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It might help to consider the points below to guide you in providing critique for the hard-working writers on this forum Clearly you are not required to answer them all, but it can help.

How Do We Critique? (A) Tell the truth, and (cool.gif Criticize the prose, not the writer.

As a critiquer, not a reviewer, comment on anything that moves you. Line edit if you want. Argue with character motivation. Question the rubber science. Suggest alternate plot lines. Identify clearly what you think needs improvement.

At the same time, you must respect the author's right to tell his own story.

Critics have a duty to help the author achieve his or her objectives, not yours. You may not like heroic fantasy, but if you're critiquing an author who does, you have to provide suggestions for making it more fantastic or more heroic.

Be general first. If something bothers you over and over, state the general issue first.

Then be specific. It's not enough to say, "the characters are wooden and the plot is slow." Which characters? When don't they react appropriately? Where does the action flag? Why do you feel it's slow? Identifying chapter and verse as an illustration helps everybody examine the issue.

Then be constructive. Once you've identified the problem, suggest an answer. "She shouldn't just sit there when he threatens her, she should tear his face off."

The author, of course, doesn't have to take your suggestion, but the act of examining an alternate story line is enormously helpful. All too often, writers see their stories as having no options, they must occur a particular way. The eye-opening experience of examining a whole different road will often jog someone's thinking process so that the author will create a third solution, neither his original choice nor the critic's alternate, that's better than both.

How Do We Listen? As an author, you must absorb what is said to you. That doesn't mean you accept it or reject it, it means you listen to it. You take it seriously as being motivated for your benefit.

Perhaps you say back to your critic, "I was trying to do this, but it didn't come across. How could I have gotten that idea (feeling, theme, view) to work for you?"

How do we get through this and come back for more? Because the prose gets better. Just like exercise, which hurts at the time but produces results.

Over time, we become very respectful of one another. We hold nothing back in terms of identifying and pounding problems ... but we're all extremely solicitous of each other's intentions.

If you write something and I suggest an idea to improve it, you don't have to accept it. That act of acceptance or rejection, that artistic and literary choice, means you're still the author, all the way across the board.



For prose pieces, the following issues are critically important:

1. Plot - does the action make sense? Is what is written moving the story forward?

2. Does the story start at the right place (the beginning?)

3. Is the pacing appropriate to the story? Too fast? Too slow? Just right?

4. Is the plot a real plot (a character, in context, with a problem)? Are things happening which seem to have no discernable reason or purpose?

5. Are there unconvincing coincidences passing for plot?

6. The ending: is the payoff adequate to the buildup? Does the ending make sense? Is it satisfying?

7. Hook - Is the beginning adequate to catch the reader's interest?

8. Characterization - are the people of the story believable?

9. Point of View - whose story is being told and who is telling it? Watch for head-hopping, PoV slipping and poor choice of PoV character

10. "Taking the reader for granted." Otherwise known as "The urge to explain." The great phrase, "RUE" or "Resist the Urge to Explain." Simply put, authors make this error when they use dialog, narrative summary and action to accomplish the same purpose.

11. Internal dialog passing for emotions or plot. Many beginning writers do this. At its most extreme, the internal dialog is actually the author's own thoughts as they ruminate along the page, not those of the character. "What would Mary do? Would she fire the gun at John, or would she turn it on herself? What would happen if she fired the gun at the floor? How could she ever decide?"

12. "Maid and Butler dialog" is dialog where two characters tell each other things they already know. It is often used to attempt to tell backstory or to explain concepts the author thinks the reader won't understand. In SF, we know this as the "infodump."

13. Originality and creativity. The most important part! We should be encouraging people to use their imaginations and to think beyond the first ideas which pop into their heads.