Critique Partner Love
Do you have a critique partner? A bounce-ideas-off-buddy? A creative friend to share pages, chapters, or an entire manuscript with?
If not, I highly recommend finding a critique partner or multiple critique partners to help improve and elevate your work. If you want your book to be read by the masses, you need a range of opinions before you polish that manuscript and consider querying an agent. This is where a critique partner comes in.
I have a wonderful group of writer friends, including a handful I exchange pages with on a regular basis, and I’m so grateful I can call them my critique partners.
Recently, I participated in my critique partner, Annie Cathryn’s, book launch for her fantastic women’s fiction book, The Friendship Breakup.
Since it’s February—the month of love—we wanted to celebrate critique partner love. And so, I’m sharing this love with all of you including how we met, our critique partner journey, critique partner do’s, and tips and tricks.
How We Met
The year was 2020. The world was in a state of chaos due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my husband had recently had a horrible accident causing brain damage and other health issues, my 4-yo son and 1-yo baby-girl were at home, and I was struggling to keep my life together, kids fed, job on track, bills paid, and be a caretaker on a daily basis (and let’s face it, sometimes struggling on a minute-to-minute basis). But amongst the chaos, there were wonderful moments of joy. And one of those moments was in the quiet after everyone was tucked in bed and I could sit down and write.
Writing has always brought me peace.
During a time in the world when everything was shutting down and relationships were put on hold or severed, I yearned for connection and support, especially in the writing world. And even though the world had changed, my goal to be a traditionally published author had not diminished. I’d recently picked up my first manuscript—a women's fiction book inspired by my experience growing up in the wedding business—and decided to completely overall the plot and associated manuscript. I knew I needed more feedback including if I was going in the right direction. I joined the Women’s Fiction Writer’s Association and filled out a request on their website for a query partner match.
Luckily, I was part of a Secret Work Writer’s Club (hi, Andrea!) and have a few writer friends in my life, so I knew partly what a critique partner entailed, but within a day of submitting the request, I found myself in a women's fiction critique group with five other women writers located throughout the United States. I wondered where we’d even begin, so I put together ten get-to-know-me questions as well as asked how many pages they felt comfortable exchanging and at what cadence.
Our Critique Partner Journey
Annie and I were the first to provide our information, and I quickly realized we had the same goals—to bring more love into the world, be traditionally published and one day, be on The NY Times Best Seller’s List. She was also very positive, enthusiastic, and surprise, a Sagittarius too! We exchanged pages (50 pages a month to start, and yes, that totaled 250 pages). Slowly, critique partners dropped off as they took ghost writing jobs, decided to change genres, or felt it was too much during 2020. That left Annie and I. But our goals remained, and we continued.
Annie was still writing The Friendship Breakup and our monthly exchanges helped her keep her page as well as word count goals required to finish the draft by fall that year in sight. I was also rewriting the last 100 or so pages of my own manuscript, while polishing what I’d written thus far. We were accountability partners.
Books don’t write themselves.
To help each other stay on track, we sent check-in emails and text messages throughout the month checking on progress, if we were still on track with our pages, and if we were struggling and needed an extra pep talk. I looked forward to every communication.
Getting to read the first draft of someone’s manuscript is incredible. You get to see where the book started, how the characters develop, as well as the author’s style. But getting to read someone’s first draft is also a privilege. The first draft is like a book baby and when you become a critique partner, your partner entrusts their book baby to you.
My goal as a critique partner is to not only to support my partner, but also celebrate wonderful writing, clarify if something doesn’t make sense, and provide feedback to help her improve her manuscript. When our month-end exchange happened, we used Google Docs. This enabled us to see each other’s edits, make comments in a ‘live document,’ and offer suggestions. We’d also receive notifications of comments and/or edits via email as we worked through the monthly page exchange. It worked great and gave me something to look forward to.
After our initial manuscripts were completed, we also reviewed each other’s queries, and then later, other works/manuscripts. We have worked so well as critique partners because we both truly value the other’s opinion, care for one another, and both love to not only celebrate successes, but also be there for one another for the setbacks. If you don’t have a critique partner, I highly encourage you to find one. Or two. Or three. :)
Critique Partner Do’s
During our Critique Partner Love chat, Annie and I came up with a few critique partner do’s:
Be positive
Ask questions instead of saying something doesn’t work such as, ‘Have you thought about…’ or ‘Can you expand on…?”
Offer constructive feedback such as ‘This is a great start to this scene. If you added some more showing details, the scene would be even more vivid.’
Celebrate sensational writing (e.g., I love this line!)
Add how you relate to a scene/piece of dialogue to let the writer know they’re doing their job by making you feel (e.g., LOL! This scene reminds me of a time…)
Tips and Tricks
Also, some tips and tricks for when you find a critique partner include:
Ask what they’re feedback style is
Use Google Docs or Critique Match software to simplify pages exchange
Follow your critique partner on Social Media so you can see follow their journey and progress
Be accountable and follow-through with deadlines
How to Find a Critique Partner
If you’re searching for a critique partner, you can:
Join writing memberships such as the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Romance Writers Association, the Society of Childrens Book Authors and Illustrators, etc. and request a query match.
Search #CritiqueMatch on Twitter for a critique partner
Join Critique Match for free at https://critiquematch.com/# and find critique partners
Meeting Annie at Zibby’s Bookshop!
Special Thanks
A special thanks to Annie Cathryn for your support and love over the years! I’m so grateful for your friendship and can’t believe we were finally able to meet one another last weekend at your book signing at the opening of Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica. Three years of friendship and 2,000 miles apart, hugging you was the best part of my weekend!
And to my other wonderful critique partners—Andrea, Mom, Shanel, and Wendy—thank you for supporting me on my author journey, and I can’t wait to support you even more on yours. xoxoxo
With love,
Erica Mae