I have a very interesting and productive group of critique partners.
My first group consists of three women: one writes detective fiction, another writes women's fiction, and the third writes inspirational historical romance.
I belong to another group in which my critique partners are male. The ratio of males to females in the CBA market is very lopsided in favor of women, so it's an unusual privilege to find men in a critique group *at all,* let alone more than one of them. One of these men writes political thrillers; the other writes literary fiction.
My final critique partner is a wonderful woman I met online. She writes contemporary Christian romance.
My motley crew of critique partners is producing some fascinating and divergent responses to my work. The gender difference, in particular, seems to be profound.
The men aren't too fond of the romance-based chapters of my work. (Shock! LOL!) They like the dark, somewhat horrifying world of my hero, who works for a really bad guy.
Some of the women think that the hero's world is too dark and overpowering. They like the romantic chapters.
All of their commentary is valuable. My taste as a writer tends to be more similar to the men's, but I must not forget that I am writing for a female audience. When I step back to look at the big picture, I realize that there is weakness in my heroine's character arc, which is causing me to write more powerfully for my hero. That was not the case in novel #1, so the writing for both hero and heroine was more balanced. I haven't quite figured out how to solve this problem, but I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions!
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6 comments:
As one of your critique partners, I don't mind some of the dark areas in the life of your hero and think you are handling them quite well--I write the detective novels, you see, and all is not lightness and romance.
I'm a firm believer that a person needs to illustrate the darkness to make the light that much brighter.
You're lucky to have such great crit partners. :-)
I do have great crit partners! And Barbara, thank you. I didn't think you objected to my dark parts, but I was trying to be general so as to describe the different perspectives without giving away identities! :-) Your fiction is indeed not all lightness and romance--for that matter, neither is the fiction of any of my critique partners. And that's a good thing.
I hope it's clear to all of my critique partners that I deeply value your input and that your differing opinions help me to pinpoint problems with my novels and to do my best work. That's why I want to share with other writers how valuable it is to have a wide range of crit partners.
Perhaps the more accurate way to describe the situation, rather than defining it by gender, is that the *romance* readers like the heroine's chapters but the non-romance readers are not so keen.
:-) But that's a good challenge to me to improve my heroine's chapters and give them broader appeal.
Crit partners are invaluable. I love mine. I'm in two groups on line, then meet with one monthly.
It's amazing how they catch things. Then, when you bounce ideas off them, how they really throw a new perspective on things.
It's awesome.
Rosslyn,
Isn't feedback great? I find myself exclaiming over suggestions, usually in agreement and with a hint of "doh!" (smack forehead here) when my wonderful friends point something out I missed.
Once in a great while, I'll come upon a suggestion that I decline. Even then, the suggestion was helpful, as I had to weigh it against my understanding of the story in order to choose to disregard it.
Good critique partners are solid gold. I'm blessed. :)
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