As the Moon Climbs

You may have a handle on general approaches to critique and what should be covered, but you may still need to work on your delivery. It’s not that your every opinion needs to be offered to the writer on a pillow accompanied by scented candles and chocolates, but you also don’t need to punch them in the face with your Knuckles of Wisdom.

1) Use “I think” or “I feel” statements.

Even if you’re a writing master, a ninth degree writing black belt, your opinions on someone’s work are still that: your opinions. They may be widely shared, but they’re still subjective, so own them. Don’t talk about how “the reader” or “the audience” perceive something; first, because you don’t speak for everyone, and second, because it sounds pretentious as hell. Save it for your college professor and your next review for the New York Times.

2) Do unto others…

Treat everyone with the same respect you believe you deserve. Look at what you’ve written and put yourself in the writer’s shoes. How would you feel if someone said this stuff to you? “I’m tough, I can take it.” Don’t be a silly goose. It’s not about proving your skin is thicker than anyone else’s, or trying to toughen them up. If it makes more sense to you, think about whether you’d say the same things to your mother, your grandfather, your boss at work. If you wouldn’t, because you’d get grounded, beaten up or fired, then don’t say it to people here, either.

3) Don’t be a doomsayer.

If you show up like a nasty protester with a critique that is essentially a sign reading “THERE IS NO HOPE” then you’re wasting everyone’s time. You don’t have to have solutions for problems you raise, but your attitude should convey that you believe the writer will be able to find those solutions. If not in this story, then in the next one. There’s a world of difference between saying “This is bad” and saying “I believe you can do better if you keep trying.” Because again, you may be a black belt, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a little stronger, a little faster, a little more resilient. Progress is always possible.

4) Don’t make it all about you.

Many of us like to talk about our own work; it’s natural and normal, and often entirely inappropriate in the context of a critique. Maybe their story is like one you wrote; nobody cares. Maybe their character reminds you of one of your characters; nobody cares. Maybe you see a writer having a problem similar to one you’ve faced and solved, so you’re tempted to get all anecdotal and tell them all about how you journeyed through the Mines of Mediocrity to find the Sword of Sharpwits and answer the Riddle of Really Nobody Cares Why Are You Still Talking? Just give them the solution and how you think it applies to their story.

5) Don’t rush.

The writer probably took time and care to put their work together, so why would you think it’s okay to read it quickly and crap out a critique? First impressions are important, but so are second thoughts. Try to read each piece at least twice: once as a reader, once as a reviewer, or both times as a reviewer but reevaluating your initial reactions as you go through it the second time.

6) Don’t be dogmatic.

There isn’t one right way for anything to be written. Treat each piece as its own unique entity, and instead of trying to force it to conform to some predetermined idea of a Platonic ideal for story or poem, consider how it can be revised to become the best version of itself.

7) Don’t be offended if the writer doesn’t take your advice.

It’s their work, not yours. All you can do is offer suggestions, like offering delicious food to a cranky toddler. They may eat it, they may ignore it, they may throw it at you, but in the end it’s their choice what they do with it. If they are routinely dismissive of your critiques and you genuinely think they are being foolish or rude, great news! You don’t have to keep critiquing their work. Because unlike a toddler, you are under no obligation to care about whatever mess they make of things.

tl;dr? Be excellent to each other. Wyld Stallyns rule!

I wrote a few short essays on critique for a writing forum where I like to hang out, but figured other people might be interested in some help in this area as well. It’s geared towards online critique groups, but works in person just as well with minor tweaking where reasonable. Bon appétit.

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“You are insufficiently white and fluffy!” you scream at a passing cloud. The cloud pays you no mind. It is secure in its cloudness and has no interest in your opinions, but more importantly, your critique was not a very good one.

“But Valerie,” you ask, “what should I do instead, I who am insecure in my critiquing abilities but eager to develop them further on my path to writing the BEST THING EVER?!”

The simplest method I’ve encountered so far came from an Odyssey workshop taught by CC Finlay. Behold, the four-part critique process.

1) Summarize what you read.
2) Say at least one thing it did well.
3) Say at least one thing it did poorly.
4) Offer at least one suggestion to fix it.

Step 1: Summarize what you read. A couple of sentences suffices, and ideally you want to touch on any theme or subtext you noticed.

Example: “This story is about a puppy who goes on an epic journey to find the Slipper of Superpowers, but his best friend finds the slipper instead and in a jealous rage he becomes a supervillain and vows revenge. It’s an allegory for the inherently self-destructive nature of capitalism, the literal representation of a dog eat dog world.”

Why do this: If the story you read and the story the writer thought they wrote don’t match up, then either the writer needs to figure out where they went wrong, or you didn’t do a great job of reading. Possibly both! But it’s important to know up front that something is amiss.

Step 2: Discuss at least one thing you thought the story did well. Maybe the characters were fully fleshed out, or the imagery was vibrant, or the language took your breath away. Think about stuff like character, plot, setting, language, etc.

Example: “I thought the dialogue was clever and felt true to the experience of puppyness. I laughed out loud at the jokes about eating cat poop.”

Why do this: It’s good for writers to know when they’ve done something right, so they can keep doing it. We all want to fix our flaws, but it’s important to maintain our strengths as well. It also helps cushion the blow for the next bit.

Step 3: Discuss at least one thing you thought the story didn’t do well.

Example: “I thought the setting of the story was poorly described. I wasn’t really sure where they were at any given time. A castle? A cave? They were just sort of walking through blank spaces. Where did all the cat poop even come from?”

Why do this: Regardless of whether you tell a writer HOW to fix something, it’s good for them to know that a reader stumbled over a certain part, or couldn’t suspend disbelief, or found a particular character excessively gross. Just because I can’t fix a car myself doesn’t mean I can’t identify that it’s making a weird noise and smoke is billowing out from under the hood PULL OVER WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP THE CAR.

Step 4: Offer at least one suggestion for how to improve the work. Yes, I know what I said in step 3, but this is a different step, okay?

Example: “I would give more detail about the setting, maybe show us how they’re going through this maze of catacombs, which is why they keep finding cat poop (CATacombs, get it???).”

Why do this: While the writer is never under any obligation to use your suggestions, it can be helpful to see how other people would fix a problem. Maybe you have exactly the right solution. Maybe your solution helps point the writer in the direction of the right solution. And maybe your solution shows the writer what the obvious answer is, so they can go in an entirely different but still very satisfying direction.

So, one more time, the steps to a useful critique:

1) Summarize what you read.
2) Say at least one thing it did well.
3) Say at least one thing it did poorly.
4) Offer at least one suggestion to fix it.

While I tailored this to stories, it can apply to poetry just as easily. These are not required for any and all critiques offered here, but it’s a good template to start with.

Another simple method, reportedly proffered by Mary Robinette Kowal: the ABCD method.

Look for four things: Awesome, Bored, Confused, Disbelief. If something is great, say so. If there’s a place in the story where you find you’re getting bored, point it out. If something confuses you, ask about it. If some part strains credulity, note it.

The two methods mix and match together pretty well. Step 2 covers the awesome things, while step 3 lets you talk about the boring, confusing or unbelievable stuff.

Additionally, going further to describe WHY you feel bored, confused, etc. will help both the writer and you. The writer, because they can see into your thought process as you read, which gets them out of their own head to consider stuff from an alternate perspective. You, because the more you think about the how and why of other people’s work, the better you’re likely to be at doing the same for your own.

I didn’t keep up with my writing as much as I’d hoped in February. I stopped tracking word count because it became a slippery eel with all the edits I was making, but I did submit two stories before the month skittered off to hide under a sofa. I won’t tell you which sofa. It will be a surprise for later.

I also sold a story, “Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses,” to Innsmouth Free Press for their upcoming anthology, She Walks in Shadows. The cover is amazing. The other writers are amazing. My excitement has caused me to fumble all other available adjectives than “amazing.” They are probably under the sofa with February.

Stories I read this month:
The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill by Kelly Robson
And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead by Brooke Bolander*
The Girl Who Ate Butterflies by Mary Rickert
Nine-Lived Wonders by Rachael K. Jones
B. by Nicola Belte
The Language of Knives by Haralambi Markov*
Traveling Mercies by Rachael K. Jones
The Joy of Sects by Joseph Tomaras
And the Winners Will Be Swept Out to Sea by Maria Dahvana Headley*
At Night, By the Creek by Ashley Hutson
A Shadow on the Sky by Sunny Moraine
The Weight of the World by Jose Pablo Iriarte
Map by Susannah Felts
The Ticket Taker of Cenote Zací by Benjamin Parzybok*

My favorites are marked with an asterisk.

I also read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which has won so many awards that it’s starting to pull readers in through sheer gravity. If you like mystery revenge stories with sentient spaceships and gender ambiguity, consider yourself directly targeted with this one. The way the plot unfolds through a dual-narrative in the past and present of the novel’s galaxy… It’s like rhythmic gymnastics, or wuxia pian: beautiful and perfectly timed. I was hooked immediately and then dragged in a nautilus pattern that tightened as new information was revealed about the characters and plot, and then I was left at the center of it all to watch how it unraveled. So well-structured. The characters were also fascinating, flawed but noble in their own ways, and I’m excited to see what happens in the sequel.

Next month: more links! More asterisks! Maybe I will read another book! It will be amazing.

I started the new year with good intentions, an excitingly stripey calendar and colorful star stickers. I had a plan, or at least about 12% of a plan, and I went bravely forward as only brave people can.

I tried to write something every day, and read something every day, and I didn’t do too badly. At some point I realized I was shortchanging myself by not counting editing as a task worthy of stickerdom, so I folded that into the writing sticker oeuvre. But that meant a few days where I did stuff but didn’t get a sticker. Shameful.

Stories I read in January:
They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain by Rachel Acks*
The Lion God by Benjamin Blattberg
Ether by Zhang Ran*
And That, My Children, Is Why We Can’t Go to Space Anymore by Shane Halbach
The Wizard of Ordinary Things by Eliza Archer
Beautiful Boys by Theodora Goss*
Headwater LLC by Sequoia Nagmatsu
The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History by Sam J. Miller*
The Last Flight of Admiral Franco Talbot by Adam Musil
All You Zombies by Robert Heinlein
“Hello,” Said the Stick by Michael Swanwick
In the Late December by Greg van Eekhout*
Milk Man by Cornelius Fortune
The Presley Brothers by Molly Gloss*
Immersion by Aliette de Bodard*
Give Her Honey When Your Hear Her Scream by Maria Dahvana Headley
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin*
The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal*
Of Blood and Brine by Megan E. O’Keefe
The Necromancer in Love by Wil McCarthy*
Cold Hands and the Smell of Salt by JY Yang
Dry Bite by Will McIntosh*
Shoelace by Laura Lovic-Lindsey

My favorites are marked with an asterisk. Some of them I read for the workshop I’m participating in, which has been a lovely experience so far. I need to critique two more stories for my classmates by Wednesday, and I’m excited to revise my own work based on the feedback I’ve received.

I also read a great book of poetry, Dear Hero, by Jason McCall. The comma is part of the title. The poems were short so it was a pretty quick read, but my gut was punched so many times I felt like I was battling a supervillain. Fitting given that the conceit of the book is essentially exploring the nature of heroism, with ruminations on superheroes and sidekicks and epic heroes. If you’re ever in Alabama and you can hear him read, I highly recommend it. Dude has a voice like a football coach, not the typical weird MFA lilt that so many poets pick up like some kind of verbal herpes. Not that herpes is anything to be ashamed of. Lots of people have herpes.

Tune in next month to find out what new stories I’ve read, and whether I’ve come up with any exciting new things to compare to venereal diseases.

I have a love/hate relationship with resolutions because I’ve made a lot of foolish ones, and seen other people make them, and then we all fail together and commiserate and learn little from the process. I’ll say, this year is the year I’m going to exercise three times a week, and I’ll buy new sneakers that are like walking on puffy clouds. I’ll run for a few weeks before waking up one day and thinking, oh no, it’s raining, can’t run in the rain, maybe tomorrow, but then the rain stops while my excuses keep pouring out.

Excuses are easy. Giving up is easy. Making unreasonable resolutions and then missing a day and feeling like a loser and never getting back on the proverbial llama: easy. Llamas are large and temperamental things, all spitty and bitey and kicky. Best viewed from afar. Do not engage.

Last year, I tried to set some manageable goals for myself. Write 12 short stories. Finish my novel in progress. Revise a previous novel and start looking for beta readers.

I did write the 12 stories, plus a poem and a play, but I didn’t finish or revise any novels. I abandoned the novel I was working on because I didn’t love it. I started to revise another novel and abandoned that one, too. I submitted stories and I revised stories and I got 39 rejections. I felt like a failure. If you’re wondering, failure feels like a sick tummy and a hot neck. And llama spit.

But the writing life is a game, and as any child can tell you, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you put away the board and sulk for a while, but eventually you pull it back out and pick your color and play again. Snakes and ladders. Sometimes you climb, and sometimes you land in the mouth of the beast and it craps you back out where you started.

The thing about being at the bottom in this analogy is, trite as it may be, you have nowhere to go but up. You can’t do worse than lose. There is no double-losing.

I took three classes: one with Nick Mamatas, one with Jillian Burcar, and one with Jeff VanderMeer. All were excellent in very different ways, and in all I found new friends who I hope will one day be counted among my old friends. I wrote a story, and people enjoyed reading it, and it turned into a novel project that still gives me a kind of giddy glee.

If there is a single vital thing I learned this year, that’s it: write what you love. What excites you. What entices you. I wrote a lot of stuff that was trying to be thoughtful and important, and so little of it was really what I wanted to write, as much as what I thought people wanted to read. Backwards of me, I think. And now, that’s behind me.

So, resolutions. Read more. Write more. Write better. Keep helping other people do the same. Snakes and ladders this may be, but you’re only really playing against yourself, and there’s no penalty for reaching down that ladder and giving someone else a hand up. And if you see someone sliding into a snake–if you’re that someone–cut the creepy crawler wide open and use its guts for a rope.

Get back on the llama. It’s actually kind of soft and warm once you get to know it better.