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September 16, 2010

Critique Week: Secrets of a Critique Partnership

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Today marks a milestone for me.  My first ever appearance guest-posting on another blog.  Woohoo!

I’m at Roni Loren’s blog today with a post on a critique partnership that works: mine.  With help from my critique partner, Margeanne Mitchell, I put together a humorous peek inside our relationship and tried to identify what makes it work so well—and how others can try to create a similarly supportive partnership.

So follow me over to Roni’s Fiction Groupie blog to get A Peek Inside a Successful Critique Partnership and then come back here to get details about a book giveaway.

And if you’re joining me from Roni’s blog, look for my previous post about making criticism work for you and check back next week when I’ll continue this series with more information about how to turn your critique partnership into the relationship you want.

And now…an Example

My critique partner and I thought it would be fun to show just how much critiquing can help your work.  This isn’t exactly a fair comparison, as it’s between a single typed-while-frustrated-because-Harlequin-lost-her-entry-the-first-time-around paragraph and an entire chapter, but it should work well enough for the purposes of this contest.  (Although I should mention that in addition to losing her first entry, this competition also erased all her italics and line breaks in the chapter itself, so this comparison really doesn’t work well, but we’re running with it anyway.)

  1. You’ve already checked out my post at Roni’s blog, right?  Good.
  2. Now go check out Margeanne’s entry in the Harlequin New Voices competition.
  3. See if you can find one of those infamous comma interlopers Margeanne hates so much in the non-critiqued Summary paragraph on that page.
  4. Read the critiqued Chapter One.
  5. Leave comments below with critique suggestions on her chapter.

Again, this series is all about how good and honest (yet respectful!) critiquing suggestions strengthen you, so please keep that in mind with all your comments.  And come back next week as this series continues with more about how to find that perfect critique partner.

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murphy

Great post!!!!

Murphy

murphy

Thank heavens (about the playing nice) . You did a great job today. 🙂
Murphy

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[…] Week extravaganza we’ve looked at how criticism can help us improve, we’ve learned what a successful critique partnership looks like, and we’ve identified our strengths and weaknesses so we’ll recognize our perfect […]

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[…] It’s probably a given that all good writers want to get even better.  Last week, I talked about how we can use criticism to improve our work, and I gave a peek inside a successful critique partnership. […]

Write Romance? Sign Up for Jami's New Workshop on the Romance Beat Sheet! Click here for more information...