To Writers Group Or Not To Writers Group
On why a writers’ support group might be what you’re looking for
Twenty or so years ago I attended a six-evening night school course on novel writing that included a group critique element of the sort you find in typical writing groups. Now I should say that they are were all lovely people and I’m still Facebook friends with a few of them; hell, some might actually be reading this, now. (Hi guys, if you are! <waves hopefully>)
But my experience with the critique element did illustrate some of the problems inherent to group critiquing. The format was that each week one of us would bring in the first chapter and the blurb of the novel we were trying to write. (The idea of the course was that you were supposed to be working on a novel).
I bought along a novel that was SF humour / satire in the X-Files-type conspiracy genre. You know the sort of thing, aliens are secretly taking over the world, aided by a corrupt elite. (Remember that this was 20 years ago, when you could still enjoy such things). In my novel, the protagonists were two seriously dodgy moonlighting agents of HM Revenue and Customs who had side jobs working for the alien invaders.
My blurb started with the tagline: “They say the truth is out there. Dave and Jase are being handsomely rewarded to ensure that out there is precisely where it stays”.
So one week, it was my turn. At the end of the previous week I’d handed out my printed copies of my first chapter and blub; now I’d get my feedback. The rules were that the group would spend the 15 minutes discussing the novel and I had to say nothing to ensure they could speak freely.
Trouble was, they spent a good part of the 15 minutes discussing the meaning of the phrase “the truth is out there”. Now it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that this phase might be unknown outside of SF / people who’d watched the X-Files (i.e. unknown to regular, normal people). It means, of course, that there are truths that are being hidden from us, truths that we might uncover and make public if we just dig hard enough.
Unfortunately, the group, non-SF-readers all, concluded that the phrase meant that the truth has already been revealed and made public (i.e. the polar opposite of what it actually means), and on the basis of that concluded that in my novel everyone on Earth knew that we’d been contacted by aliens who were now opening living among us. Of course, when they then turned to discussing the story that my chapter one was launching, it didn’t make much sense.
Throughout all of this I was periodically saying, “But, but, but,” only to be silenced by the tutor who was running the course.
All of which meant that while the critiques had been well meaning, they ultimately weren’t really any use to me. And that’s always going to be a problem if you’re reading something in a genre that isn’t a genre you normally read: you won’t understand the conventions of the genre, you won’t understand what writers in that genre are trying to achieve, and you probably won’t enjoy reading it. (Why would you?)
And this isn’t any criticism on other people; I doubt I could provide meaningful feedback on say a romance novel, or a work of literary fiction.
I’ve always steered clear of writers groups, partly for this reason, and partly for the fact that I struggle to find time to write my stuff, and read things I want to read, without taking on extra obligations. This saddened me a bit, because I would loved meeting up with other writers to just chat about writing, and spend time with like-minded people who shared my passion (albeit possibly in different genres). But it just hadn’t occurred to me that there was any other option.
And then I went to a talk at Conversation 2023, the Eastercon just gone (Eastercon’s the British National Science Fiction Convention).
I wasn’t expecting much. As I’ve said, I’d pretty much sworn off writing groups. To be honest, it was 9 o’clock, I’d had my breakfast, I was looking for a panel, and it was on. But then, after lots of talk about various convention critique groups and how they worked, none of which appealed to me in any way, one of the participants (and I’m very sorry but I can’t remember which one it was), said something like: “I’m not in a critique group at the moment, but I am in a support group”.
And then she went on to explain that a support group is one where you don’t exchange your work for critique and feedback, but is instead either an offline or online space where you just chat, and support each other as writers.
Lightbulb moment.
So a few weeks later I plucked up my courage and put a post into my town’s Facebook discussion page:
Hi there. I was wondering if there are any writers support groups in the area? If not, are there any writers around here who might be interested in forming one?
For those who haven't come across the term, a writers support group differs from a critique group in that where in a critique group you share your writing with the other members and then receive feedback from them, a support group is more just a group for chatting, supporting, and socialising, about writing in general rather than about the specific prose you're creating.
It doesn't matter if you're writing in different genres; it's enough that you're facing the same challenge. Myself, I'm not really looking for critique at this point. As a science fiction / fantasy writer I've had bad experiences in the past getting critiques from non SF people who just simply didn't get the conventions of my genre. But I'd love to get together with fellow writers over a coffee and just chat about writing in general, and dreams and ambitions, and finding the time, and how to keep a dream alive when reality isn't being particularly helpful.
Or even just a Facebook or Whatsapp group to do the occasional random post.
And you know what? A bunch of people replied. And on Monday we had the first of what we’ve decided will be monthly meetups, in a quiet, lounge-type pub in the area. It was really good. No pressure. No “homework”. Just meeting a bunch of people who share the joy of pulling words out of your imagination and spinning them out into a story or play or poem or whatever.
So if you’re finding writing a rather lonely endeavour, and perhaps you’ve hit the middle part of a project where you’re convinced it’s crap, and you really need someone to talk to who’s been there, done that, ripped up the t-shirt in frustration, and can commiserate with you over a coffee, or perhaps something stronger, maybe you should think about a support group.
Just for extra information, here’s a follow up comment I made to my post giving a bit more clarification in response to someone who’d pointed me at a group that, when I looked at their page, was a critique group:
That sounds more like a critique group, where they have evaluated each others' work. Thing is, that only works if you're all broadly on the same page in terms of what sort of thing you're writing.
I think if you're an SF/F writer like myself, it only really works if you're in a specialised SF/F critique group. I imagine the same would apply if, say, you write romance. There are online SF/F critique groups, but at the moment I'm looking to meet actual online human beings regardless of what genre they write in.
So with a support group, there's no exception that you will produce works to show the other members and no requirement to read works by the other members. Essentially, it's not about critiquing each others' prose. It's basically just to chat about writing in general, and perhaps get general advice and sympathy, like if you're struggling to find distraction-free time to write, or have got yourself stuck on a particular aspect of your plot.
Of course, that's not to say that if you had finished a novel and were looking for beta readers, you couldn't say, hey, does anyone here fancy beta reading my novel? It's just that there would be no requirement on anyone to say yes. Which is good, because you wouldn't want people reading your novel if they're not the target audience. (I wouldn't want a literary fiction reader to try slogging through my SF/F novel, and frankly I wouldn't want to slog through their literary fiction novel!)
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