All About Writing Groups

(The text below is the collected wisdom of several years' worth of writing teachers, distilled into a single lecture for your edification. This essay was last updated September 7, 2006. It is copyright 2006 by Jennifer Pelland, and cannot be redistributed without my express permission.)

How to find a writing group:

There are lots of online writing groups, but there's nothing like sitting around a table with a mob of other writers, exchanging critiques face-to-face. So how do you go about finding a good local group?

1. Check your local bookstore's bulletin board, or ask the folks working there if they know of any groups. If you have a local science fiction bookstore, that's even better. Check coffee shops as well.

2. If you have local science fiction conventions, or even not-so-local conventions, attend them and network with authors to see if they know of any groups that are open to new members. If the convention has a free writing workshop, attend it and see if any of the other folks there have heard of any local writing groups. Also check out the flyers and notices area at the convention.

3. Google is your friend. Try a web search. Go to Meetup.com and see if there's anything fitting the bill in your neck of the woods.

4. If you attend a writing class, see if any of the other students know of a good writing group that's open to new members.

If you're successful and find a writing group that's open to new members, now you have to vet it:

1. If it's not specifically a SF/F group, ask them how comfortable they would be critiquing genre work. Ask what kinds of fiction the rest of the members submit. If they're mostly writing in styles that you don't like, and no one else will be submitting genre work, then you might want to move on.

2. Find out how many members are in the group, how often they meet, and what their critique submission rates are. Some groups meet weekly, some groups only meet a few times a year. Some groups critique up to ten stories at a meeting, others critique two or three. You want to make sure that you don't get in over your head, or worse, sign up with a group that'll only get around to you once a year.

3. Ask about their critique style and policies. Some groups literally will not let you say a single negative thing about other member's submissions. On the other side of the equation, some groups tear all submissions to shreds. Make sure the group's style matches what you need as a writer. (I myself am highly skeptical about the support group style of crit group. I don't know how you can get better if no one points out the negatives.)

4. Finally, ask about the goals of the other members of the group. If you're serious about publication, then you want to join a group where the bulk of the members are submitting their work to professional markets. Even better is if some of the members are published.

At this point, if they're comfortable with you and you with them, attend a trial meeting to see if you like them.

How to start a writing group:

If you can't find a good local group to join, then you might need to start your own. If so, then a lot of the steps above still apply. You'll want to network with folks at local conventions and fellow students in writing workshops. You might even want to venture onto the Internet or post signs in bookstores and coffee shops.

Here's how I formed mine.

I live just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. In 2002, I attended WisCon, which takes place in Madison, Wisconsin, which is over 1,000 miles away. I participated in their free writing workshop, and in it was a really sharp critiquer who lived about twenty minutes away from my house. Later that weekend, I met someone else who'd also participated in the workshop (with a different instructor) who lived about thirty minutes away from me. I asked both if they were interested in forming a writing group, and they said yes. When I got home, I went online to a women's genre writers community called Broad Universe and put out a call for Boston-area authors looking for a writing group. I netted about five people that way. A couple of them left when it became clear that either their schedules didn't fit the group's or that their styles didn't. That fall, I attended the Viable Paradise workshop on Martha's Vineyard, and every Boston-area participant asked if the writing group was accepting new people. Three joined.

So, I formed my group by networking in all the right places. I didn't have to deal with any overly-clueless potential members because I only networked in clueful places. And in the past four years, we've only ever had to ask one person to leave. Her goals were so wildly different from everyone else's in the group that we had a hard time critiquing her. Plus, she was a bad critiquee. Which leads me to the final point.

How to behave in a writing group:

Most groups follow a very standard format: each of the critiquers speaks for 3-5 minutes in turn, and the critiquee has to sit silently until they're all done. Why? Because that way, the critiquee can't rebut every negative statement. This is important for two reasons:

1. It forces the critquee to listen. If you're spouting rebuttals every thirty seconds, you're not absorbing, you're defending.

2. You can't defend your story to an editor, so defending it to the people who are trying to help you with it is pointless.

So, when you're the critiquee, sit, listen, take notes, and thank people. Do not sigh, to not make faces, do not whimper, do not groan and bury your head in your hands*. When they're all done with their 5-minute crits, then you can speak. It's important at this point not to get defensive. Instead of saying, "None of you got what I was trying to do!" say, "Well, I was trying to convey X, but since none of you got that, it means I didn't do a very good job of it." Instead of saying, "The meringue metaphor conveys his deep-seated fear of drowning in a giant vat of lotion," you should say, "If I made it more lemony, would that make sense?" At this point, you can have a little discussion about ideas you've come up with during the course of the critique, or see if folks have concrete suggestions for you on how to fix the things that no one got. But remember to be gracious. These people have just put a lot of effort into helping you make your story better, and if you're at all hostile, then next time one of your stories comes up, they will be too.

(* You can get away with all of the above if you do it sparingly, with comedy, and once your group is well-established and you all know that this isn't a sign of you shutting down, but instead a sign of you blowing off a smidge of silent steam.)

When you're a critiquer, your responsibility is to be fair and thorough. Read the story through twice, and be sure to prepare written or typed notes that you can read from during your oral critique and then hand over to the critiquee. If you jot notes in the manuscript, make sure they're legible and helpful. Always remember that the point of your critique is to help make the story stronger. Identify its strengths as well as its weaknesses. Be honest*, but be helpful. And remember, this is not your story. Feel free to offer suggestions for improvement, but don't rewrite it, and don't try to make the author change it into something entirely different.

(* The exception to this rule is if you're at a convention workshop and have to critique a story by a rank beginner that seems to have no redeeming qualities. This will happen to you some day, guaranteed. At that point, remember that we all have to start somewhere, and be more generous than you feel is warranted when pointing out the good points of the story. Then when discussing what needs to be improved, just focus on the big stuff, and phrase your critiques in a way that are generally instructive. For instance, if the ending is far too abrupt and random, say that the end of the story should flow naturally from the plot while still being somewhat surprising, and that it should be weighty enough to properly balance the story.)

You'd think this would go without saying, but never make your critiques personal. I've heard many tales of woe about critique groups that seemingly exist only to give the critiquers a chance to feel good about themselves by savaging someone else. These groups are poisonous. No one becomes a better writer this way, they just become meaner. If you find that you've stumbled into one of these groups, run away. It's better not to have a critique group than to have one like that.

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