In my last post, I wrote about having a writing buddy and how awesome that would be. As a sort of follow-up to that, I thought I would share a site called Critique Circle. It’s not a site for finding writing buddies, it’s a site that allows you to put up sections of your work for other members to look at and give feedback on. As a writer, one of the most important things I can think of that helps improve your work and learn more about the craft is the opinions and experience of other writers. They will often pick up on things that you may not have realised you missed, such as plot holes, inconsistencies, typos and even simple grammar errors. It’s extremely useful during the editing phase of writing!
Critique Circle has a great system in place, using ‘credits’ and a time-based review period that allows every story posted to get feedback. Credits are earned by critiquing other stories, and it costs three credits to post one of your own pieces to be reviewed. Stories remain up for a period of one week, but they can still be critiqued after the one week, they just won’t show up in the current week story queue.
The site also has a bunch of free tools you can use, such as the word count meter (which you can see here on my site on the side bar under “My Projects”), a name generator, various writing exercises, a manuscript progress tool… and much more!
Best of all, it’s completely free! You can sign up for a paid account if you feel so inclined, but I find that the basic free account gives you everything you need – access to the story queues, the forums, all the cool tools.
The community of writers is very friendly and incredibly helpful. I have only submitted one piece to CC (the first chapter of The Mythicals), but the feedback I got was amazing – insightful, constructive and thorough. That feedback was what made me realise that I needed to take a good look at my story and make some major changes to it, almost completely rewrite it in fact! A heart-breaking revelation after all the work I put into the first draft…
There are definitely very talented writers and some interesting stories to critique on CC. Even though I haven’t submitted anything else yet, I have still been checking out other writers and their stories, putting in my two cents worth! This site is a gold mine for aspiring authors! Even if you don’t intend to submit or critique any stories, the tools alone are worth signing up for.