It’s a new year, and with a new year comes new commitments and resolutions. One of which might be to try and expand upon your writing skills by joining a writers’ group.
There are, in my experience, two types of writers’ groups: ones where people read what they’ve written to a small group of other writers and critique one another’s work, and a second type in which a group agrees to be locked in a room where they write in “sprints,” meaning that they write non-stop for 15-25 minutes. The latter is a bit like a group of gym buddies that hold each other accountable to make progress on their writing goals. The former is what I want to talk about today.
A writers’ group is intended to be a place where you can bring your stories and get honest critique on what needs to be improved. Unfortunately, the most common problem you’re going to find with writers’ groups is that the criticism isn’t honest.
There are several reasons for this. The first and most innocent being that the other authors simply aren’t or don’t feel qualified to critique your work. If, for example, you bring a bunch of poetry to a group that normally deals with authors trying to write books, there’s a pretty good reason why the other authors won’t know how to criticize your writing. Not every novelist can write short stories, not every fiction writer knows how to craft nonfiction, the list goes on.
But most skilled writers can grasp at least the basics of any kind of storytelling. So, as long as you’re bringing a story you’ve written to a group of other skilled aspiring writers, there’s a pretty good chance that they will know what to point out regarding your writing. This brings you to the second problem with getting honest feedback: most aspiring writers aren’t very skilled.
There is a rule when it comes to fiction (and a lot of other things) called Sturgeon’s law: 90% of everything is crud. This applies to writing as well as everything else, and I can assure you, 90% of the stories written by aspiring writers in these groups are some variation of crud. Some are mediocre to the very core, like a really boring bowl of plain oatmeal – not offensive, but utterly bland. Some are an absolute turd from the very beginning, but have some strange golden nugget or two of good quality writing that make you wonder if they were written by the same person. And some few are complete and total crap from the very beginning. This last category is especially common among writers who are just starting out, because we’re all terrible at first. Part of the reason only 10% of everything is worth sifting through all the crud is because the good 10% is written by the people who stick it out when their first few tries are terrible.
So, a good number of writers in these groups aren’t going to give you much in the way of criticism simply because they don’t know what they’re doing any more than you do. But of course, the third reason honest advice is hard to come by in these fields is that people are afraid of hurting each other’s feelings.
This is probably the most annoying reason, because getting your feelings hurt is the risk you take when you seek out criticism. All improvement is going to require some unpleasant realizations. If your group is simply feeding each other praise and stroking their own egos, get out and find a new one immediately. No one is in less need of an ego boost than your average wannabe writer.
Funny thing is, there are groups who really don’t take kindly to honest criticism. Not just the writers themselves, but the actual group as a whole and the community behind it. I’ve had a group kick me out for being honest with a member who had asked us if her protagonist was likeable, and left the group entirely because I explained why she wasn’t and gave examples of how she could fix it.
Another issue I’ve run into with writing groups is when they quite literally were too sensitive to handle reading the works of the aspiring authors. In one case, I was kicked out of a group because I brought a chapter with too many horror elements (it was one of the chapters with the ghoul husks) for one of the other members, and she complained to the group’s leadership because my writing had made her feel uncomfortable. Don’t worry too much if you find yourself kicked out of groups like this; you’re wasting your time there, anyway.
Then there are the people who will criticize completely the wrong things about your work; I’m going to make another post next week about which criticism to ignore and which to take seriously, but in general, be careful with anyone who tries to give you criticism packaged in some sort of slogan, for example, “murder your darlings,” because there’s a pretty good chance they aren’t using the slogan correctly.
You might think from reading this that I don’t like or respect writers’ groups, but that’s not the case at all. They can be very helpful, even with writers who aren’t very talented yet. They can give you feedback on how the story makes them feel which you can compare to your intended audience reaction. They can spot spelling and typographical errors you didn’t catch yourself. They might have genuinely good advice on how to improve your writing or where you can look to find examples of better writing (for example, if you want better ways of revealing information about your world than just boring infodumps, Discworld is a good place to start).
Just remember that like most things in life, writers’ groups are subject to Sturgeon’s law.
