I’ve thought about trying to find a couple of serious crit partners, but I’ve decided against it. I already have two, one who is an avid reader and the other who is a fellow author, but sometimes they are too close and might not have a critical enough eye. They love me too much! :0) But the critical eye thing is why I wouldn’t make a good partner for an author trying to make their book the very best it can be. Because when I read, I want to be entertained. I want to be barely able to put the book down. And that’s my main criteria for a good book. I don’t want to get hung up on every little, teeny thing that other people might see as something that should be changed. I just don’t want to get bored. So I would probably be too easy on the author’s work. If I like it and it takes me away for awhile, I don’t care if it isn’t perfect. And I think most readers (who aren’t writers) feel that way. And even though I’m a writer, I’m not so critical of other people’s work. I know of an indie author who a lot of the other indies say is SO good. And she’s done well. But after reading the first book in the series, I’m thinking that I really don’t want to read more. After I got about halfway through the book, I started getting a little bored. If other authors say her writing is good, then maybe it is. But I don’t really like it that well. I HAVE to be entertained. That’s why I don’t like most classic literature. It’s kind of the same way with movies. If the critics don’t like it, I probably will. They don’t look at entertainment value, they look at picky little things that normal movie goers couldn’t care less about.
After saying all that, I do want to make it clear that I AM very critical of misspelled words, glaring grammatical errors, and terrible punctuation. There’s really no excuse for a lot of that. If you’re not a good proofreader, hire someone to do it for you. In fact, when I read some of the indie work, I feel like saying, “I wish you had called me! I would have only charged about $30 to proof this.” Now, I’m not saying I always catch everything. Sometimes you are too close to your work and miss things. (Or maybe you’ve proofed someone else’s work and it had so many errors it was hard to catch them all.) But I’ve only been made aware of about 3 errors in my books (there may be more that no one has caught or said anything about; I hope people will tell me so I can fix them). Even traditionally published books have that many or more. But some of the books I’ve read recently have 4 or 5 errors in EVERY chapter. One author, after getting a bad review for so many errors, stated that she actually had paid someone to edit. If I ever edited a book and it still had errors, I would drop everything and make corrections free of charge until it was right. I would never charge for editing it again if it was my fault it didn’t get caught in the first place. And I hope the author I referred to went back to her editor and demanded the corrections.
Whew, it seems like I digressed. All this was sort of part of the same thought, but it kind of came across disjointed. That’s ok. It’s just my blog and I can ramble if I want to. LOL
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I’ve been a crit partner, and used crit partner, at various times. Sometimes I’ve enjoyed it, especially when the fellow authors are professional enough to take my criticisms in stride and to use them properly. Nothing gets my ire up like a writer who asks for criticism, then blows up and acts like a child over it.
But I haven’t done any crit work in a while, and am not planning to. I just don’t have the time. It’s the same reason I no longer help out editor friends by reading slush for them, or helping out in other ways with their books, ezines, magazines, etc. It takes all my time just to write and do self promotions.
I don’t have a lot of disposable time. LOL. But my husband lost his job recently and I would really love to pick up either some editing work (grammatical errors, typos, horrible punctuation) or formatting books for Kindle or Smashwords. Formatting isn’t hard at all, but some people just don’t get it. But I don’t think I would be good at actually critiquing.
I know what you mean about writers getting mad when you just tell the truth. I know it hurts, and I’ve had to develop a really thick skin, but it helps in the long run. I mean, if an author truly disagrees with something you’ve suggested, it can be done with class. And they may not make the change. But if they ask your opinion, they need to take it in stride and appreciate it.
It sounds like you’d be an awesome beta reader. Some readers are better at different things, and at the end of a first draft, I think it’s great to have someone go through and say, yes, this really entertained and here’s what I liked; or to have them say, this is how far I got before it totally tanked for me and here’s where I think you derailed. That kind of critique is just as valuable, if not moreso, than the person who find the picky stuff. To me, that’s as much a crit partner job as anything else.
I don’t take on a lot of new crit stuff anymore. Kait keeps me pretty busy, I occasionally get stuff to look over from Zoe, I’ve got my own stuff, and I have an insane TBR pile. But when I did more first looks, I was usually pretty gentle in a first read with a new person. This would be for a work in progress, not something that was finished and they were thinking about putting out soon. When you know they’re still working, I think you have more leeway to ease into the critique relationship, and kind of get a gauge of where this person is in their ability to handle criticism. If they’ve never had honest critique before, and they really think they’ve written something awesome and nearly perfect, it’s going to be a huge shock to find out that they’ve Mary-Sue’d all over, gone off on 20 irredeemable tangents, and have a voice so mired in purple prose you want to puke from it. Say all that at once, and naturally they’re going to be upset and defensive. It’s human nature, and just like the writing can be improved with time and work, so can their ability to accept criticism. But if you see potential, you can focus on some basics first, and hopefully you’ll get a chance to work on the other stuff in time.
And then, of course, some people will never be open to it, never get better, and there’s no working with them.
I think I’m babbling, because this should be the part where I wrap up what my point was, except that I forgot what it was. If I had one. Which I’m totally not sure about.
Yeah, I think I could be a beta reader. I could definitely tell someone that a read was really entertaining without getting into the details. If the story worked for me and I didn’t get bored, they are at least on the right track. (I did some beta reading for Zoe.) But, sometimes, even the details seem to be subjective. You can tell that by looking at an author’s reviews and seeing both 1 star and 5 star reviews for the same work. When a book is finally a finished product, you’re still going to get so many different opinions. For instance, you might have one reader say the characters were developed well and another reader may say that the characters were not developed at all. This business of reading and writing can be quite puzzling sometimes. LOL