Boiling Frogs
Posted By Vonna on October 5, 2009
I have a rather horrible analogy for critique groups to share with you today.
Now, I have no idea if this is true, and I have no intentions of experimenting in order to find out, but the idea goes like this:
If you put a frog into a pan of boiling water, it will jump out immediately.
But, if you put a frog into a pan of comfortably warm water then slowly raise the temperature to boiling, the frog will stay there.
In writing critique groups, if your partners read fifty pages of your manuscript all at once, they can usually tell at once if your story is flawed, thus giving you an opportunity to fix it right away.
But, if your group only meets twice a month or even weekly, reading five to seven pages each time, it can take up to five months for them to read the same fifty pages.
And if your book starts out with a bang—everybody likes your characters, setting, plot, etc.,—your partners may be predisposed to see your next installment with less critical eyes. Though each chapter may shine on its own, big picture issues can become fuzzy.
So five months—or worse, two years—later you realize that you are sitting in a pan of boiling water.
I am not about to give up my weekly and twice-monthly critique sessions, but recently some of my writing buddies and I have decided to do more extensive critiques on a regular basis. This is not an undertaking for the faint of heart. Giving or receiving bad news on over twelve thousand words of a novel at once takes courage. But this is the level where agents or editors will see your work when they request a partial or full. And all told, I would rather be scalded than boiled.
We are still working out the nitty-gritty details of our new critique format, like should we meet every four or six weeks, how many pages at once, how much time for discussion, and should we have lunch, cookies or both, etc. Anyone out there work with longer critique sessions? What solutions have worked for your critique group?
I SO agree. When I beta I always want to read big sections (50-100 pages if not the whole manuscript). You just can’t get a feel for pacing and plot if you don’t read a bunch at once. My critique group sends half or full manuscripts to each other. It takes a few weeks for us to get back to each other but the advice is excellent.
Love the topic! CG’s usually have room for addition/adjustment. Don’t want to be caught staring dully out of a pan of warmish water.