What do with a crit once you get it
Note: Hiding the critique (or yourself) under the bed, tempting as that might be, is not the right answer.
Just like you have to learn to give a critique, so too do you have to learn how to utilise the comments you get. Now’s the time to get out your surgeon hats—and knives.
A general truism about critting is: If five people point out a problem with a line or scene, there’s almost certainly a problem with it. However, all five people are probably wrong about how to fix it.
To understand how to use a criticism, you have to accept that you are the only person who knows deep down what story you are really trying to tell, and therefore what solution best serves that story. You’ll probably get all sorts of suggestions—many of which take the story off in completely different directions. Sometimes, these are just the bright masterstroke you need to fix a piece. But usually, they are more reflections of how that person would write the story.
But that doesn’t mean discard them out of hand. They contain valuable clues as to the problem. But how do you interpret critiques?
Initial reactions
First, simply read the crits to get an overall sense: are they mostly word/prose level? (We’ve already talked about how this is the least useful level of critting, unless it’s a final draft).
Are certain issues pointed out over and over: pacing? Confusion over who is speaking? Not understanding transitions or the flow of time? Do readers not understand why a character is doing something? Do you have POV glitches?
Understanding the big issues that are likely to be repeated throughout is a useful way to get a sense of how well the piece works overall—which can be a useful way of seeing how intense surgery it needs: Are we talking about a nose job, or a heart transplant?
But also look at the comments themselves. Do they seem to get the story you are trying to tell? If you are telling an action story with a fast pace, comments that ask about more character depth and say it’s too fast might be completely off base, or might be spot on, because even action stories need an emotional element. How do you know?
This is where details in giving crits help. If they’ve explained why they feel that way, great. But if not, you have to ask yourself, for example, if a scene is critiqued as too fast paced, why might they feel this way? Have you been clear about the stakes of the action, what will happen if the characters fail? Have you skimped on description in an attempt to keep things moving? Have you forgotten about your characters and slipped out of their POV into omniscient? You have to try to understand various reasons why your story came across that way.
You also have to be aware that the best solution might not even target the area critiqued. Does a scene feel too fast paced because it’s the third action scene in a row, and the reader needs a moment to catch their breath first? If the stakes aren’t clear, maybe you need to go back a few scenes and set them up so the events in the critted scene have more subtext.
Diving deeper and finding fixes
Let’s stick with the example of “This action scene felt too slow.”
First, you need to figure out why it is coming across as too slow in order to know the right fix, which almost certainly isn’t simply “add more action”.
Reread the scene, paying attention to:
- Is it a complete scene, or is it all flashback or tell, rather than show? Do the events happen in real-time in front of the reader? One way to tell this: could a film crew film the scene as is? Look for too-long chunks of prose.
- If yes, then take a hard look and ask yourself: are the actions interesting, or are they predictable? The most fast-paced scene can seem boring if nothing out-of-the ordinary happens, if it is a re-tread of the most basic elements of that type of scene, like a gun fight that the reader has already read almost exact copies of in a million other books and seen in a million movies. Could the reader write it themselves and not miss out anything? If you were to ask a reader after the first paragraph what will happen, would they get it 100% right? Then you have a predictability problem, and it feels slow because the reader has mentally skipped ahead and knows what will happen. Reader anticipation is working against you, because mentally, they finished the scene already so there is no reward to them for actually reading it line by line rather than use the summary in their head. Solution: make sure something unexpected happens, add something original-humour, character moments, an unusual setting that elevates a traditional chase scene, for example, into something new. Think of all the car chases you’ve seen. Think of how writers have spun them into something fresh. Different types of vehicles, terrain, off-road. Chases where people can’t go fast, to not attract attention. Ones where the person can’t drive that type of vehicle. Etc, etc. etc. Come up with an interesting fresh twist on the premise.
- Lack of emotional engagement. Even the most exciting series of events can seem boring and feel draggy if the reader doesn’t care about why they are happening, if they are not invested in a particular outcome happening to those particular people. Even action scenes need an emotional payoff. Think of the difference between Silence of the Lambs, and the glut of serial-killer novels that spent more time on coming up with different obscure killing methods than spending time on character.
Does the action actually flow? You might have a fresh twist and emotional engagement, but if the actual flow of events are difficult to follow or don’t make sense, the reader’s own confusion will slow them down, making it feel slow.
Try acting it out with a friend, or by yourself, using only the actions described. Are they actually doable? (I did this once and realised I had a character holding a guitar in one hand the entire scene—oops. Another friend did this and realised he said a character “started shooting in the air”, but never said he stopped. So for the rest of the scene, in the reader’s head, that character was still in the background, shooting in the air.) Too much confused jumbled action comes across as slow.
Then, you repeat this with all the comments to dig down to what issues they are really pointing at. It can be helpful at this stage or next to do a reverse outline or character arc outline (The Emotional Wound Thesaurus is really helpful for this) to check your pacing and that your plot has all the necessary/expected scenes.
And remember…
This is just to start. The good news—as you become aware of these things, you start to solve the issues in the writing phase, right as you conceive of scenes. This is why giving crits helps as much if not more than getting them, because it’s the analysing the story that improves your own story-generation process that solves problems before they occur.
I know I’ve found that my projects need less “big picture” editing with each one, because I can solve problems as I’m writing, so overall, drafting becomes quicker and more streamlined.