| Suggested Guidelines for Critiques | ||
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Your job as a critic is to make suggestions to these writers so that their works eventually become the best they can be in terms of content and execution.
Now, let's think about how we go about reading another person's work and giving it an honest appraisal that will lead to a productive revision. Read the work once without making a mark or a note. Read it as if you had bought a literary magazine and were seeing this work in print. On the second reading start making annotations and notes for your critique, with attention to the following list, though obviously, in a useful critique, you do not want to address everything on the list: a. Language i. creativity/originality ii. clarity and conciseness b. Theme i. completeness ii. depth/originality c. Structure/story i. creativity ii. clarity iii. completeness iv. tension d. Characterization e. Description/selection of detail f. Voice/style More general considerations on critiques: Has the writer used the incident/subject to its fullest potential? Are there missed opportunities concerning any of the components above? Has the writer answered all of the questions he/she has raised? Are there questions, explicit or implicit, that might be raised and haven't been? Is there some writing that needs to be cut? Other sections that need to be expanded or could use more detail? Be as specific as possible about these sections and why you think they might be altered to better effect. More specific considerations: Has the work gone beyond the personal to interest readers? Has the personal been made universal? Are there opportunities for doing this? Comparisons to other works: What does the work remind you of, either in terms of works you've read or in terms of genre? Do you trace an influence that might be helpful to let the writer know about? |