Critique – Why bother?

Over the past year, in exchange for being critiqued back, I’ve read and critiqued over a third of a million words worth of amateur work. Why?

Why is it so important to give and receive critique as a writer?

You know that phrase a picture is worth a thousand words, well sometimes an allegory is worth twice that.

There were two twin writers: Adam and Ben. Both realised they loved writing as teens, and they were estranged, thrown across the nation to write on their own. Fortunately for our example, they had the exact same work ethic and the exact same talent.

After months of slowly building up the routine, they both got into a place where they were writing a thousand words a day. Even when it was hard, even when they were exhausted, even when they were falling asleep at the keyboard. They’d write.

After 3 months of non-stop writing, they’d finished their first drafts. As is common with new writers, they both had heavy exposition dumps throughout and their characters arcs were lacking. Adam went to get critique for his work, whereas Ben sat down to work on rewrites by himself.

For every hour Adam critiqued someone else, Ben spent that time reworking and tweaking his story. For every minute Adam spent talking through another writer’s work, Ben would spend that time rewording his sentences.

Yet Ben’s story got better at the micro-level. He’d cut unnecessary words or snazz up a simile, but the arcs were still lacking and the dumps were still heavy.

Whereas Adam went through having his work ripped apart and remade, having to cut out those exposition dumps, rework arcs and remove whole subplots. But he didn’t have the time to tweak as much as Ben did, with all that time spent critiquing.

After 6 months of this, Ben is sure he has a masterpiece. He’s spent so many months on it that he’s certain others will love it, just like he’s grown to.

Adam has his manuscript in its final form, as refined as he and his critiquers could possibly make it. He doubts it a bit though, it’s hard not too; he knows how much he still has left to learn.

By miraculous coincidence, they both submit their pieces to the same agent, on the same day. Which piece do you think the agent picked up?

Adam.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

If you don’t get critique, you’ll just keep making the same mistakes over, and over, and over again. I’ve seen the most ludicrously industrious writers fall into this trap. Even worse, the longer you go without critique, the more lost you feel. You’ll think you’ve leapt forward, only to get slapped back by the harsh reality of your limitations.

Some writers will write four or five books, and won’t grow at all. It’s like a kid who thinks one plus one is three. If they’re marking their own work then they’re going to mark that as right again and again and again. So all that effort put into getting better at maths is just burying that error deeper and deeper inside. Until they come to quadratic equations after years of study, and a maths teacher looks at it and has no idea what the original flaw ever was anymore.

You don’t know what you don’t know. Often audiences, or critiquers, are the only ones that can point towards the truth that you need to hear to take your writing to the next level.

Sure, you can read books on writing, but unless someone’s there to tell you something isn’t working then 95% of the time you read something and think “Yup, I do that.”

What do I do about it?

Join a writer’s group, any group. Hell, some free websites facilitate it too, like Zoetrope.com. Or post up in /r/destructive readers on Reddit. If you can’t find a writer’s group then do what I did: start one. Testing yourself against the iron wall of critique is the only way to get better as a writer.