This week I had a double dose of critique advice in two different settings on two different WIPs.
Tuesday, our writing group in Royal Oak had their annual critique. The 30 or so of us who attended broke into groups and the writers take turns readingfor 10 minutes (I managed 9 and a half pages) and then the critiquers (2 published writers) tell you what to fix for five minutes. It’s loud and fast-paced and hard to think, but since I had worked for 6 hours on the first ten pages of Luke’s #1 Rule I was somewhat confident.
Ha! Seems my pov is too shallow (I need to brush up on deep third pov) and my heroine’s reactions are not believable. I have heard these comments about my work before, so I was happy to know where I still had work to do. Well, not happy. But, you know, grateful.
I filed those comments for another day, because right now my main focus is on getting The Paris Notebook edits finished for the TWRP editor. I sent those first 10 pages of that ms. to my monthly Saturday critique group. There are only four of us, but we still send copy out a week ahead of the meeting. That way, when we meet (my house yesterday) we spend an hour or more carefully going over each member’s pages. Our newest member, Tom, gave me invaluable suggestions on the male perspective, while super editor Susan cut out all my blather.
See, this is my problem. as I’m writing the “blah, blah, blah,” as Susan calls it (she’s hilarious, and we spend a ton of time laughing at ourselves) I think I’m doingdeep pov. Looking over it this morning, I see that Susan (no surprise) was right. What I took for deep pov was either telling emotion or dumping backstory.
Clearly, I need to get to the bottom of this deep pov thing.
Cynthia Harrison 