After a couple of obviously bad choices (their spelling/grammar/ideas were worse than mine, or they got extremely defensive when I suggested they change ‘there’ to ‘their’), I found several authors whose works were appealing and whose initial drafts weren’t horrendous. I then gave them a ‘test’ by submitting a short-short story I had already published with good reviews, and asking for feedback. I didn’t feel guilty in asking for their time, as I had already spent some helping them as best as I could. I went through four or five authors this way, but now I have the three I use currently.

The way I know they are the right three for me is that they often pick up on the same major problems (and I get three suggestions as to how to fix them), don’t get offended when I ignore their advice on smaller problems, and noticeably improve every piece I’ve submitted to them. That initial piece I used as a test to see if their reviews helped me? I’ve republished it, and my positive reviews turned into rave reviews.

The best thing is those three people have turned into some of my best friends, biggest supporters, and harshest critics when I was was being lazy and needed a good butt-kicking. It’s also a great way to get to know published authors - two of my three now have printed either books of short stories or novels. And I helped.

Bad breath secrets revealed by a long-time sufferer who finally triumphed…

It’s a two-year program (four residency-writing terms and a residency to wrap it all up), aimed specifically at producing marketable popular fiction manuscripts. It is a Master of Arts program, so there must be a thesis - and that is a full-length manuscript of publishable quality in your chosen genre. Possible concentrations include mystery/thriller, sci-fi/fantasy/spec fic, children’s lit, and romance - or any combination of them. One of my favorite aspects of the program is its gearing toward customization for each student/author’s individual interests and needs. There are required modules, of course, but in the end each person can get their own best education out of it.

My other favorite aspect is the incredibly supportive community - students, faculty, mentors, and alumni are all interested in each other’s success and stay in touch regularly. Everyone cheers the successes (like Maria V Snyder’s recent nomination for a RITA) and mourns the losses - contracts that fall through, never-ending agent searches, and everything else - in addition to offering ideas and help for dealing with those problems. That’s relatively uncommon within any group of widely disparate people, and from what I understand it’s almost unheard-of in many creative writing programs.

This is getting long, so I’ll stop here and give a link to the program’s website, but feel free to ask more questions if anyone’s interested!

I’m an advocate of in-person critique groups and separate first readers, but what works for me may not work for others, and vice versa. My current critique group is set up through my graduate program (Seton Hill University - Writing Popular Fiction - it’s fabulous, but I won’t gush here). We met in person in January and have submitted monthly excerpts from our novels for critiques. We’ll meet again in June and repeat the process for the second half of the year. I find it easier to take a critique from someone I’ve met in person, especially when I’m asking for more than a general “does it make sense/is it interesting” response. That way I can temper what I know to be their preferences and tendencies in writing with my own. For true (in-depth) critiques, I think exchanging work is a good idea because then we’ve both invested time in each other. It also means that I can satisfy my instinctive tendency to point out typos and tiny problems by noting common issues once or twice and then turn it off and focus on the larger issues like whether characters are acting in character, whether themes and plot lines work, and where I’d like more info about a person or setting - sometimes even a note that I’d like more info, but it doesn’t need to come right away. Just that by the end of the story I’d like a more fleshed-out view of this or that.

I’ve got three trusted first-readers, and I use them to get an overall first-impression feel of my work from a non-writer’s perspective. All of them read widely, two of them across many genres and one of them mostly within fantasy, which works out well for me. All of them point out typos and grammar problems when they find them, but are particularly useful for pointing out when I haven’t laid enough groundwork for a character’s actions. All of them send me their reactions and questions and then at some point in the next few days I’ll catch them online or call them up and talk about how I might fix it. My dad’s really great about that part - he has such a fantastic way of putting a new spin on things that I usually hang up the phone just itching to write. The key thing for me is that all three of these people are good at giving feedback I can work with and use to help shape my story into something better.

The one person I *don’t* let see my wildly unfinished ms is my husband. Not because he’s not supportive (more often than not he’s the one who tells me to sit my butt down and get to work) or uninterested, but because most of the time all he can say is, “I really like it, when can I read more?” While that’s tremendously flattering, it’s not particularly helpful as I’m writing. I have a feeling he’ll be one of my final readers before sending this monster off to agents and editors, but until I can hand him a completed plot, he’s out of the loop. In the end, he’s pretty good-natured about it.

In the end, it’s all about finding the right balance for each individual person. I like when my critiquers give me ideas about ways to fix things - but only if they don’t expect me to immediately incorporate it. I can’t count the number of times an off-hand suggestion has turned into the seed of an entire subplot, just because it got me to look at a problem from a new direction. Suggestions can be extremely valuable when they’re used well.

But again, you have to be able to judge when you, as the author, have a better idea of what should be happening than your readers do. Knowing when to make a change based on a critique and when to stick to your guns is one of the hard parts.

All she really does, though, is ask questions. If she stumbles on something that prompts a “Wha.–?” response, she marks it, comments on it, and goes on. If it’s answered later, she’ll go back, but it is the question-asking that seems to work the best. I will know if it is good that she has a question at that point or not. It’s by now symbiotic and it works well.

I have other readers for specific things, which I don’t require for each story. Because of what I’m working on now, I have a reader who speaks fluent French. Another is a better historian than I.

But the thing all writers need to know–to learn–is when to ignore their reader’s comments. Sometimes what they catch or comment on is not broken, just them knowing you and at that moment thinking what they’ve read needs something. In other words, unless that reader is a professional of some sort, this is a long learning process, and not only do they have to learn to be honest with you, you have to learn that it’s okay to ignore their comments sometimes.

The thing that is easier with fiction though, vs. non-fiction, is fixing errors, especially logic errors and errors of plausibility. There are certain fiction writing skills that allow one to create fixes within that area of the manuscript where the flaw is located, while leaving the rest of the text alone.

In non-fiction, especially history, that doesn’t work so well, if you’ve gotten certain facts wrong . . . .

And also, in non-fiction, your editor will be a very tough critic and send that finished ms. right back to you with a lot fixes that s/he sees needed. This happens no matter how hard you’ve worked to turn in the very best possible ms. you can, with no matter how many really quailified reader-critics have gone through it.

And in the end though, it is still the author(s)’s decision.

Not easy!

Love, C.

I think I may have discovered that my closet cousin may actually be the right first reader for me. One thing I know I don’t have to worry about is her being afraid to express her opinion. Added to this is that she is a fan of Fantasy, but reads widely across the spectrum.

My older brother is a possibility as well — but only now that we are both grown up.

I shall see. I should know by late summer if either is actually a good choice.