Critique Circle: Feedback To Advance Your Novel Several Drafts

A while back I joined an online writing community called Critique Circle. It's a safe place for writers to submit their work and get feedback from other writers. It's been a valuable tool for me to gauge my story and characters, catch problems before they get out of hand, and also encourage myself to keep being excited about writing.

Critique Circle works like this: You sign up for free. To get critiques, you need to give critiques. For every critique you give, you get credits (usually 1 or 1 1/2, though maybe more if it's an especially long piece you're critiquing.) It costs 3 credits to submit your own work for critique. Once you submit something, your work goes up at the start of the next critique round, which happens once a week. People read your work, critique it, and you get to read the critiques as you receive them.

Pretty slick, eh?

Before I discuss the cons of Critique Circle, let me just say I've found it incredibly helpful. I have a tendency to fall in love with my own words, and I know I use too many words, so having someone read a chapter and say, "You know, you could say this in about half as many words," is great for me. Most of the people who give critiques are very nice. Sure there's a few jerks on there, but, hey, this is the internet. If you can't handle a few jerks you probably shouldn't be online.

The downsides of Critique Circle:

• Lots of high school and novice writers. You'll notice this as you start critiquing work. It's difficult because, A. You can tell the work stinks, but B. You need to be constructive about it especially if you want a constructive critique in return. I mean, everyone starts out as a crappy writer. We all need help in order to improve, but it does get tiring reading young adult ripoffs of Twilight and The Hunger Games written by teenage fans.
  
  
• The time it takes to get a critique is too long. I've got 60+ chapters to get critiqued, but you can only submit one a week. There is a "novel system" on Critique Circle that allows you to submit all of your chapters, but this requires a fan base of reliable "critters" who will plow through your manuscript. You also need to sign up for the paid membership, which is $34.

Is it worth it? So far I'm going to say yes, it is. Having other readers give me feedback this early on in the process is already taking my work to where it would be after three or four self-edited drafts.

Is Critique Circle for everyone? No. If you can't take feedback, you're probably not going to like this site. If you don't like not knowing who is on the other end, you should probably try to find an editor or agent. There aren't a lot of non-fiction works on Critique Circle, so if you're a law student writing an essay on the practice of criminal defense, or a surgeon writing How To Perform Open Heart Surgery, you probably won't get a lot of valuable feedback. For creative writers though, it has the potential to be a gold mine.

Meet The Characters: Merek Viator, The Wildcard

Children of the Falls is a massive seven book fantasy series spanning several decades, three continents, hundreds of characters, and seven main narratives telling one massive story. Key to this narrative is Merek Viator.

About Merek

A praised knight and a skilled soldier, Merek eventually allowed the fame to go to his head. Through alcohol abuse and gambling, he brought the ultimate disgrace upon his family. Now an outcast, Merek seeks to find the one thing that could restore his family's honor: his lost sister, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery as a result of Merek's selfishness.

To get her back Merek accepts a job from a mysterious man working under the high king. His mission is to journey to a neighboring country, kill a wizard, steal from him a rare gem, and return it to the high king in exchange for the help he needs to get his sister back.

I picture Merek as the John McClane of my series. The guy is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has the worst luck, and knows how to take a beating.

Ultimately, Merek is a wildcard. A good guy? Maybe. But he's not above making morally ambiguous choices to achieve his goals.

The Soul Crushing World Of A Writer

There's nothing more satisfying than closing my laptop and going to bed feeling like I just typed out a great chapter. On second thought, it was the BEST chapter! Maybe one of the best chapters I've ever written. It just flowed. You know? The prose was sublime. My keen writer instincts were firing on all cylinders. Yessir, can't wait to look that over again and be impressed with myself.

And there's nothing more disappointing and downright humbling than finally getting to re-read that chapter to realize it's not really that great. In fact, there's a typo. Oh, look, another typo. And spell check is... spell checking a lot. Where was I going with that sentence? Why did I think this paragraph was so great? This chapter is abysmal! Oh my lanta! I'm never going to finish this book. I hate myself!

Sigh.

I try not to do a lot of re-writing while I'm pounding out a first draft, but I always go back and re-read the last chapter I wrote at least once. And it's always a humbling experience. Haha!

It's an amazing little world we authors live in—an exciting, stimulating, soul-crushing world.

How NOT To Start Your Novel - Advice From Agents

We all want to start our stories strong and original, with hooks that leave readers just drooling. But we're not all as original as we'd like to think we are. And no one knows that better than literary agents. They sift through more prospective novels in a year than anyone else, and have more insight into what Chapter 1 story hooks are overused, cliched, dumb, and just plain don't work.

I recently found a list of quotes from literary agents at writerunboxed.com. It had me chuckling because, I must admit, I've been guilty of some of these!

Here's some of my favorite quotes.

On False Beginnings

“I don’t like it when the main character dies at the end of Chapter 1. Why did I just spend all this time with this character? I feel cheated.”
–Cricket Freeman, The August Agency

“I dislike opening scenes that you think are real, then the protagonist wakes up. It makes me feel cheated.”
–Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

On Prologues

“Most agents hate prologues. Just make the first chapter relevant and well written.”
–Andrea Brown, Andrea Brown Literary Agency

“Prologues are usually a lazy way to give back-story chunks to the reader and can be handled with more finesse throughout the story. Damn the prologue, full speed ahead!”
–Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

On Too Much Description

“The [adjective] [adjective] sun rose in the [adjective] [adjective] sky, shedding its [adjective] light across the [adjective] [adjective] [adjective] land.”
–Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

“I dislike endless ‘laundry list’ character descriptions. For example: ‘She had eyes the color of a summer sky and long blonde hair that fell in ringlets past her shoulders. Her petite nose was the perfect size for her heart-shaped face. Her azure dress—with the empire waist and long, tight sleeves—sported tiny pearl buttons down the bodice. Ivory lace peeked out of the hem in front, blah, blah.’ Who cares! Work it into the story.”
–Laurie McLean, Foreword Literary

On Starting Slow

“Characters that are moving around doing little things, but essentially nothing. Washing dishes and thinking, staring out the window and thinking, tying shoes, thinking.”
–Dan Lazar, Writers House

“I don’t really like ‘first day of school’ beginnings, ‘from the beginning of time,’ or ‘once upon a time.’ Specifically, I dislike a Chapter 1 in which nothing happens.”
–Jessica Regel, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency

On Fantasy Fiction

“Cliché openings in fantasy can include an opening scene set in a battle (and my peeve is that I don’t know any of the characters yet so why should I care about this battle) or with a pastoral scene where the protagonist is gathering herbs (I didn’t realize how common this is).”
–Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary

On Romance

“In romance, I can’t stand this scenario: A woman is awakened to find a strange man in her bedroom—and then automatically finds him attractive. I’m sorry, but if I awoke to a strange man in my bedroom, I’d be reaching for a weapon—not admiring the view.”
–Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary Agency

On Christian Novels

“A rape scene in a Christian novel in the first chapter.”
–Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

On Being Too Beautiful

“I don’t like descriptions of the characters where writers make them too perfect. Heroines (and heroes) who are described physically as being virtually unflawed come across as unrelatable and boring. No ‘flowing, wind-swept golden locks’; no ‘eyes as blue as the sky’; no ‘willowy, perfect figures.’”
–Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary Agency

On Too Much Backstory

“I’m turned off when a writer feels the need to fill in all the backstory before starting the story; a story that opens on the protagonist’s mental reflection of their situation is a red flag.”
–Stephany Evans, FinePrint Literary Management

“One of the biggest problems is the ‘information dump’ in the first few pages, where the author is trying to tell us everything we supposedly need to know to understand the story. Getting to know characters in a story is like getting to know people in real life. You find out their personality and details of their life over time.”
–Rachelle Gardner, Books & Such Literary

To read more, visit: http://writerunboxed.com/2013/04/22/april

Half Way There

I reached the halfway point on Where Evil Abides last week, volume 1 of Children of the Falls. My estimated word count based on the average chapter length should be around 190,000 words. I currently stand at just over 100,000, which is about the total length of the first book I ever wrote. Whoa.

This series is presenting two major challenges.

1. The reason I refer to the individual books as Volume 1, Volume 2, etc., as opposed to Book 1, Book 2... is because each book is essentially a collection of seven narratives. That means there are seven distinct characters ranging in age from 5 to 20, each with a unique arc, personality traits, and narrative styling.


2. Worldbuilding. I've designed medieval fantasy worlds numerous times—in other books I've written or co-authored, with children in schools during writing workshops—but what I've incidentally immersed myself in is map-making on a global scale. I'm currently working on three different continents roughly the size of North America, Africa, and Eastern Asia. Each realm has different governments, religions, superstitions, people, clothing, architecture, language, and more. It's world-building on a scale I've never done before.

Just telling you about it now has exhausted me. Off to bed!