They sting, there’s no getting around that. No matter how thick a skin you think you’ve developed. But sometimes a blunt critique is the very best gift you can recieve. Someone who’ll tell you flat out where your story fell down and couldn’t get back up. If nobody tells you, how can you fix it?
This may be particularly true with query letters and synopses. Hopefully, your actual story doesn’t have plot holes you can drive a truck through. If you’ve honed your craft, you should have found most of those yourself. But it’s not so easy when you’re trying to condense all or part of a story you’ve lived with for months into 250 or 1500 words. It can be much too hard to forget all the complexities that lay behind those few sentences that your reader can’t possibly know unless they’ve read the book. Even then, there are likely details you know that never made it onto the page.
That’s where someone who doesn’t know (and hopefully already like) the story is so helpful. They can tell you the impression the couple of paragraphs of your query really give, so you have a chance to go back and refine it before an agent sees it.
So, take a deep breath, rub a little balm on the sting, and sincerely thank the people who will tell you the truth about your writing.
So true! I love, love, love harsh critiques! I’d rather be mocked now by my friends than rejected by agents and editors. Almost worse? If the agents and editors buy the book, don’t mock the errors like they should, and let the reviewers do it instead!
Not that I plan to be able to catch every mockable error, even with all the excellent critiquers /agents/editors in the world helping….
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Absolutely. Sugarcoating it doesn’t help anybody.
That said, however, I suspect that my next post will be on the value of the sandwich method, especially with harsh critiques.
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Since you mentioned the sandwich method, two things spring to mind:
1. I haven’t had breakfast yet.
2. I believe in firm critiques.
That being said, being deliberately nasty isn’t going to help anyone. Here’s an example from my life:
I had a friend of mine read my newest short story. After he finished it he simply said, “Start writing stronger endings.”
There were no buts. He didn’t like my ending.
Later on we went to discuss ways to improve the ending, and it was really fun. He could have said horrible things. But he didn’t. Then again he didn’t sugarcoat his opinion either;
he was unbending when it came to his opinion.
I believe in harsh critiques and I also believe in being courteous without downplaying the faults.
Great post Meredith.
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