Should You Let Your Critique Partners Know the Whole Story?

During the past couple of months, several members of my online critique group have decided to go back and rethink their stories. And as part of that rethinking, they’ve submitted their revised story outlines to the group for feedback. This strategy makes sense, since it’s always better to catch fatal flaws in a story before a writer dives too deeply into their manuscript.

I know some of you out there are pantsers who disdain outlines, but I find them a good way of keeping my stories from falling off the rails. Outlines don’t have to be super specific—just enough to remind you where you’re going. I  consider myself a heavy plotter, but experience has taught me my best ideas don’t occur to me until I write, which means I’m constantly going back and revising the outline—even when I'm nearing the final chapters! Whatever works, I suppose.

As far as my crit group is concerned, I’ve resisted the urge to submit any sort of outline. For one thing, my outline is in a continual state of flux, so there’s not much point in having others review it. But more importantly, I prefer my critique partners to read my chapters without any clue about what’s going to happen next. I don’t want their knowledge of the story to color their opinions. 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from critiques of my early chapters, it’s that when I do a poor job of leading the reader through the story, my critique partners tend to arrive at all sorts of erroneous (and often surprising) conclusions as to what really happened in the scene—conclusions that may not have occurred to them had they already known where the story was heading. In other words, if I'd given them knowledge a first time reader wouldn’t have access to, then I might have missed learning of these problems.

I want—no, I need—my critique partners to work under the same conditions that a first time reader would.

What about you? Do you let your crit partners know where the story is going ahead of time, or do you keep them in the dark as much as possible?

ChemistKen

Friday Links -- Volume 38

I spent most of the week on vacation, so not much progress on the writing front. You'd think that having all that time away from work would mean lots of writing time, but it never works out that way, no matter how many computers and writing pads I drag along with me.  I'm guessing I only managed about an hour of writing in six days. Almost makes me glad I'm back to work.

At least the week is ending well. We returned from our vacation to find that the family computer wouldn't start, no matter how many times we kicked it. Turned out the power supply was fried, so I picked up another one at a local store and now everything is back to normal. I wasn't too worried about my manuscripts. They're backed up on multiple computers as well as Dropbox, but every minute I spent getting the computer back up and running was one less minute I could spend writing.

Does anyone have any scary computer stories to tell?

Have a great weekend and enjoy the links!

ChemistKen


Having Trouble Plotting Forward? Try Plotting Backward

Hidden Emotions: How To Tell Readers What Characters Don’t Want To Show

Are You Showing or Telling Your Internalization?

How to build better relationships with your readers using Goodreads’ “Ask the Author” feature

Navigating the Next Frontier in Digital Publishing: Audiobooks

Mark Coker's Tips On How To Sell More Books

New Authors, Should You Self Publish or Seek a Traditional Publishing Deal?

Friday Links -- Volume 32

It's been a busy week for me.  After recovering from the Memorial Day weekend, I spent the rest of the week either reviewing or editing books for other writers, which explains my lack of a post on Wednesday.

Speaking of which, I posted a review of World Cup Mouse over at the Sher A Hart: Written Art blog, so if you're into fun MG books about soccer playing mice, be sure to check it out.

Have a great weekend!
ChemistKen

6 Steps to a Professional Amazon Author Page

15 Articles on Cover Design for Self-Publishers

Michael Crichton’s Method for Plotting Out a Story

Are You Serving Your Story?

How to Write a Sequel

A Journey through Theme Development

Another Look at the Subjunctive Mood

The Perils of October

My blog posts have been a bit erratic lately, but that’s not unusual for the month of October. Fall is my favorite time of year and I enjoy spending time outside, savoring the sights and smells of Autumn before they go away. (Fall doesn’t last long in Michigan) Best of all, the season culminates on Halloween, one of my favorite days of the year. As a result, my muse is firing away on all cylinders and it’s difficult to stay away from my manuscript -- especially since Halloween is the perfect time to be writing a story about Hogwarts and the wizardring world.

This year, however, I have the added workload of preparing for NaNoWriMo. Yep, I decided to go for it this year. I’ve known about NaNoWriMo and the challenge of "writing a novel in a month" for a couple of years now, but I’ve always declined to enter. My main reasons were:

1) I didn’t want to steal time away from my Hogwarts story.
2) I wasn’t ready to think about a new story.
3) I’m such a slow writer I couldn’t imagine writing 50,000 words in a month without having to throw away 90-95% of it anyway, so what was the point?

But these days I find myself more and more anxious to work on something I can actually publish, and NaNoWriMo seems like the perfect kick in the pants to jumpstart the process. I’ve had an idea for a story for a couple of years now (fantasy, magic, high school students) and this is my chance to lay the groundwork for my story.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks outlining and plotting, and as November approaches, I can feel it all coming together. I may still end up throwing away 50% of November’s writing once December rolls around, but that’s a number I can accept. Besides, I getting used to having to change 50% of chapters after my critique partner gets a hold of them anyway.

So I wish the best of luck to everyone else who’s participating in NaNoWriMo. I suspect this blog won’t be the only one to hit a lull in a week or so.