Writers Groups – Critiquing Methods – Ruled to Death

Beware the Sayer of the Law

This is the last installment of a thread covering critiquing methods I’ve encountered in my writing career. This post is a catch-all for any workshop/critiquing group that hands you a list of rules you have to follow. I highlight three distinct types I’ve encountered.

Review
Finding a critique group that’s good for you is based on one question:

What is your goal/reason for being in a critique group?

 
My goal is simple and direct; improve my storytelling and storycrafting/increase my skill levels/learn my craft.

Rules
Any time or place a group of people get together for a single purpose, rules will apply. The best rules are those shaped by consensus and accepted democratically. They may be spoken, unspoken, written, tacked on a wall, handed out, understood, …
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MindMaster Case File 455: The UnResponsive Male

She opened my office door and the room temperature went up ten degrees. She wore a wide brimmed blue fedora that slipped down, covering her face slightly and it was the only loose thing she wore. She was shaped like an hourglass and it was only a few minutes past the hour. Her fedora matched her eyes and there was a cool shower of blond hair framing her northern european features. I noticed this even though I could hear my mother telling me it was impolite to stare.

The lady in the fedora said, “May I come in?”

I was going to comment that some of her all ready had but my tongue was too busy falling out the side of my mouth to form words. “Ungh-nghe,” I said.
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Characters Part 3 – Secondary Characters

Do they get a name? Are they uniquely described or identified?

 
Does a character provide focus but not often? Do other characters in the story know them by name or by some unique attribute or description?

Any character that gets a name or is unique description/identification is at least secondary and perhaps primary.

Naming Names
Any named character becomes important due to human psychology; describe someone as “a waiter” and we’ve described their function, describe someone as “Bobbie the waiter” and we’ve given them an identity.

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Sharon Marchisello – Pricing the Dead Body in Baggage Claim

Bad things happen at Gate 58a

Finance Professional and Murder Provocateur Sharon MarchiselloHello all and welcome to this week’s Author Interview Plunge. Today’s author is Sharon Marchisello. Sharon writes in two widely separate fields; personal finance and murder mysteries. Perhaps the intersection is that she knows how to get rid of your investment counselor permanently should your portfolio collapse.

I’m just wondering…
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Characters Part 2 – Primary Characters

What these people doing on these pages?

This is the third installment in a series I’m doing on StoryCrafting. We started with Revision and followed that with Characters Part 1 – Main, Principal, Central.

One of the comments I often get regarding my novel Empty Sky is the number of primary characters it contains.

Primary characters?

Yes! You know those characters that are neither main protagonist nor main antagonist yet without whom your story wouldn’t exist? Those are what I call primary characters. A working story with only two characters (and those two characters better be your protagonist and antagonist) is going to be either brilliant or short and perhaps both. Often those two characters needs to be complex to make the story interesting. A story with only one or two characters of only one- or two-dimensions that’s interesting…well, I haven’t read one (and am open to suggestion).

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