Comments on: Pros and Cons of Writing Groups

By: Suanne

Suanne — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:22:58 +0000

It sounds difficult to pull off, but helpful if you can manage it. You might also find out if people want to be seperate by genre, if you’re not already. I love the poetry of my writing friends, but often have little helpful to say. Similarly, the writing style that is acceptable, or plot pacing that works, can vary a lot from romance to mystery to SF&F.

Good luck with it!

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:07:35 +0000

I just got here from your newer post “Talking the Cat out of the Tree”, and I had to throw a pitch in for Review Fuse (www.reviewfuse.com), another site for online writing groups.

I spent time at several online writing groups and you hit on one of the things that frustrated me and lead me and a few friends to start Review Fuse: the level of the group. With other sites, I never knew what I was going going to get and while I loved getting critiqued by someone who was a much better writer than me, I was often frustrated having to review works that weren’t at my level.

One of the things we’re trying to do at Review Fuse is peer matching. It can work two ways:
1. You can create your own private group and only invite people you know are at your level.
2. You can submit to the entire Review Fuse community and we have some algorithms that look at your personal profile, reviews you’ve done, works you’ve submitted, and review ratings you’ve received and attempts to match you with writers at your level. Now I’ll admit, that this second one is far from perfect. We’re still working on it, but hopefully as the community grows and our software improves, our site will be able to match writers with peers at their level.

I’d love to hear your opinion on something like this. Do you think it can work? Would it be helpful to writers like you?

By: Suanne

Suanne — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:20:16 +0000

Thanks, just now I’ve got my hands full with a good in-state group and an equilly good online group, but I’ll keep them in mind. I’ve heard them recommended before.

By: Square1

Square1 — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:07:42 +0000

For fantasy and sci-fi authors I recommend Critters.org by way of a good critique group. Their system is well established and there is enough variety in skill sets and levels that you almost always receive very good feed back no matter how well you can or can’t write.