When I asked author Becky Levine  (it's also HER BIRTHDAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BECKY!) to answer some questions on critiquing for my blog, I never imagined she'd offer to give away a signed copy of her awesome book The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, but she did! After you've read her answers to my questions, you can find the info on how to enter to win a signed copy of her book! Woot!

Q: One of my readers asked, “I'm curious about how many readers you feel one should have in order to get a broad, balanced view of the manuscript without being overwhelmed by the amount of feedback?” It’s a great question. Sometimes I wonder the same thing myself. What’s your take on this question?
A: I’ve seen groups work well in all sizes, but my personal preference is 4-6 people. Depending on how productive everybody is being, this size seems to leave time for members to write as well as critique. If you get too many people, you can spend all your “free” hours between meetings reading everyone else’s submissions and feeling like you can’t make progress on your own book. On the other hand, if a group is too small, it’s easier for a writer to ignore a critique (one they might really  need to pay attention to). You can say, “Well, only one person thought that was a problem, so I don’t have to worry about it.” In a larger group, you’re more likely to get a few people pointing at stuff that isn’t working, and it’s harder to go into denial!

Just a quick note on being overwhelmed: everybody gets this feeling. It’s one reason I recommend leaving at least a little time between getting a critique and revising on that feedback; I think this helps you see things more clearly (and calmly) and lets you process the comments and make choices for your story.

Q: Many writers are very nervous when they receive a critique. Can you talk a little about the difference between critique and criticism and how our feelings are impacted by both?
A: Here’s an example I’ve been using in workshops lately—the differences between these two sentences:

-I don’t like your hero.
-I don’t like your hero enough yet.

The first comment hits the author with a dead-end feeling. They’re working on their first, maybe second draft, and they’re still developing the hero’s character (along with a gazillion other things), and all they’re told is that they’ve failed. This pretty much shuts down their brain and sends them off with a big emotional hurdle to get over, when they sit down to write again.

The second comment contains all the potential for the thinking and writing and revising the author will be doing. The critiquer recognizes that the character and the story is in process and is just giving the author a heads up that they haven’t hit “done” yet. Which, honestly, the writer knows—they just need some help with hows and whys and what-nexts. The second comment lets them keep their brain open and listen to the suggestions this critiquer is going to follow up with.

The content of the critique hasn’t changed; the critiquer hasn’t avoided telling the author what isn’t working, but those two words make all the difference, I think, for the writer’s ability to think about what the critiquer has to say. And if we, as writers, can’t play with the words of our critiques, then we’re not

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