Writing Critique Groups: Techniques to Enhance Your Writing Skills

The science fiction critique group I started through Meetup.com had about a dozen members within six months. Once the group was meeting consistently, I dropped the Meetup subscription because we didn’t need the platform anymore, and the group ran itself.

A good critique group does something that no amount of self-editing can replicate: it shows you how your writing lands with actual readers. You can’t see your own blind spots. You know what you meant to say, so you read what you meant instead of what you wrote. Other writers catch the gaps between intention and execution because they’re reading your words without your context.

Skipping critique is one of the biggest mistakes I see writers make. Writing alone feels safe, and it lets bad habits survive for years, because nobody’s there to tell you the dialogue sounds like a legal brief. (See Fiction Writer’s Workshop, for writers working solo) The writers I worry about most are the ones who get their first real feedback from paying readers, in the form of one-star reviews.

Don’t confuse a critique group with the big general writing groups on Facebook and other social media. A critique group has rules, and its members are usually kind because they’re trying to help you. The general groups run from a few hundred to a few thousand members, and they’re hostile.

Right now the fight is AI. I’ve watched a writer post an obviously AI-made cover and ask for advice, and the group dogpiled them. Someone else asked for help writing a book with AI and got the same treatment. I see it over and over.

Before AI it happened on every subject. I’d say something, and suddenly a hundred people were talking about me, how awful I was, how I wasn’t a real writer. Some groups get so tired of the same questions that they turn on anyone who asks one, as if people aren’t allowed to be new. Ask something they’ve heard 50,000 times and they’ll jump on you and tell you to go read the FAQ.

How Do Writing Critique Groups Work?

The format is simple. Each member brings a piece of work: a few pages, a chapter, a short story. The group reads it and provides feedback. Some groups read aloud during the meeting. Others distribute work in advance so members arrive prepared with written notes. Either approach works. The important thing is that every member both gives and receives critique on a regular schedule.

The giving matters as much as the receiving.

When you critique someone else’s writing, you develop analytical skills that improve your own work. You learn to identify pacing problems, weak dialogue, unclear transitions, and structural issues. You start seeing these problems in your own drafts because you’ve trained yourself to spot them in other people’s writing. (More on my review of the Writing Clinic)

Watch: ONLINE CRITIQUE GROUPS | How to Start a Writing Group in 2020, Michelle Schusterman

How Do You Find a Writing Critique Group?

Meetup.com is still the easiest way to find local writing groups. Libraries and bookstores sometimes host them. If nothing exists in your area or nothing matches your genre, start your own. It’s less work than you’d expect.

When I started mine, I chose a specific genre focus, science fiction, instead of a general writing group. That specificity attracted members who wanted to be there and who understood the genre’s conventions. A group where everyone writes literary fiction and one person writes space opera is frustrating for everyone. Pick a focus. You’ll get a smaller but more useful group.

You control the size, the schedule, the meeting location, and the tone. Keep the group small enough that everyone gets time for their work in each session. A dozen members is about the upper limit before meetings run too long or people stop getting regular feedback.

What rules make a writing critique group work?

To make the most of your experience in writing critique groups, consider following these seven guidelines:

1. Give Specific Feedback: Aim to provide detailed and precise feedback, instead of general or vague suggestions. This will help the writer to make targeted improvements in their work.
2. Maintain a Positive Attitude: Constructive criticism should be just that: constructive. While it’s important to point out areas for improvement, also name the strengths of the piece.
3. Focus on Content, not Grammar: While spelling and grammar are important, the main focus of a critique should be on the content, including the plot, character development, and overall structure of the piece.
4. Allow Everyone to Speak: Ensure that everyone in the group has an opportunity to provide feedback. This helps to create a diverse range of opinions and prevents any one person from dominating the conversation.
5. Respect Confidentiality: If a member of the group is a ghostwriter, respect the confidentiality of their work. Unauthorized sharing of ghostwritten material is a severe breach of professional ethics.
6. Listen to Feedback: Receiving feedback can sometimes be as challenging as giving it. Take on board the constructive criticisms and suggestions offered by your peers, and resist the urge to defend your work. Remember, the goal is to improve.
7. Stay Engaged: Regular attendance and active participation in the group can greatly improve your experience. The more you invest in the group, the more you stand to gain.

How Do You Give Useful Critique?

Be specific, start with what works, and describe how the writing affected you as a reader instead of rewriting it your way.

Heard elsewhere

The difference between criticism and critique, and how to mine the specific reviews while ignoring the malicious ones, came up when Richard was on Marketer of the Day.

The most important rule: critique the writing, not the writer. “This scene is confusing because the timeline jumps without a transition” is useful. “You’re not a very clear writer” isn’t. The first gives the writer something specific to fix. The second gives them a reason to stop coming to meetings.

Focus on craft elements: plot structure, character consistency, pacing, dialogue, scene construction, voice.

These are the things that matter most and the things writers need outside eyes for. Grammar and spelling are secondary, and they get fixed in copyediting. A critique group’s job is to catch the structural and storytelling problems that spellcheck can’t find. I don’t attend critique groups anymore, because too many of them fixate on the little things. When I draft a book, spelling and proofreading are the editor’s job. I’m looking for the big things: whether it says what it should and whether the style is right.

Be specific. “I liked it” is useless. “I didn’t like it” is worse. “The opening scene pulled me in but I lost track of the timeline in chapter three when the flashback started without a clear transition” is something a writer can work with. Point to specific passages. Explain what worked, what didn’t, and why.

Start with what works before getting into what doesn’t. Identifying strengths is useful in its own right, because writers need to know what’s landing so they can do more of it. If every session is pure criticism, people burn out and quit. I think groups that pride themselves on brutality are mostly feeding somebody’s ego at the newest members’ expense.

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis both belonged to the Inklings, the Oxford circle of writers who met for years, often at the Eagle and Child pub, and read their work in progress to each other. Tolkien shared his stories with Lewis long before The Lord of the Rings reached print, and Lewis later wrote to publishers on its behalf.

In a 1965 letter, Tolkien said what he owed Lewis was “sheer encouragement” and that Lewis “was for long my only audience,” according to Newsweek. “Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby,” Tolkien wrote.

I think about that letter every time someone defends a brutal critique group. The Lord of the Rings got finished with a friend in the room who kept telling its author the work was worth doing, and I’d bet plenty of good books have died for lack of that.

How should writers take critique?

Don’t argue. Don’t defend. Don’t explain what you meant. If you have to explain what you meant, the writing didn’t communicate it, and that’s the feedback. Sit, listen, take notes, and process it later. The impulse to defend your work in the moment is natural and you need to override it every single time.

You don’t have to accept every suggestion. Some feedback won’t apply. Some will reflect the critiquer’s preferences instead of a problem with your work. Your job is to listen to all of it, think about it after the meeting, and decide which changes improve the work. It’s your story. You make the final call.

Ask for specific feedback when you need it. If you’re worried about pacing in act two, say so before the group reads the piece. Targeted questions get you more useful answers than an open-ended “what do you think?”

What if a critique group hurt you?

Then you met the wrong group, and you’re far from alone. A woman posted in a memoir group recently that she’d joined a writers’ group years ago, got torn apart, went back a few times and never shared again. She’d journaled her whole life and written her way through some hard years, and one bad room was enough to keep her quiet for a long time after.

A cruel critique group doesn’t fix anyone’s writing. It teaches a writer to stop showing it to people. I’ve spent a lot of hours in critique circles, at the East Lake Writers’ Workshop and in the science fiction and fantasy group I ran in Clearwater for about a year, and the good ones all had the same thing in common: rules about how feedback gets delivered, and somebody willing to enforce them.

If you’ve been burned, don’t swear off feedback. Shop for a group the way you’d shop for a doctor. Sit in on a session before you share anything. Watch how the regulars treat a newcomer’s pages. Look for groups with written guidelines, and for the people who say what works before they say what doesn’t. One trusted reader who wants your book to succeed is worth more than a room full of people who want to sound smart.

Common Problems

The most common problem in critique groups is one person dominating the conversation. If you’re running the group, manage the time. Give each critiquer a set amount of time per piece and enforce it. Everyone’s feedback matters, and the quiet members often have the best observations.

The second most common problem is members who can’t take criticism.

If someone argues with every piece of feedback or gets visibly upset every session, they’re going to poison the group’s willingness to be honest, and a group where people pull their punches to protect one person’s feelings is useless. I’d rather lose one member than watch eleven others start lying to each other about their pages. Address it directly or the group dies.

The third problem is inconsistent attendance. A critique group only works if people show up regularly. Members who drift in and out don’t develop relationships with the other writers’ work and can’t give informed feedback on ongoing projects. Set attendance expectations early.

A Note for Ghostwriters

If you’re a ghostwriter, don’t bring client work to a critique group without explicit written permission from your client. Reading ghostwritten material in any public setting, including a small private group, is a breach of confidentiality. Trust and discretion are the foundation of the ghostwriting profession. If you need feedback on your craft, bring your own personal writing projects instead.

Breaking a client’s confidence to get notes on a chapter is inexcusable, and a ghostwriter who does it deserves to lose the client. For your own work, I can’t think of a cheaper way to find out how your pages land than a room of writers who’ll tell you the truth, and the writers who avoid that room out of pride tend to stay stuck the longest.