Finding critique partners or groups

[youkiddingme]

I'm a very new writer. I'm also a poor one. (That was meant to relate to my income but may also be an accurate descriptor of my ability.) I cannot afford expensive courses and editors. I'm learning to critique and hoping to find people who will do the same in return.

Any tips on this, please? I have joined some groups, but have found that many of the critiques offered are not that helpful (given to other writers).
Some are expressions of preference rather than objective. Some seem to quote 'rules of writing' in a rather dogmatic fashion. I have seen one person berate the use of word repetition while another praised the clever mirroring when discussing the same sentence. I have seen the odd person whose ability to understand the writer's intention, and fully examine the writing in relation to that intent, is brilliant. Naturally, I am trying to keep note of these people, but feel that while my own skills are still in their infancy it would be quite a cheek to try and partner up with them.
How does anyone else navigate all this, please?

I use Scribophile

You can either join for free, with some limitations or pay £65 (I think it is) a year for full membership.

Limitations mean you can only post 2 works at any one point, have to use the main spotlight, and are limited in number of messages.

I found fairly quickly that it's worth £65 a year.

It works so you critique other works and get "Karma" for doing them. You need 5 Karma to post your work. It takes about 3 works of critique to earn 5 Karma, and if you post in the pain spotlight you stay there until you get 3 critiques. It seems to work well.

Yes, you do sometimes get people with axes to grind, quote the "rules" etc, but generally they're a friendly bunch and out of around 200 critiques there only have been a one which I felt was not helpful (although sometimes they do sting!).

The best is when you've been there a bit and you find people come back to your works, and you know that they are trying to help as best they can.

I tried Scribophile but didn't like the way it's arranged and the fact you can only post two things. I've been on Critique Circle for a few years now and there's no limit to what you post. You can have a free membership or pay. Obviously if you pay you get more options and I rapidly moved on to paying monthly for it.
It works really well. You get credits for reading the work of others, and then pay 3 credits to post your own work, on a week by week basis. It runs from Wednesday to Wednesday and there's new work up every week - classed in rough genres - the Newbie queue, General, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Thrillers, Children's and Young Adult.
The more you crit the more you get critted back and you're free to choose exactly what you want to crit.
And as you crit you get to build up partnerships with other people on there who will keep coming back to read your work.
You can post up to 10,000 words at a time, but it's best to keep to 3,000 or less if you want to attract people to read your work as a Newbie.
I've done about 2,800 crits on there myself, and had about 3,700 in return. Once you get a name for yourself people will go on reading and critting your work even if they don't have anything for you to read back, I find.
If they do that, you have an option to send them a bonus credit. So that's a nice thing to be able to do.
It has really helped me with my writing. Yes, you get crits from people who aren't too good at it, but on the other hand you will meet people who really know what they're talking about. And you don't have to take notice of the crits you don't like. Just take the bits you think are best for your story and chuck the rest.
I'd highly recommend this above Scribophile every day.
And everyone is really nice too - no trolls I've ever come across in all the time I've been on there and all the crits I've had.
Hope this helps. You can take a look without being a member I think.

But you don't need any form of course or editor, expensive or not! I genuinely get alarmed at seeing how often on here posters now seem to think that you need to have studied creative writing to write -- if that's a paradigm shift in how writing is now thought about, it's a damaging one.

Literally the only thing you need to do is to read widely in the genre in which you write or want to write, and to read like a writer how does this author handle pace, dialogue, characterisation? Or to think from your experience as a reader to your writing, eg 'I'm really liking the protagonist of this novel let me try to figure out how the author is making me feel like this.' Or 'That ending felt unsatisfying -- let me try to see what went wrong.'

Bad books can also be really useful. If you keep confusing two characters, what has gone wrong in their characterisation to make you do that? If the middle sags, where and why does the pace drop off? If you start getting bored, when exactly did you start getting bored, and why? If you're skipping chunks, what are you skipping?

As a caveat to the suggestions above, I would guard against using critique groups too often or too early. I think it can become addictive, posting small chunks of text for immediate feedback, and you can end up replicating stuff that got you praised last time. I'd have to be very convinced of someone's ability as a reader and writer before I showed them work in progress. The only person who sees mine before my agent and editor is a novelist friend for whom I am also first reader. We know one another's work very well, and are able to be brutally frank.

Thank you MargaretT.

Thank you very much waterhorse. I have joined Critique Circle and I really like the feel of it. I've done a couple of crits and read some of those done by others. I think this is a place that will help me grow.

Thank you for all the advice Phrenologist. That all makes great sense and I will be taking it on board. As a very early writer, I think I'll just stick to doing crits and reading those of others for the most part for now. It will be good to just spend time around other writers, learn from other crits, and build up a few credits for the future.

Maybe we can be critique partners? I’m midway through a novel (women’s fiction) and would be happy to critique yours and vice versa?

That's a lovely offer inthekitchensink. I'm not sure I can take it up right now. Health issues make me too unreliable to commit to anything on a regular basis and I would hate to let you down. With crit circle I can do crits when health permits but my writing output is really low right now. Thank you so much for your kind offer though.

Completely understand. Always happy to take a look in due course

Have a look at Jericho Writers OP. You can pay to be a member to access resources etc but they also have a free community called Townhouse that you can join. It’s a forum where you can post questions and share tips and people do use it to post content for peer review.

I tried Scribophile but couldn't get away with it as the genre I'm writing in is completely different in the US (it's a US website) and they didn't understand some of our turn of phrases. I decided to deactivate my account and found a local writing group that meet via Zoom meetings once a month. It was through this group that I found my critiquing partner. We write the same genre and seem very similar in personalities and outlook on life. It's still very early days but I'm glad I found her.