In my last post, I talked about revising my novel, Razor Mountain, and I mentioned that I was using Critters.org to get some feedback on the early chapters. I was sure that I had talked about Critters previously, in my “reference desk” series about useful tools for writers, but when I went back and looked through old posts, I was shocked to discover that there was no such post. Today, I’m going to remedy that.
Online Critique
I’ve written on a couple occasions about getting reader feedback and why it’s valuable. I think most writers will naturally understand the value of beta readers, editors, and improving writing through several drafts. Revisions without feedback are needlessly hobbled.
However, there’s more than one way to get feedback. An online critique group like Critters has some disadvantages: you won’t necessarily know everyone, and you aren’t engaging with readers face-to-face. You also don’t get to pick your readers, so the feedback may not be quite as tailored as a traditional writing group.
So why use an online critique group? Well, there are some advantages too. Online critique can be asynchronous, making it easier to avoid scheduling issues, and lower-pressure. Feedback is written out, which gives you a useful artifact that you can save and consult as needed during revisions. Since the group is less formal and doesn’t meet in the real world, people can come in and out according to their personal situations. In short, an online group like Critters is less formal than many in-person groups, which can be a good or bad thing.
Critters.org
Critters.org (and its pseudonym Critique.org) is an online writing workshop that has been around since 1995, with over 300,000 critiques in that time. The main, original workshop group is focused on speculative fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Since its inception, it has expanded to 17 different workshops covering most genres of fiction, mainstream and literary fiction, and other media such as comics, film, music, photography and more.
Critters is free to use, and always has been, surviving on goodwill donations. It is not exactly a svelte, modern, or flashy website. It still looks and functions a bit like a website from the 1990s—mostly text and links and a big top menu with dozens of pages. It is still maintained by the original founder, Andrew Burt, and a host of minion programs he has created. As a programmer, I feel right at home. For non-programmer writers, I imagine it’s a little bit off-putting.
The mechanics of critique are simple. Members can submit a manuscript via webpage or email by filling out some information and attaching their work. These pieces go into a queue, and each week a dozen or so are “released” to the group. Members then submit their critiques via webpage or email, and those critiques are forwarded to the authors.
To ensure that everyone gets good feedback, critiques must fulfill a minimum length (a paltry 200 words), and any member who wants their work sent out in the queue must submit a critique 75% of the time, or 3 out of every 4 weeks.
Cultivating Culture
A distributed group like this lives or dies by its culture. Plenty of message boards and chat rooms have fallen by the wayside because they didn’t moderate effectively, and became cesspools of hate speech and trolling. Critters has survived so long and continues to be successful because it has developed a culture of respectful and honest feedback.
When signing up for the group, new members are directed to several articles on the site about diplomatic language and effective critique. Authors are also warned that honest feedback can be hard to hear, and that some critiques are well-intentioned, but a little more blunt than you might like.
Members submitting critiques are also required to check a box stating that they have been diplomatic, which is obviously not hard for the malicious to overcome, but serves as a good reminder for those who are acting in good faith.
Of course, like any effective moderation policy, there are ways to escalate bigger issues. I’m sure there have been trolls in the past, but I suspect that Critters has the advantage of being a bit of a dusty niche of the internet, where troublemakers aren’t common and most people are putting forth some effort in order to improve their skills and their work.
My experience has been extremely positive. I have never had any outright problematic critiques, and I could count the number of overly-blunt or tone-deaf critiques on one hand. (Honestly, an occasional rough critique is probably good practice for being in this industry.)
Details
There are a few interesting little details about Critters that aren’t necessarily apparent unless you read through all the documentation up-front.
Partial Credits
Normally, an author submits a story and anyone who provides a critique of the minimum (200 word) length gets credit for participation that week, counting toward the 75% rule. However, if the story is short—under 2000 words—then any critiques will only count for half-credit. This is to encourage readers to critique longer stories, and not just focus on these quick reads. A half-credit does not count toward the 75% ratio until you’ve done two of them.
Critique Counts
It’s possible to see the current number of critiques submitted for each manuscript in the current week. These counts are updated in almost real time. Critters’ weeks run from Wednesday to Wednesday, and a lot of critiques come in over the weekend, so I like to look at the counts before I pick a story for critique. Sometimes one or two manuscripts will have very low counts, so I like to help those folks out. If someone already has 15 critiques, what are the odds that I’m going to be repeating things someone else has already pointed out?
In general, novel chapters get fewer critiques than complete stories, and longer stories get fewer critiques than shorter ones. So, you’re likely to get the most out of Critters if you write a lot of flash fiction, and considerably less if you write novels with long chapters.
RFDRs
RFDRs, or “Requests for Dedicated Readers” are submissions for novels, where the author is requesting volunteers to read the entire book and provide feedback. RFDRs often include chapters of the book, and anyone can still submit a critique for the submitted portion without signing up to read the whole book.
If a reader accepts an RFDR, they contact the author outside of Critters, typically by email, and coordinate the process. Because reading a whole novel is a big ask, completing an RFDR is worth one credit for every 5000 words of the book. So an 80,000-word novel, fully critiqued, would be worth 16 individual critiques! However, if the RFDR agreement is for the whole book, then the reader has to complete the whole thing to get credit. If they give up partway through, it’s up to the author whether they’ll still give credit for the work that was done.
My limited experience is that there are a lot of novels on Critters (about half of all submissions), and not very many people interested in RFDRs. This limits how much an author can get out of critique for a novel, since it takes a long time to send an entire novel through the queue, one or two chapters at a time, and not all readers will have read previous chapters to understand the full context.
Resets
The 75% participation ratio can be daunting, especially if you’re not used to critiquing. It’s easy to miss a couple weeks and fall behind.
I have been a member of Critters for years, but not continuously. I’ve taken months or years off, which will decimate the participation ratio. Luckily, this is a common issue. If you need to take time away, or you fall hopelessly behind, you can submit a request to have your participation ratio reset. You then only need to start submitting a critique each week to be back in good standing and have your work go out in the queue.
Giving and Receiving
Finally, I’ll reiterate something I mentioned on Twitter recently. It’s extremely useful to get feedback on a work in progress, but it’s equally valuable to critique the work of other authors. It’s practice for editing your own work with an unbiased eye. I have discovered problems in my own writing that were only apparent after I wrote critiques of other people’s stories. Sometimes it’s just easier to see an issue in someone else’s work than in your own.
Try It!
If you have a hard time getting a writing group together in the real world, or you simply prefer a less social, asynchronous, or easier-to-schedule option, Critters is a fantastic alternative. I’ve been using it for years, and there are plenty of professional and published authors who are members.
If you’re on the fence, I’d encourage you to give it a try. It’s as simple as submitting a story and doing a few critiques. You’ll likely get feedback from 5-20 people, and you can evaluate the quality for yourself.
Words Deferred 