Critique - The Trauma!

By Maureen Lynas


You've shared your baby, risked depression, and asked for a critique. Eek! 

Your story (or you depending on your emotional viewpoint and place on the writerly learning curve) has been appraised, analysed, evaluated and judged.

Maybe it's been unanimously praised as being the next GINORMOUS thing. Maybe it's been found wanting. Or maybe, and more probably, it's somewhere between the two and you are now dealing with the aftermath of the critique – confusion. 

One of the great things about a critique session is that you get a lot of feedback and one of the bad things about a critique session is that you get a lot of feedback. There are so many comments, so many differing opinions, so many different solutions. What on earth do you do with all of this information? 

Perhaps how you react initially depends on your disposition and/or experience. On first reading (or hearing) the critique  . . .



You may only see the positive.

OR 

                            You may only see the negative.






Then, on second reading you may become very confused because you're receiving conflicting messages. 


So it's important to take a step back and analyse what you've have. I do LOVE to analyse. 


 

 

Meet Boggarty Bog, a distraught troll. 

 

Boggarty is writing her autobiography (picture book format, illustrated badly). The first installment - Boggarty Bog's Biggest Burps, details a traumatic event in her life where she lost the ability to burp, just after she's been goaded into entering a burping competition by her arch enemy, Sally Mander. 

Disaster! 

The critique arrives. It's a mixed bag of comments and she's had to resort to a quart of slug juice to get her through the trauma. 

 

 

The Comments:

 

Really? A book about a burping competition? The burping genre is soooooo finished. 

The opening line sets the character, the conflict and the tone. 

I love the protagonist! 

I hate the protagonist. 

Perhaps there's too much burping? 

I like that she has to drink ginger beer to make the burps come back but ginger beer's too English. I would change it to lemonade. 

There's too much ginger beer, no one could drink that much. 

Kids LOVE burping, you're onto a winner! 

At 900 words it's too big for a picture book. 

At 900 words it's just OK for a picture book. 

The beginning could be trimmed to get to the problem earlier. 

You've missed opportunities for escalation e.g. of burps, in number and loudness. 

I'd like to see more ginger beer, great opportunity for an illustrator to draw hundreds of bottles.

Why don't you add in a farting donkey. That would make it even funnier. 

Trolls don't drink ginger beer. Do they? 

You've used me instead of my – as in 'Blimey Bert, me burps have gone,' said Boggarty. Teachers won't like that, words should be spelled correctly. 

I laughed out loud when she was flying like a deflating balloon. 

Your use of rhetoric builds the comedy. 

The punchline is unexpected, the set up brings the threads together and it makes sense. 

The polarity of the characters' personalities creates conflict. 

The story has a symmetrical structure.

I don't understand the setting, why are you living in a house? Why aren't you in a cave? 


Such a lot of conflicting comments. Now what does she do with them? Well, bless her, she isn't very far up the learning curve so most of her reactions are a bit emotional. 



What do they mean too many burps! You can never have too many burps! Escalate? Polarity? Conflict. I'll give them conflict! 

Cue more slug juice with a dash of powdered frogspawn. 
What can she do? Well, she can... 

Divide a piece of paper into two columns:

Positive and Negative 

Choose two coloured pens. One for Subjective (blue). One for Objective (red). Write down each point from the critique. At the bottom, add in any solutions that have been offered. 



Positive:                                                                            
                 

The opening line sets the character, the conflict and the tone.                                                 
                                                                       
I love the protagonist! 
                                                                                                
Kids LOVE burping, you're onto a winner! 

At 900 words it's just OK for a picture book. 

Your use of rhetoric builds the comedy. 

The punchline is unexpected, the set up brings the threads together and it makes sense. 

The polarity of the characters' personalities creates conflict. 

I laughed out loud when she was flying like a deflating balloon. 

The story has a symmetrical structure. 

The ending is sooo funny. 


Negative:



Really? A book about a burping competition? The burping genre is soooooo finished. 

You've missed an opportunity to increase the conflict between Boggarty and Sally on page 6. 

There's too much ginger beer, no one could drink that much. 

At 900 words it's too big for a picture book. 

You've missed opportunities for escalation e.g. of burps, in number and loudness.

I hate the protagonist. 

Perhaps there's too much burping. 

The beginning could be trimmed to get to the problem earlier. 

You've used me instead of my – as in 'Blimey Bert, me burps have gone,' said Boggarty. Teachers won't like that, words should be spelled correctly. 

Trolls don't drink ginger beer. Do they? 

Solutions:


Why don't you add in a farting donkey. That would make it even funnier.

I'd like to see more ginger beer, great opportunity for an illustrator to draw hundreds of bottles. 

I like that she has to drink ginger beer to make the burps come back but ginger beer's too English. I would change it to lemonade. 

I don't understand the setting, why are you living in a house? Why aren't you in a cave? 


The next step for Boggarty is to remove the subjective comments. Then: 

  • Work out which of the objective comments require research e.g the word count comments may both be true depending on which publisher she’s submitting to. 

  • Work out which comments point towards learning new skills e.g. what exactly do they mean by opportunities for escalation? 

  • Look at the solutions; are they highlighting a real problem? What other solutions could she come up with – it’s her story, she should solve the problems. 

Of course, she can’t do this until the effects of the slug juice has worn off and the emotional pain has been dulled. This could take weeks. Months. Years. 



Maureen Lynas is the author of the Action Words Reading Scheme and a member of thefuneverse She was a 2012 Undiscovered Voices winner and blogs on writing on Notes From the Slushpile where you can see all about her current work in progress - The Best Witch.

17 comments:

  1. Thanks Maureen, that was useful AND made me laugh.

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  2. Thanks, I aimed for both so I'm very pleased to hear it worked. Yay!

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  3. What a great piece Maureen! You always add such great touches of character and humour, even in something short like this.

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    1. Thanks, Paula. I did try to write something serious once. Failed.

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  4. That's brilliant Maureen! Excellent advice, I will put slug juice on my shopping list.

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    1. Try the flavoured ones, Amanda. The pure stuff is an acquired taste.

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  5. Great advice, Maureen. Colour coding idea fab. It's brave to ignore all subjective comments. Don't you ever go back to them after another quart of the slug-stuff?

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    1. My reaction to subjective comments used to be quite emotional, Rowena. I could be down in the dumps for days. Then I joined a book club. Our members have diverse tastes and we cheer if one person loves a book and another hates it. We embrace the subjectivity and recognise that we all bring our life experiences, knowledge and preferences to our reading. It gave me an insight into what it must be like going through the slushpile and how delightful it must be for an agent/editor when they find a gem that they relate to.
      So, in answer, no, I don't go back to the subjective ones.

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    2. Very interesting, Maureen. When critiquing others, I find my subjective impression is often altered after an objective analysis - usually heading towards the middle ground, i.e. ones I loved at first seem less good, ones I disliked seem better. But like you, when it's my stuff under the microscope, I give much more weight to objective comments.

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  6. Thank, Maureen, this is a really useful area to analyse.

    A problem I have is drawing the line between subjective and objective - how do you do that? Surely all critique comments have some subjectivity to them?

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    1. For me it's the difference between emotional reactions to the story and technical aspects of the craft. I can love a character & premise, even when the voice is inconsistent, the plot wanders all over the place, or the individual scene needs more suspense etc. But maybe Maureen meant something different.

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    2. I did mean that, Rowena. I don't feel that my subjective opinion is as important as my technical opinion because my subjective opinion can't help the writer to develop their story.
      Subjective - an emotional reaction, like it, don't like it.
      Objective - It's about knowing what the writer is trying to do and supporting them to find the right techniques to pull it off..
      But that's just my opinion, Nick.

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    3. Thanks for the clarification. This is a great tool - I'm going to use it the next time I have some feedback.

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  7. Yep Maureen, agree with Nick this is a GREAT tool.

    When someone says they 'love it' or even if they hated a particular character, I do tend to cherish that because for me writing is an emotional activity and I'm hoping to achieve an emotional response, so while those comments aren't as helpful practically, they certainly tick boxes.

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  8. Great help thank you Maureen I am going through this process myself before I finally submit to agents!!

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    1. Opp, Jan and Dennis. I forgot to subscribe to post comments and have only just spotted yours.

      Here's good luck to you, Dennis, and yes, Jan, it's definitely an emotional activity. I was almost in tears the other day as King Fred had to admit he'd failed Prince Bob and his son would have to spend eternity as a frog. Tragedy!

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  9. Amusing and very instructive, great combination

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