Hunting Guide: Critique Groups, Where to Find and Bag Them

Critique partners (or groups) are like agents: good ones are worth their weight in gold. Bad ones are worse than not having one at all. By a long shot. But you've heard that all week long, right? So the question is: How do you find the mythical beast? The unicorn that is a good critique group? You have a few options.

1. Meet Up - install the app and the search for writing groups. Chances are excellent that you'll find a number of writing groups meeting near you. Read through their descriptions and go check out a few. You get a 30 day trial before you have to commit to paying for anything. And you can try out several groups - go, talk to people, listen to what they're writing. Listen to HOW they talk to one another about writing. CAUTION: I did have a Meet Up writing group near me, but the group was more interesting in cheerleading than in making something better and they read snippets of work that were far too short to allow anyone to really work on story craft. So for my money, it wasn't a bad group, it just wasn't pointed in the direction I was going. Have an idea of what you're looking for when you go in.
2. Your local library - chances are excellent that there's a local writers organization partnered with your neighborhood library. There may not be published critique meetings, but there are likely to be events like book signings that would allow you to begin talking to the writers and find out how to join the group. From there, you begin asking around about critique groups.
3. Cons - Attending conventions aimed at what you write gives you access to people writing the same-ish genre. You'll find all kinds of organizations aimed at you. (Norwescon, my local scifi/fantasy con almost always has Broad Universe - the women in scifi - reps offering up membership info.) There are also a ton of writers and aspiring writers of every type there. Talk to them. Ask about critique groups. You never know.
4. Writing Org Membership - Finding crit groups has been the greatest boon granted to me by RWA. My local chapter gave me my local critique group. My online chapter gave me the excellent critique partners I rely on as beta readers. It came from going to meetings, getting to know people, getting to know what they wrote and talking about wanting a critique group.

There are likely more ways to find critique partners and beta readers, but allow me to trot out an adage: You are the average of the five people you spend  the most time with. Meaning you can pick a critique group that will either lift you up or drag you down. The choice is yours. When you do get invited to a critique group, date! Don't commit straight off. Go to a meeting. Listen to how these people critique one another. Is the crit constructive? If problems are identified in a piece of work, are suggestions for fixes given? Are the crits voice appropriate to each author and piece of work? Does your critique style mesh? Don't be afraid to go through several groups before finding the right fit. I'm on groups five and six. Some didn't work very well, some I moved away, some everyone else moved away. The point is that you don't have to jump at the first thing to come along unless you're confident that you will become a better writer for joining. That, after all, is the point - to grow and to help your critique partners to do the same.

The Mirror of Emotion

Emotion is a mirror. Reflect your character’s emotional state to the reader by selecting what your character sees, hears, tastes, touches and smells. Have you ever noticed how at Halloween, everything suddenly takes on a creepy tone? Mundane objects and events take on sinister connotation because you are psychologically primed by the cultural association of Halloween, horror movies, and the things that go bump in the night. Your readers (and characters) are, too, and you can mine that. A bright sunny day looks one way when you’re happy. When you’re scared, you suddenly notice the murmur of the wind in the tree branches in voices you can almost understand. The tree limbs claw at the raw sky. The shadows are sharp enough to slice skin. That same scene when you’re angry – the wind that was bracing when you were happy might now a slap in the face. An assault. Maybe traffic grumbles. And the people passing you avoid your gaze but you see the whites of their eyes for a long time until the fall behind. So many ways for your character to reflect his or her emotional state based on what they sense. It’s as if emotion is a filter for a camera lens that only allows certain information to register.

Dialogue is another mirror. You, oh petty god and master of massive creations, have the power to show readers how a character feels based solely on what he or she says.

“I’ve got it.”
“No. You don’t. Try --”
“I said, I’ve got it.”

You know nothing about the scene, nothing about the characters, but I bet you knew exactly how to read that last line. Have a look at Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet – the garden scene just after ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo.’

JULIET

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

How long winded she is. She’s indulging in long sentences and thought arcs. She has the time for reflection, a little love-sick introspection, and some heady game playing in that line – ‘Take all myself’. Speak the lines aloud. Listen to the sounds – long, open vowels. Lots of hard consonants – things that stop you and slow you down in the speech. It’s to show the actor and the audience that Juliet is developing a thought as she speaks and that she’s still giddy with infatuation.

ROMEO

I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

JULIET

What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night
So stumblest on my counsel?

Look how short this is. Say it aloud. Again. See how the sounds slide right into one another and pull you along the words? Do you speed up as you get through the sentence? Shakespeare is brilliant for using words and their sounds to either speed you up or slow you down as you speak his lines. If you’re paying attention, you find the emotion in the dialogue, too. Because this line is in such contrast to the longer speech above, it’s pretty easy to get fear from her ‘WHO ARE YOU WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE’ demand. While there are plenty of hard t sounds at the ends of words in this sentence, the vowel sounds are almost entirely formed far forward in the mouth. Sounds weird, I know, but big, open vowel sounds move farther back – like when you say ‘ah’ at the doctor’s office. In Juliet’s ‘What man . . .’ sentence, the vowels are all just behind the teeth and pinging off the hard palate. Point being that based on the sounds of words, you control and convey emotional states. Plays make it easy to see, but you can watch movies and TV, and if you listen carefully, hear how other writers spoon feed you emotional states with what their characters say.

I will confess here and now that I suggested this topic for the week because it’s something I struggle with. A lot. Just when I think I have it all figured out, I stumble and fall again over how to get emotion on the page. Show! Don’t tell! Madness dwells beneath a crit partner's suggestion that a scene lacks emotion. Suggesting this topic was my bid for a week long workshop on the subject. What’s your favorite trick of the emotional manipulation trade?