Cast your net wide

What's better than two critiques? Four critiques. What's better than four critiques? Eight critiques. As I mentioned, when you start, your goal should be to identify a stable of people who will have a keen eye on identifying the mistakes that you consistently make but can't seem to catch yourself. I call these blind spots, because they don't indicate that you are a poor writer; they just indicate areas where your ability to identify flaws appears to be broken. These are different for everyone, which is why one person's awesome critique partner is another person's waste of time.

The good news is that you can find good critique partners anywhere. Award-winning science fiction author Ken Liu asks for people to critique his stuff on Twitter. I've done the same and found at least one person that has provided me with awesome feedback. That said, there are places you should ask for critiques with knowledge that the quality will most likely be better--online writing discussion groups, online critique groups like Critters, local critique groups, etc. The point is that you need to look far and wide for people that aren't afraid to point out things you haven't noticed.

I have had dozens of people critique my work. I'm down to a group of five to seven now that I regularly rely on to critique my work, but I will occasionally cast that net out again via Twitter or an online group or what have you. Because it is my belief that a few more strokes with the whetstone will always make the blade sharper.

Ask for Critiques

The great thing about the writing community is that we're generally a supportive and helpful bunch. We like to help others. We love to see writers improve. So you, as a writer, need to tap into that, and you can't be passive about it. Ask someone to critique your work. Don't be shy. They'll say "no" if they don't have time. Join an online writer’s group and just ask. Offer to critique the work of others. If someone is saying something on a forum that resonates as something you need to hear, contact them directly and ask them to critique your work.

Don't be annoyed if people say, "No." Some will, of course, and that's their right, and you should respect that. But just because the first four people you ask say "no" doesn't mean that they resent you for asking or that it is a wasted exercise. I'm sure you have friends that are writers. You should ask them. You should ask them if they have someone they like using. Again, don't be shy. This is all part of casting your net wide, and fishing in the fertile waters can be very helpful.

Identify your weaknesses and focus on the people who are very good at identifying them

Of course you need at least some degree of knowledge as to what makes great prose, and you should be able to identify a significant number of your own flaws, Still, that’s not enough, and that’s why we need critique partners. We know we have flaws, but it is just so damn hard to identify them.

The good news is that when people point them out it's like someone turned the light on in a room where you were squinting to see. It's suddenly, "Wow! That's exactly what this story was missing. How did I miss that?" Those are the people who will help you the most.

Drop critique partners who provide nothing but general advice and say things like "If eight people point it out, it's probably a flaw” to support their position.

General advice is mostly useless. It ignores the specific function of breaking prose rules for effect and creates a normalized boring text. A process that reminds me of Donna Tartt’s recent comment about spellcheck and autocorrect: “It drains blood from language.” When you see comments like “Don’t use passive voice” or “not enough description” you should, of course, do a gut check and examine whether you were doing those things for a reason, but blindly following the advice is a mistake.

Focus on two points: 1) Is the critical comment supported by additional text in a compelling way and 2) Does it just plain make sense to you. This isn't a democracy. It's a method of refining art where some people are just better than others. So, it's entirely possible that only one or two of the people critiquing your work have a halfway decent awareness of good prose or what you are doing. It's also entirely possible that you have eight critiquers that just love the story and don't mind that the characters are wooden or that the gap between scene two and three doesn't make sense because, dammit, they just love when the princess proves to be a badass and when you did that thing in scene four it made everything else right. Uh, no it didn't.

Be happy you have a kickass scene four, but if one person says your scene two to scene three transition makes no sense and you immediately go, "Oh yeah, that's true." Then follow the advice of the one person and mark them down as a legitimate critique partner.

The alternative scenario can also be true: If you don't understand the critique instinctively but the critiquer provides plenty of evidence that seems to make sense, at least take a closer look at what he or she is saying. They are blind spots for a reason, and a critique partner who not only points to a flaw but also describes why it is a flaw is worth his or her weight in gold.

Mercilessly prune people who give unhelpful critiques

If someone gives you an unhelpful critique they are wasting your time and theirs. Don't ask them again for critiques, and if it's a group setting where you are required to hear and receive their critiques, then just thank them and toss their critique in the trash or delete it. Remember, the goal here isn't to make friends. The goal is also not to be an asshole. So it is perfectly fine to be firm in narrowing down who will see your work, and this can certainly be done without being a jerk.

If someone takes offense to it, then you just need to be prepared for that and file it away as their problem, not yours. I know this can be tough, but it's really the only way to handle it. If eight people love your work, and their critiques make you feel good, but they don't really help you; well, those aren't the ones you need.

If two people identify things that the others don't, and those things make you uncomfortable or ask questions that you have a hard time answering. Those are the ones who are probably being the most helpful.

Don't ever send your edited manuscript back to the people who critique your work

When someone critiques your work, they are emotionally invested in it. It is too easy for them to feel hurt if you ignored half of their advice. Never mind that the half you did take could have been hugely beneficial, many people will be annoyed that you didn't listen to everything they said.

The reality is that you should make your critique partners feel like they are being helpful. After all, you've already pruned all the unhelpful ones, right? But you certainly don't need to justify that by showing them that you took 20% of their suggestions last time, and this time you took 40%.

This can be difficult when someone specifically asks to see the edited document, but you should still just say, "No." There is absolutely no reason for them to see it. Their job was to help you, and they did that. They may ask you where you are submitting the story, and it's fine to tell them, but if a critique partner becomes someone who is constantly asking you for updates, then you know that he or she is way too invested in your work. That's not healthy in a critique partner, and--even if they've been helpful--you should consider not using them any more.

You don't need drama and people identifying with your success as an author. You need a cold ruthless eye wielding a word scalpal who is invested in good stories.

Don't give your next draft back to the same critique partners who read the first draft.

This is basically the same as the previous point, but I want to underscore that it is even true for when you go through multiple rounds of edits. When someone critiques a piece, they have just put themselves in the same role you have--they have become invested in the piece and lost objectivity. Their second glance will be more focused on "Did he or she listen to my advice" and less on "is this a better piece."

Certainly there are exceptions, but this is human nature, and it is hard for anyone not to judge a revised work based on how much you took his or her advice. Besides, a fresh set of eyes is always helpful.

Don't focus on efficiency, focus on results.

If you have a critique partner who provides you with 95% crap advice, but on one specific thing where you have trouble, he or she is incredibly helpful, keep them and embrace them. There is no acceptable percentage of edits that you need to integrate into a piece. The acceptable number is how many improve the piece. The key is just that--are you getting advice that improves the piece?

So be ruthless not just in pruning bad critique partners, be ruthless in pruning irrelevant advice from good critique partners. This happens all the time, and if your expectation is that you're getting bad critiques because everyone is giving you some bad advice, then I have a secret for you: Everyone will give you bad advice.

Your job is to be comfortable with ignoring the irrelevant from the important. This is another reason why not to give edited manuscripts back to critique partners, by the way. If their expectation is that you'll take all of their advice, they're going to be disappointed. If you took 100% of the advice of even one critique partner, you probably made a mistake.

If everyone is giving you horrible critiques, then you probably need to re-think your own critical eye.

Just like you should never expect a critique partner to be 100% perfect, you should not expect a large number of critique partners to be 100% wrong, too. Odds are in those circumstances that you are too emotionally invested in your work to accept objective criticism.

A huge indicator of this is if you get defensive over specific critiques. It's certainly acceptable to laugh when someone incorrectly changes the spelling of a word you used, but if you find yourself getting upset over an issue and the critique partner is presenting you with a logical reason for his or her critique, you really need to take a step back and examine whether you actually are right.

Ultimately, if you are going through critique after critique and getting frustrated at how bad they all are at misunderstanding your skillful narrative complexities or how it is just sad how biased every critique partner is in defining a character as a stereotype when you created her to be a robust anti-stereotype, then you should take a hard look at yourself.

If improving yourself isn't a big goal, then don't bother with critiques.

If it is more important (and fun!) for you to just write a story and toss it out there, devil may care, then you probably shouldn't even embrace critiques. They are time-consuming and clearly add a layer of effort to your writing that wouldn't exist otherwise. If they kill the fun, then just don't do them. The joy of writing will always be paramount for some people.

Return the favor.

Finally, when people critique your work they are doing you a favor. They are taking their time to help your writing. You need to do the same for others. If someone asks you for a critique, take the request seriously. Of course if you are doing a lot of critiques for others then by all means give a polite “no,” but always be open to helping others if you can.