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Critiquing is one of the BEST ways to grow as a writer. A new set of eyes can see the faults and problems in my novels and chapters far better than I can. And if I critique someone else’s writing, I get to see what makes it good and what doesn’t work, and thus be able to apply that new knowledge to my own writing.

A couple of quick notes:

1: If you post a five-gajillion-words-long novel, no one is going to have the time to read all of that. If you post just one chapter, you can still get feedback, and it won’t murder the time schedule of all your critiquers.

2: Don’t be afraid to share. You won’t regret it. You’ll be able to improve your writing.

3: Critique other people’s stuff! Be a nice human bean and check out your fellow Meraki’s stories and snippets. The more you critique, the more other people are likely to critique yours, and it’ll be a giant happy party of critiquers.

4: As a general titling rule, this structure will make it easiest for people to navigate the forum: Excerpt Name – Genre (chapter/scene/novel). For example if I want critiques on the first chapter of my novel ‘Prince’ I’d make a topic called this: Prince – Fantasy (Chapter One) That will just make it easier for everyone. Short stories you can simply say ‘short story’ in parenthesis instead of ‘chapter one’. Same goes for Poetry: Poem Title (Poem) — All that said, this isn’t mandatory, it’s just for the ease of the critiquers. *fingerguns*

5: Don’t think ‘but I don’t know how to critique.’ It’s against the rules. I won’t allow it. 😛 If you’ve never done it before, now is the perfect time to start! Read through a chapter/scene and tell the author what you think of it! Tell them the things that confused you, or that you really liked, or that didn’t sound as good as you thought they could. Give suggestions for how they could improve.

I do editing for a job, so trust me. It’s not that hard to learn, and it has huge benefits on BOTH ends. If you want any tips for being a better critiquer, just ask away. You can also check out -this blog post- as a bit of an inspiration to get you started.

Go forth and have no fear! Post your brain children and I promise we’ll all take as much care of them here as we would our very own. 😉