Critique services worth it?

I don't think I've encountered anyone on this board (myself included) who has any business holding themselves out as any kind of expert on writing or publishing. Sure, we can give feedback and advice as fellow-seekers, we can give responses as betas, and some of us have developed expertise in tiny areas (like grammar) and can share knowledge rather than application, but anything beyond that? No.

The business side of things? Well, none of us is an expert on that, but I think some people on the board at least have interesting experiences to share.

But the writing side? Way too subjective.

 

This is my view as well. If we can't do that, the forum becomes an unpleasant place to hang out.

 

Lots of completely newbie writers read these boards, many of them lurking. They're likely to think anybody posting on a writer's forum has much more expertise than the poster probably does. So it's very important to correct misinformation, and present opposing viewpoints. Including adding strength to those who share your views.

And there is a lot of misinformation presented.

Besides, behaviour which makes the board unpleasant is clearly subjective... and we all have writing issues we feel strongly about, and will put our point forward strongly over pages and pages and discussion - including those of you claiming we should just agree to disagree.

 

Exactly. But there is a lot of difference between pointing out what you (the generic 'you') think is misinformation and calling another person a troll, or referring to their opinions as 'grenades.' That's the point I was trying to make. I would like people to keep to the topics, rather than take personal potshots at one another every time an issue raises opposing views.

Interestingly, I don't believe that all first-time authors necessarily need to get professional opinions or pay an editor before publishing or approaching agents. I think it can be an extremely good idea if the resources are available, but it's not a requirement. Many people get published without going that route, like our own @Laurin Kelly . But if another forum member, like @EdFromNY , thinks that IS something all new authors should do, I wouldn't accuse them of trolling, or imply that their opinion is a grenade. It's just their opinion, however strongly held and worded, which I don't completely share.

If you disagree with an opinion, just point out why you think the opinion is wrong, make your case in a persuasive way, and that should take care of any newbies who are browsing the forum. They'll see both sides of the argument, and realise there is more than one way to do this writing gig. And they won't be put off the forum itself, by witnessing unpleasant exchanges between members. Instead, they'll realise this is a friendly group of people and a safe place to discuss diverse opinions on writing issues. Isn't that what we all want? I know it's what I hope the forum is like.

 

I don't do that "every time" I have opposing views. I believed what I said and didn't say it to be insulting, but because I think it's problematic.

Having an opinion is not what I referred to as troll behaviour. I've disagreed with you many times, and Lost the Plot many times, and others many times, and never suggested any of you are behaving like trolls.

You can keep telling me this, but it wasn't me who first got personal.

 

Well, the derail has gone on long enough, so let’s get back on topic. Thanks.

 

I wouldn't make this assumption. You never know who you are really talking to in a place like this. But I do consider myself an writing expert and I'm probably not the only one. I like hanging around here and talking to you guys because it's fun and a place to discuss ideas with like-minded people. I don't know. What makes people an expert? Publications? Degrees? Resume? Do you guys really not consider yourself experts when it comes to writing? I know some people on here are new to writing, but a lot of us have been at this for a while. And some of us do live (survive) off writing. I don't know if that makes you an expert, but I'm decent enough to eat most days.

 

Who on this board would you consider to be enough of an authority that you would treat them as more than a beta?

 

Well, I'm not really here looking for betas and authority figures. Just wanted to make some new friends.

Also, I don't think everyone mentions all their qualifications when posting and that's more than okay. I am far more likely to share my misery on here than my success.

 

So you don't want to ask anyone on the board to be a beta or an authority, but if you were going to... who would you pick? Who here do you think knows enough about writing that they'd be able to give you meaningful, authoritative guidance?

The answer for me is "nobody". There's nobody on this board that I think knows enough about writing to teach me. Suggestions, sure, feedback, sure, but teaching? Read editing? Nobody. I'm surprised you don't feel the same... but I'm certainly curious to hear who you feel is an authority.

 

I have done a little betaing but not much. I think sometimes people just click with your work and you with their work. But I don't need someone to teach me how to write. I already have an MFA and am somewhat of a professional. That being said there is one person around here that stands out for me and that I have shared my writing with and some bits about my background or where I'm publishing that I haven't shared publicly. I wasn't looking for an authority on writing and really didn't have much in the way of expectations, but this user I would definitely call a writing friend. I take what they say seriously, and I can tell they are very smart. If this person reads this, they will totally know I am talking about them, but I don't know how they would feel about me singling them out the way it seems like you're looking for. I do hope people on here and in life are lucky enough to make these kinds of connections.

 

Yeah, I think lots of us have "writing friends", betas, crit partners, etc., either on this board or elsewhere.

To me, that's a whole different thing from someone I'd consider an expert on writing.

 

What makes someone an expert to you? The person I'm talking about just seems to know what they're saying and are usually right. It's very easy to see where someone's taste level is and usually skills follow suit. But if you think we're all such a bunch of blind leading the blind, what's the point? Are you the only expert? I don't think it's fair to assume no one here knows what they're talking about. I've never doubted you. I guess until now when you're saying we're all a bunch of useless hacks. What gives?

 

I've already said I don't think I'm an expert.

And if you're in a position to "know" that what the other person is saying is "right", then you don't really need the other person, do you? I mean, as a colleague or sounding board or whatever, fine, but not as someone who can teach you.

For me, there's a significant distance between "no one here knows what they're talking about", "all a bunch of useless hacks", etc. and people being experts who are good enough at writing in general to hold themselves up as people who can be teaching others. I think most of the people on this board are somewhere in that significant distance. They're not useless hacks, and they're not experts.

 

It's funny, but someone can almost become an expert overnight. Sure, they worked years at it... and then it was recognized. Happens all the time. I'm not saying people should be delusional, but sometimes we make it (whatever that mean). Instant expert? Perhaps. But I don't know how important that is for discussions around here. Maybe more so for critique and beta reading, which I really don't see as the number one way to improve one's writing by any means. You haven't said what you would consider an expert to be. I'm quite curious.

 

Jesus H. Christ! Enough BS from all of you already. Have you forgotten amidst your inflated egos, that the OP actually ASKED for advice on editing? Do any of you even remember who the OP was????

X is the mathematical term for an unknown quantiy
spurt is a drip or stream under pressure
Therefore an X-spurt is an unknown drip under pressure which is what we all are.

Ding-ding, ding-ding, @Lew, troll, departing this thread!

 

Dear @Kwills79
Sorry that your question has generated so much BS. I hope you don't hold it against those of us who remember what this forum is supposed to be about - that is helping/supporting each other in our writing endeavors.
If you are a rookie, then by all means get someone to professionally edit your book - either paid or volunteer. You will learn so much from that experience. Take their advice with a grain of salt, remembering that they know a lot, but it is your story.
Good luck & happy writing.

 

If a new author does want to pay for a professional opinion on their writing before they submit for publication, and does NOT want to be taken for a ride by charlatans (and they are certainly out there in droves), I'd be interested to hear how you'd go about finding these good editor/advisors.

If you want to find a qualified doctor or dentist, there are organisations you can consult ...because these people need to be licensed to practice. But freelance editors? Dunno.

Looking for an editor via a publishing house seems to be a non-starter, because these are people who are busy working for the publishing house. Freelance people with plenty of qualifications and experience, who do this for a living, are the ones I'd be interested in finding. And I reckon you can't go by their own assessment of their abilities.

I was thinking about this the other day, when this thread first started ...wondering how to find these people if I wanted to. I do happen to know a few people who might be able to give me contacts, but that's basically it. Is it always a laborious process of research, research? Is it always down to who you know?

It would be lovely to go to a website that contains ONLY qualified and successful freelance editors, pick the one that seems to suit your requirements and contact them ...safe in the knowledge that they're who they say they are and actually do editing that's worthwhile. It might end up that you're not a good fit with them, but at least you won't be cheated. If that website exists, it would be excellent to know.

 

Sometimes we don't all agree about what helps. That lack of agreement, and voicing it, doesn't reflect a lack of desire to help, and it's a little offensive to imply otherwise.

Edited to add: Wait a minute. The original poster ASKED if critique services are worth it. Why the suggestion that it's off topic to discuss...whether critique services are worth it? Arr?

 

I'm not sure I believe in someone being an expert in all fields of writing, or all fields of fiction. I don't know how someone could be.

But if I found someone whose writing I admired and wished to emulate, I'd definitely want to hear more from that person about my own writing. If I found someone who is vouched for by authors whose writing I admired and wished to emulate, I'd want to hear more from that person about my own writing. So I guess I'd consider these people experts? They've demonstrated it through their accomplishments.

If someone is an expert, why wouldn't that expertise be demonstrated via accomplishments? I don't mean commercial success, necessarily, but I mean the ability to produce work that I admire and wish to emulate. And since one of the criteria I would like to emulate in writing is commercial success, sales could definitely be a factor. Or at least publication with good publishers.

None of this means that I don't value the contributions other members of this forum have made to my writing. But they've made those contributions as colleagues, fellow-writers, fellow-readers... not experts. I wouldn't pay any of them for their services, except the payment of owing them a favour and being willing to return it on request.

I have no idea, beyond word of mouth and keeping your fingers crossed. I think this is definitely one of the things that makes me reluctant to ever recommend that newer writers pay for editing. How the hell do you know it's going to be useful?

And there's the old trap of not necessarily realizing when someone is giving you good advice, because it's not the advice you want to hear. If I judge an editor's advice by whether I agree with it, then why did I need to pay an editor in the first place? Apparently I already knew what needed to be done.

If I sent sample chapters to two editors, and one of them said "this is really, really good and almost ready to go, but I've just made a few suggested changes to smooth things out," and one said "this really doesn't work at all; you're totally lacking in structure and need to take a hard look at where this is going," then I'm likely to agree with the first one, since I presumably wouldn't have sent the pages away if I didn't think they were pretty good. But that doesn't mean the first editor is right.

It'd be nice to think that we're all better judges than that and have a fair idea of the quality of our writing, but I see posts every day from people who think their writing is strong when it obviously isn't. How are we supposed to know we aren't like those people, deluding ourselves that we're better than we are? We think we're doing fine, but they think they're doing fine, too.

The subjectivity of writing is one of the big frustrations of it all, for sure. And one of the fun challenges!

 

I think you touch on the most important thing here. How we perceive criticism is based on how we see our own writing already. For some that means believing anyone who says their work is great, for others it means believing anyone who says their work is terrible. Neither way is really great in terms of making your work better because we're all subject to confirmation bias. It's easy to look at feedback from anyone and decide that obviously this is amazing feedback simply because it tells us what we expected to hear back. And in some sense I can see the use in that, at least it makes you more self-aware in your work. Hopefully you know if this scene really drags. But if you know that, then, well you were just sending it to a reader in the hopes they'll tell you not to change something you think you should.

I think the best way to illustrate this is to think about the worst case example for getting feedback. Say I've brought a best selling book back in time, to before anyone has heard of it and asked for feedback. This book is already definitely publishable, definitely good enough to be successful, definitely will do great in it's present for. And now I take that book to an editor who looks at it and tells me that it's really not good. Is that good feedback? The guy might actually be right. For real, he might. After all, no-one said that a bestselling book has to be a literary marvel. But I think every author would be happy to release a best seller and our goal is to sell books, not just write them. The advice might be right, it might be bang on about how tropetastic and formulaic this book is. But changing that might well make your book impossible to sell; after all it's no longer a mass market best seller, it's something more complex and interesting but also less commercially viable too.

This would be an example of feedback that is well intentioned and is genuinely correct but that hurts you as a writer trying to be published. And equally that can run the other way; an editor who is pushing you to be commercial above all and advises you to drain out everything that makes your book unique and interesting. Now maybe that's advice that might help you get published, but are you going to take that advice and turn your ambitious work into Dan Brown? Ideally being better written and more interesting would also make your work more commercial, but I think we all know that's not true.

I think that it's genuinely a problem when you pay for this kind of critique. There's definitely a tendency to think that something you paid for is something that must be correct, no matter how much you disagree with it. But you still need to treat feedback with caution and think about what any changes are aimed at doing. Is it something that the book is unpublishable without? Or is it to hedge towards being more commercial? Or is it to make a book more literary and conceptual? Or is it a matter of taste? Would any reader tell you this guy sucks? Or is this someone who thinks this popular character type has been done too much?

 

I use Reedsy.
Read some of the third party articles written about the services they provide and, if satisfied... dive right on in! Reedsy does require their pool of professionals to meet certain criteria, that their resume is truthful and that they've worked on best selling books. The profiles are reviewed by Reedsy staff (or so they claim), not just rubber stamped by a software program.

If you're confident it's the place for you, by all means join up and start shopping for an editor. When you're ready to submit a manuscript you'll be asked to choose up to five editors; introduce yourself, describe your WIP and attach a favorite chapter, one that puts your best foot forward. Depending on the response you'll hopefully have a good feel who among the five you'd most like to work with. Of the five I contacted, four said they loved the sample chapter and wanted to work with us, the remaining one said that she no longer does developmental editing. One of the editors had The Martian among his portfolio pieces, and gave us quite the compliment. In the end I thought it better to choose a female editor, as the story is aggressively feminine, plus, she'd worked on a few books I'd read and really enjoyed. To be honest, the process is a bit scary. You do have to put yourself out there and let your prose do the talking.

Really, the fees involved aren't breathtaking. Thus far (two rounds of edits on the first four chapters of the book), I'm well satisfied with the results. Our editor knows her stuff and she has a great bedside manner. If you wish to be a professional, then my advice is to mix with professionals.

 

Yeah, I would consider that kind of number as nothing short of staggering. At the bottom end, that's almost a months salary. At the top that's five months rent. And that's the context that you really have to put these figures into. Even that low end figure would be the single most expensive thing I've ever done in my life, on par with what I've just paid to move house (admin, rent, deposit, movers all taken together was about £1800) and more than my last car too. And of course I write two or three books a year. We'd be talking about spending almost half my gross income just on editing.

Not if it comes at that kind of price. It's your money and you can spend it however you want to. But even for those making a good living, this is not the kind of money that almost anyone can be casual about spending, especially when 'mixing with professionals' still leaves you sending submissions to agents and waiting to hear back for weeks, just like every other monkey with a keyboard.