Don’t Monkey with Critiques
Have you ever been assigned to critique something that was written by a monkey dancing on a keyboard? Do you occasionally find yourself wondering if you have spent more time critiquing a piece than the author did writing it?
When I am assigned to critique something that makes my brain hurt I pick one area like character development, setting, structure, or voice to focus on. I know there is no way I am going to fix everything that is wrong with the dancing monkey in one critique, but I can help him swing to a higher branch by helping him understand how to improve one area.
How do you deal with a dancing monkey?
Jacob
Stumble it!
Tags: critique writing, peer reivews
November 14th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
On websites where I am not assigned a work to review or critique, I do a line by line critique of one paragraph and drop it. I’m not going to torture myself if not required. When a critique of the entire work is required, I slog through as much as I can, leaving detailed in-line comments while I try to avoid being sarcastic. I have considered doing only a couple of paragraphs in that manner, on the theory that if they don’t learn from a few good examples, they aren’t going to learn from a truckload of them.