Who do you show your work to?

[Nogoodwithgoodbyes]

A friend of mine wants me to critique her work and said she’ll critique mine in return. I’m not sure if this is a good idea. Do any of you pass work on to writer friends to critique? Can it be a healthy relationship?

[FortunesFave]

I show mine to nobody apart from the people who matter. I send it to wherever it's going and trust that the response will tell me if it's good or not.

Using amateurs to critique your work is stupid at best.

[Spodge]

@FortunesFave - but readers are, by and large, amateurs and they are perfectly capable of telling you if they liked it, gave up at chapter 3, didn't engage with X or Y or whatever.

You can get very useful feedback from anyone who is prepared to be honest. Usually, therefore, not friends or family, who won't want to risk falling out with you if they feel the book is really not all that engaging.

[Witchend]

Scribophile

Is where I have mine critiqued.
Yes, they're (mostly) amateurs, but they pick up on more than just a few SPAG issues. I've got a lovely group who tend to crit anything each other does, so you go through the novel chapter by chapter and are then able to comment on the whole story, and then you get a few people who do one offs.
You also learn a fair amount on critiquing other people.
Because you don't know these people in RL they can be honest. There are times you think they're being mean... give it a week and you've forgiven them and a fortnight and you know that actually they're right.

Yes, occasionally you get a crit that is meaningless. I had one where they did about chapter 14 (clearly marked) and spent the whole chapter putting things like "You haven't described MC properly" or "why did this happen?" (reason being in chapter 12) and similar things.
But you get other critiques so you can ignore the odd one you get like that.

And I've made some nice online friends including being sent chocolate...

[Nogoodwithgoodbyes]

Thanks. I can’t put my finger on exactly why but it just doesn’t feel right to do this with my mate! It feels like hassle and pressure. I already have someone who I can get an opinion off so I’m happy enough with that...I just don’t want to hurt her feelings as she’s pretty keen on this exchange!

[InescapableDeath]

I don't like getting friends to review my work for some reason. I'm sure it's successful for a lot of people.

But personally I don't want my friends feeling they have to sugarcoat what they think, or being brutal and my thin skin not taking it! I also don't want to swap and find myself gritting my teeth to say something nice if theirs isn't great. It's a funny old business.

I'd much rather get feedback from people I don't know, then at least I don't have to face them again if I don't want to!

[Nogoodwithgoodbyes]

Yes! I think that’s exactly it @InescapableDeath

Great username by the way!

I don’t want to feel trapped in this exchange. She was fairly gung-ho about it though. I’m not sure how I’ll get out of it! I have visions of spending ages reading her stuff and sending nowt her way!

[MingVase]

A novelist friend, apart from my agent. I’ve always been entirely honest about what I think doesn’t work in her work, and she does likewise.

[Witchend]

I think before agreeing I would ask to say read the first chapter and see what you think.

I've been in the position of someone asking (on somewhere like MN) and thinking that I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. It was so badly written to get it in anywhere like publishable state would firstly take hours, and secondly mean that you sounded like you were criticising too much.
Think along the lines of:
I walked into the LIving room and I sat and and I moved my footslightly and moved the box "oh I thought I wanted to put that away" and so I went to do so and I didn't realise it was the start of a big adventure. a big adventure it was !!!!!
That went on for pages in the same style (and they hadn't heard of paragraphs either!)

However if it's something that is well written and interests you, then ask what they want from it. If it's SPAG and plot holes type level it's a different matter than if they want a full crit. I might do the former for a friend-if nothing else it's mostly factual rather than opinion. But if they want a full crit I think I'd struggle with that both on the time level and on the honesty (assuming you want to stay friends!)

[Nogoodwithgoodbyes]

That’s it. Y’see, to be brutally honest, I think she may stand to benefit more than me. I did a full crit for her before & it took hours. She was really happy with such in-depth feedback but I don’t have time for that these days. I’m going through a separation & house-hunting; so pretty busy. There’s also something about it that just doesn’t feel right! I don’t want to send my work to her and I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m just not ready!

[Nogoodwithgoodbyes]

@Witchend

Pretty funny anecdote! I doubt it was easy to climb out of that foxhole!

[Witchend]

I just scrolled on by, and made no comment. I did notice that the people who were commenting were generally along the lines of "that's amazing, hun" so I think a lot of people passed it by for the same reason.

Tbf I'm fairly fussy on who I would critique. I need to be interested in the story, and it needs to be reasonable SPAG because, whereas I'm happy to pick up on some, if it's down to needing to rewrite sentences to make sense it needs better help than I can give.

I can recommend trying Scribophile for critiques (someone here recommended it to me). You can join on the basic level, which is free, and if you think it's useful, move to Premium, it's about £60 a year I think.
It certainly is better than asking friends, as it isn't as personal as someone you know in real life. I've had critiques where I've looked at, thought "humph" gone away and sulked.... and then come back and realised that actually that person is completely correct. Much harder if you have to face that person while you're still sulking. This way you can turn the computer off.

And you have to critique others to get the karma to put yours to critique. It does help your writing to critique other things, and by doing that you build a network, and they will often come back to your work, and do whole novels (chapter by chapter) which is brilliant feedback.

There's also other ways you can help-I've read some of the children's stories to ds, and can feed back his reactions. If he's asking if there's a sequel you know the book's a hit!

[FuchsiaBay]

Well, tell her you simply don't have time at the moment, with your separation and house-hunting etc, and that she'll get a faster, more in-depth critique from someone else.

I think it's fine to ask a friend, assuming that friend is literate, reads a lot and, especially, is well-read in the genre you work in. If you write psychological horror, there's no point in asking your friend who only ever reads Marian Keyes for a critique.

And I think you need to be sure that your friend is (a) any good -- I wouldn't be taking time to read unedited freeform gabble and (b) that it's already been through multiple edits before you see it.

I exchange MS with a novelist friend, but we only send things to one another at the stage where we would also be sending them to our agents, so are at a high level of finish.

And (c) you need to trust the friend as a reader, and both of you need to be able to be brutally honest and maintain the friendship -- for instance, I had to tell my friend that her use of dialect really didn't work at all in one of her novels. I was right, and her agent agreed, but it involved a complete rewrite, so she needed to trust that I wasn't wrong about it.

And she told me that an entire subplot didn't work, and I removed it.

[Nogoodwithgoodbyes]

Thanks ladies. Scribophile might be a better bet. I feel like my head is too full to take that on again.