could be improved upon, what the writer may want to cut out, and examples of cliches or turgid prose. The idea is clarity. Without it, the reader will never get through the first page.
A real story (unless it is a snippet) will have the main character or narrator changing in some way, as a response to some crisis, or due to making some realization. If none of the characters change at all, there is no real point to the story.
End with an honest appraisal on whether or not the story is publishable in its present form. Most writers edit several times before a story is publishable. Offer to read the second (and third) edits.
In the end, an author is trying to change the reader in some way, by making them feel an emotion or by having them see a situation through the character's eyes. The idea behind critiquing is to make that ideal become reality.