Holly Black: How to Be Good Critiquers and Critique Partners

A few of Holly’s critique group tips:

• Achieve a balance between work and social—have fun but get the job done (says one attendee). Just don’t let the social take over.
• A critique group shouldn’t be scary or intimidating.
• In critiquing you have to be generous and willing to give away good ideas, but also work to find the right idea that works for your critique partners. You will inevitably influence each other, consciously or not.
• Everyone comes to groups with different strengths and it’s great to cultivate those strengths and use different critique partners for different things.
• You may be in groups where member have varying degrees of success. It can be hard as relationships have to adjust to this.
• Your job as a critique partner is helping make your partner write the story they want to tell.