Critique alphabet soup: watch and learn

In Monday's post, I mentioned that I'd spent the week working through crits with delta readers. Yeah, I probably did coin the term. I've begun to wonder if I'm something of a feedback junkie, roping in as many readers as I have.

I thought it might be helpful for me to describe my unusual process with WIP-1, mistakes I've made along the way, and valuable lessons I've learned.

Throughout drafting WIP-1, I fed drafts to my ALPHA readers. These are folks who are happy to see anything you put in front of them and who encourage you no matter what. They might make suggestions or frown at something you didn't get quite right, but your alphas are mostly cheerleaders, not critiquers. My main alphas are my husband and a wonderful teenager from my church who begs to read every single draft.

If you write for teens and don't have your own personal fangirl, by all means go find one NOW. I would have given up long, long ago if I didn't have Connor (yes, a girl named in honor of Flannery O'Connor. Cool, right?) telling me again and again that yes, real live teenagers will like what I write. She adores my characters as much as I do, guffaws at my humor, swoons over my romantic subplots, understands my religious themes and remembers all my best lines and quotes them to me. Seriously, does it get any better than that?

When I'd completed and cleaned up my first draft, I went trawling for BETA readers to look at the whole manuscript with a critical eye. I looked for a wide range of ages, from teens to empty-nesters, figuring each would identify with a different generation and make sure the kids, parents and grandparents were all believable. I had a voracious reader in her 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, as well as several bright, urban teenagers. Most were church acquaintances, including a 20-something artist with a British dad and American mom, like my protagonist. A few were close friends who were usually willing to be brutally honest. What I didn't have in the mix were writers, aside from one who wasn't able to find the time to crit at that point.

I gave my betas each a nice ring binder with a double-sided copy of the manuscript and a two page sheet of questions (which I will share in another post). It felt like a huge investment at the time, and I could have shopped around for better photocopying prices. But compared to how ridiculously expensive conferences are, it was pretty reasonable to shell out $125 for the amount of feedback I got.

My betas did, indeed, give valuable feedback. They pinpointed places where they "weren't buying it," where the story dragged, where the characters motivations weren't clear. The 60-something had the absolutely best advice ever, so do seek out the help of mature mentor-types in your life. They're wise and experienced about human behavior and relationships.

Unfortunately, none of my betas read like a writer, with a writer's sensibility for suggesting constructive changes, especially with plot and pacing problems. In other words, they gave me ideas of what wasn't working, but not how to fix it. Thus, I spend a long, long time flailing around trying to fix things without a clear road map.

Had I been in a critique group at the time, I would have harnessed them AND my network of thoughtful readers of all ages. That's the plan for WIP-2.

Enter the GAMMA readers: Philly Literati, an exceptionally eclectic critique group--male and female, covering diverse genres including literary, fantasy, magical realism, YA, memoir and nonfiction features.

I initially took my partial to the gammas for a reality check after test marketing to about a dozen agents. Was it them or was it me? My gammas agreed it was me. The story started in the wrong place. I wasn't giving adequate space to the most compelling parts of the story, but getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. With their help, I've begun doing the work I should have after a beta critique. Live and learn, right?

So, how did I end up DELTA readers? I got invited to a second critique group, Milestones Children's Critique Circle, that does only children's literature. They asked to see what I was working on, so I figured it might be a good idea to have insights from folks who know the industry. I gave them the first three chapters, post-gamma-critique revised. And guess what? They found more deep changes for me to make.

Now what I have is something of a mess. To keep up active participation with my gammas in Philly Literati, I've been feeding them a chapter at a time of revisions. I've only finished up to chapter 6. My MC3 deltas are chomping at the bit for another chunk of chapters to crit in late February. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep the one group read ahead of the other, especially since the middle of the book needs to be rewritten, not just tweaked. I'm starting to hyperventilate just thinking about it.

What bothers me most is the fact that to get the best crit of a novel, your reader needs the whole manuscript. Otherwise, it can be hard to see if the story arc is actually cohesive. Carefully planted clues crucial to the climax will look like stupid diversions when chapters are read in isolation.

My cure? You guessed it. I've planned to seek another set of crits: EPSILON readers to look at the whole revised manuscript and give it a final dusting down. For this group, I hope to pull in a few betas, a few gammas, a few deltas and some entirely fresh eyes that won't be checking to make sure I actually followed their earlier suggestions.

So what have I learned?

1. Have a fangirl to squee and obsess with.
2. Get writers on your team early.

3. Seek a wide variety of readers.

4. Seeking feedback as you go can be encouraging and keep you going, even if you have to take critiques of partials with a grain of salt.

5. Don't drib-drab chapters at different paces--it's stressful and confusing.

6. Make sure your first and last sets of crits happen on the entire manuscript.

7. No method is perfect. You have to be as forgiving of yourself as learner as you would of your child learning a new musical instrument. Practice makes perfect.

Do you have any insights about best practices for seeking feedback on your work? Please share!

Categories: critique groups, revision, writing life