As with all things in life, the most important thing is not the how, but the why.
Giving
Why do we give critique?
To help make a piece the best it can be. The world needs art, and is better for it. If the piece is as good as it can be, then you’ve genuinely made the world a better place, in a small way.
It’s useful to imagine critiquing like this: You’re a make-up artist presented with a soon-to-be bride. You have to get her looking beautiful for her big day. But all you can do for the Bride, is guide. It’s not your job to criticise her, or break her down, but to ensure she can make herself look the best she possibly can.
Maybe that means you need to explain, step by step, why she’s applying eyeliner wrong. Maybe it means you need to tell her that the blue eye-shadow she loves will never suit her eyes. It’s not your job to protect her ego any more than you have to, so that she can keep going.
But if you can’t say a single positive thing about the piece, then you’re not coming from the right place. Critique is a small death. The death of what the writer thought the piece was, and that can be painful. You need to ease that pain, to give the writer a light at the end of the rewrites.
Knowing that you have 15 things to work on is overwhelming, knowing that you have 15 things to work on, but 1 thing you’ve done great, is encouraging.
Receiving
The problem with receiving critique is that you want to believe a lie.
Returning to our metaphor, you want to believe you’re great at makeup. You might have the best smoky eye in the world, but it doesn’t change the fact that your foundation sucks. So, you need to put your pride aside, and listen to the make-up artist telling you where you’re going wrong.
The lie pretends it exists as “This piece is good,”
But in reality the lie is “I am good, because this piece is good.”
The reality is, so long as you are identified with the piece as it is now, you are closed to what it could be.
When you receive critique, if you feel anger, sadness or even shame, you’ve fallen into this trap.
The best way to receive critique is with detachment, and often with that comes laughter. As you know this is a step in a never-ending spiral upwards, towards the ultimate form of the piece. Receiving critique is literally the work of chiselling your masterpiece. Removing the jutting pieces of marble, step-by-step to reveal your David.
Even if you’ve spent five years on it, and there’s still 5 more years left, so what? It took Tolkien 17.
One last thing
Not all critique is good critique: Sometimes it’s mean-spirited or ill-advised.
Sometimes several people tell you something sucks, and you don’t feel attached to keeping it, but your gut still says cutting it is wrong. In these cases, You are the writer, so follow your gut, not someone else’s.
Even well-intentioned, but bad, critique can ruin a piece. They’re giving you an opinion, like a beta reader; treat it as that. it’s not gospel, it’s not necessarily right despite how certain they may be, it’s ultimately just an opinion. And if it feels mean-spirited, it probably is, so throw it out; no good critique ever came from anger.
Tl;dr – Really? You can’t take two minutes to be a better writer? Scroll up.
The Fellowship Of Ink 