Tags
My WIP critique group met this week to discuss my Lara novel as a whole. I can’t express how much I appreciate them taking time away from their own work to read all 265 pages in a month.
What I learned:
- The novel works. It has flaws and inconsistencies, but it works.
- I was worried about pacing. it was fine.
- When I started the Lara project five years and about ten drafts ago, I structured the story arc to start and end in the same location. I liked the bookend nature of having the main character and the “mother figure” meet in the first scene and say goodbye in the last scene. My critique partners didn’t agree. Several of them pointed to another scene that would make a more powerful epiphanic ending. Now I have to rethink the whole ending.
- I was worried that the story was too dark. The readers thought it was dark, but not too dark. Two of the characters have cancer and Lara was abused as a child – it’s not a happy go-lucky story but things work out in the end.
- The readers were engaged in Lara’s work life and love life enough to have questions about the finer points of her job.
- Revenge doesn’t need to be complicated but it does need to be dramatic. My critique buddies wanted to see fireworks.
- Copyediting is a skill I don’t have, but other people do. I am indebted to my critique partners for their lessons on comma use and capitalization.
I’m now looking at the novel with new eyes. Simplicity is what I need to strive for in the next draft.
Related posts:
Alpha readers vs. beta readers
Alphas & Betas
Scribbling In The Storage Room 
Excellent that they agreed to critique your whole novel 🙂
Good luck with the revisions honey xx
I love my WIP group. We usually critique a few chapters per meeting but allow for a whole novel every couple of months. At first, I was leery of reading and commenting on 200-300 pages of not-quite-there-yet texts. It has been fabulous. It’s always easier to see the flaws in someone else’s work. Every time I read a WIP, I learn something that will strengthen my own work.
There’s nothing like critique partners to point you in the right direction for revisions. I don’t know what I’d do without mine.
Thanks for sharing your experience about rewriting the ending in such a calm manner. It gives me strength to face my own critique and changes! Oh, and thanks for stopping by the nut-tree and commenting.
~Just Jill
What a great group – rare to find people willing to read an entire novel draft. Hard to let go of a cherished ending but in some ways it is the least important part of the novel (providing it feels right to the reader – if it is inappropriate or seems off balance then it will sour everything that went before)
Pingback: WIP IT GOOD Blog Hop | Elizabeth Hein
Sounds like it was a good experience all around! Our early drafts always have inconsistencies — heck, some even go to print with them fully intact. Be sure to take a breather before you dive into revisions.