From: Paul Hodges Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:09:23 -0700 (PDT) A Critique Template [Note -- do NOT use stock *phrasing* in your critique. This is a template that covers areas to review and suggested aspects to analyze. These are questions to ask yourself about the piece you're reading, not text to put into a critique. Under no circumstances should you copy & paste boilerplate text into a critique -- all actual text you write should be written anew for the manuscript at hand and apply specifically to that story. Nothing that you've copied from another critique. --aburt] ===================================================== Critique by Paul Hodges Critique template uses: http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/engramja/elements.html http://www.crayne.com/howcrit.html ===================================================== Greeting, Personal address. Make the writer know you're on their side. Warn them this uses a template and is long. General commentary -- I liked it, it's good, blah blah. Technical points -- errors, references, questions. OPENING ======= - Do the first few sentences or paragraphs of the story grab your attention? - Do they present the protagonist's main problem? Remember how you judge a book or story when you first see it in a bookstore. - Don't we often base our decision to buy or not buy upon those first few sentences? - Did this author grab your attention fast enough? SETTING ======= a) place - geographical location. Where is the action of the story taking place? b) time - When is the story taking place? (historical period, time of day, year, etc) c) weather conditions - Is it rainy, sunny, stormy, etc? d) social conditions - What is the daily life of the characters like? Does the story contain local colour (writing that focuses on the speech, dress, mannerisms, customs, etc. of a particular place)? e) mood or atmosphere - What feeling is created at the beginning of the story? Is it bright and cheerful or dark and frightening? - Is there enough description of the background in the story to paint a picture that seems real enough for the reader? - Did you feel that you were transported to 'that time or place'? - Was there too much description so modern readers might tend to become bored? - Was the description written with cliches? Did the author use good enough names for people, places, and things? - Names help set the tone for a story. Where some names of people hard to keep track of? - Did some names seem inconsistent with the character? - Were the names too stereotypical? - Did the author convince you that people in that time or place would behave that way? - Is the timing and order of events in the story consistent? For example, did John drive his new car on his vacation in chapter six but it wasn't until chapter ten that he bought it? PLOT ==== a) Introduction - The beginning of the story where the characters and the setting is revealed. b) Rising Action - This is where the events in the story become complicated and the conflict in the story is revealed (events between the introduction and climax). c) Climax - This is the highest point of interest and the turning point of the story. The reader wonders what will happen next; will the conflict be resolved or not? d) Falling action - The events and complications begin to resolve themselves. The reader knows what has happened next and if the conflict was resolved or not (events between climax and denouement). e) Denouement - This is the final outcome or untangling of events in the story. - Was the main plot clear and believable? - Did the main character have a clearly defined problem to solve? - Did you feel by the end of the piece that this problem was solved or did the character become resolved to live with it? - Were you able to determine the time and place of the story quickly enough? - Did the story start at the right place? Did it end at the right place in the plot? - Are there scenes which do not seem to further the plot? - Were there too many flashbacks, which broke your attention? - If the piece was a short story, were there too many subplots? - If the piece was a novel, could it be improved by more attention to the subplots or have more subplots? - Conversely, does it have too many subplots and you got confused about what was happening? - Was every subplot useful? - Did it add to the overall story or did the author seem to stick it in just for complexity? Pacing: Did the plot/subplots move fast enough to keep the reader's attention? Resolution of conflict: - Did the conflict and tension in the plots and subplots come to some reasonable ending? - Or did the author leave us hanging, wondering what happened? - When you finished, were there things that you still felt needed to be explained? - If the author did leave some conflict unresolved, did they indicate somewhere that future stories are pending? CONFLICT ======== There are two types of conflict: 1) External - A struggle with a force outside one's self. 2) Internal - A struggle within one's self; a person must make some decision, overcome pain, quiet their temper, resist an urge, etc. There are four kinds of conflict: 1) Man vs. Man (physical) - The leading character struggles with his physical strength against other men, forces of nature, or animals. 2) Man vs. Circumstances (classical) - The leading character struggles against fate, or the circumstances of life facing him/her. 3) Man vs. Society (social) - The leading character struggles against ideas, practices, or customs of other people. 4) Man vs. Himself/Herself (psychological) - The leading character struggles with himself/herself; with his/her own soul, ideas of right or wrong, physical limitations, choices, etc. Conflict is "The mental or moral struggle caused by incompatible desires and aims. That is the kind of conflict that makes stories vitally alive." - Ben Bova - Is there emotional conflict WITHIN the main character? - Between the main characters? - Emotional conflict is part of what gets readers interested. For example: love vs. loyalty; greed vs. duty; fear vs. desire; revenge vs. self-doubt. - Are there too many or not enough conflicts? Until the end, of course, when all the conflicts should be resolved. - Is there enough conflict between the characters? - Is it expressed through action, dialogue, attitudes, or values? - Were the characters sufficiently contrasted? - Or did they seem to be totally satisfied with their roles? - Did they have the potential to transform each other? CHARACTER ========= The Characteristics of a Person - In order for a story to seem real to the reader its characters must seem real. Characterization is the information the author gives the reader about the characters themselves. The author may reveal a character in several ways: a) his/her physical appearance b) what he/she says, thinks, feels and dreams c) what he/she does or does not do d) what others say about him/her and how others react to him/her Characters are convincing if they are: consistent, motivated, and life-like (resemble real people) Characters are... 1. Individual - round, many sided and complex personalities. 2. Developing - dynamic, many sided personalities that change, for better or worse, by the end of the story. 3. Static - Stereotype, have one or two characteristics that never change and are emphasized e.g. brilliant detective, drunk, scrooge, cruel stepmother, etc. - Did the people seem real? - Or were the main characters stereotypes or one-dimensional cardboard characters? - Were the facts about the characters accurate and consistent? - People do not exist in a vacuum. They have family, friends, a job, worries, ambitions, etc. Did you get a sense of enough of these, but not too much, for the main characters? - Did you get a good picture of the culture, historical period, location, and occupation of the main character? - Did you get enough of a sense of paradoxes within the character? - Enough of their emotions, attitudes, values? Backstory: - Were you distracted by too much background information of a character at one time? - Did the author seem to dump a lot of information on the background of a character in one or two long speeches, or did we learn about that character here and there in smaller pieces? - Did the protagonist undergo some change in the story? - Could the story have been improved by adding more details of the protagonist's or another character's * reputation * stereotyped beliefs * their network of relations to other people * habits and patterns * talents and abilities * tastes and preferences * physical description of their body? - Does each chapter/page have enough sensory description? - Can the reader easily sense what is happening physically to the main character? - Were there enough words of sight, sound, touch, smell, or taste? - If the story used a person as the antagonist (villain), did they seem real too? - Or did they seem so evil or one-sided that they were more like ideal villains? - Did they have some redeeming qualities too? - Did the villain seem to be a hero in their own mind? Every reader has their own taste in how much characterization they like. Did this story have too little or too much characterization for you? DIALOGUE ======== - Did the words from the mouths of the people in the story seem consistent with their personalities? - Was there too much or not enough dialogue, in your opinion? Usually writers err on the side of not enough dialogue. - Did any character tend to talk in long monologues? - Were you able to sense the conflict, attitudes, and intentions of each character in their dialogue without the author telling you of these directly? - Were you able to detect any exchange of power that is sexual, physical, political, or social? - Did the dialogue seem easy to speak? Can you 'hear' it? If it sounds unusual, you might suggest that the writer try reading it aloud. - Does the dialogue seem TOO MUCH like normal speech, with too many incomplete sentences, pauses, restarts, profanity, cliches, etc. that it was distracting? - Did the author use dialect that was too heavy, making it difficult to read? - Does each character have their own speech rhythm, accent (if necessary), vocabulary, and even length of sentences? - In an exchange of conversation, can you easily tell who is speaking if you didn't have their names or gender attached to their sentences? POINT OF VIEW ============= Point of view, or p.o.v., is defined as the angle from which the story is told. 1. Innocent Eye - The story is told through the eyes of a child (his/her judgment being different from that of an adult) . 2. Stream of Consciousness - The story is told so that the reader feels as if they are inside the head of one character and knows all their thoughts and reactions. 3. First Person - The story is told by the protagonist or one of the characters who interacts closely with the protagonist or other characters (using pronouns I, me, we, etc). The reader sees the story through this person's eyes as he/she experiences it and only knows what he/she knows or feels. 4. Omniscient- The author can narrate the story using the omniscient point of view. He can move from character to character, event to event, having free access to the thoughts, feelings and motivations of his characters and he introduces information where and when he chooses. There are two main types of omniscient point of view: a) Omniscient Limited - The author tells the story in third person (using pronouns they, she, he, it, etc). We know only what the character knows and what the author allows him/her to tell us. We can see the thoughts and feelings of characters if the author chooses to reveal them to us. b) Omniscient Objective – The author tells the story in the third person. It appears as though a camera is following the characters, going anywhere, and recording only what is seen and heard. There is no comment on the characters or their thoughts. No interpretations are offered. The reader is placed in the position of spectator without the author there to explain. The reader has to interpret events on his own. - Was a given chapter or section written from one person's point of view? - Are there too many points of view in the story? - Did the story skip around between the first person or third person point of view (POV)? - Were the changes in POV signaled clearly? There is nothing inherently wrong in changing POV, as long as it is not done too often. - If the story was written in the third person POV, as most stories are, did the story stick with the omniscient (all knowing) POV, use a limited POV (where we don't know everyone's motives except by clues from their words or actions), or did the author mix the two? - Did the author's choice seem right to you? - When the POV changed, were you able to quickly sense who the new viewpoint was from? THEME ===== The theme in a piece of fiction is its controlling idea or its central insight. It is the author's underlying meaning or main idea that he is trying to convey. The theme may be the author's thoughts about a topic or view of human nature. The title of the short story usually points to what the writer is saying and he may use various figures of speech to emphasize his theme, such as: symbol, allusion, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, or irony. STYLE ===== Show versus tell When in the POV of a character, did the author describe what his/her senses showed, e.g., sight, sound, smell, touch, taste? Or did the author just tell you the dinner was very good? Did the author describe exactly how the people acted? Was there too much abstract language where specific details would have made a greater impact on the reader? Were there many instancesere of words like "very", "much", "really", "great", or "nice" when a more detailed description would have been more colorful? Did we get the chance to interpret what the characters were feeling or did the author just tell us directly? For example, I once wrote: "Two weeks later, after more hours than he cared to remember, Jet felt very, very tired" and let it go at that and missed the opportunity to describe his fatigue instead. Format of the text Was it easy to read or were the paragraphs too long or the lines too long (not enough margin)? Would it help to put blank lines between paragraphs? If the piece is to be read on a computer monitor, adding a blank line between paragraphs will make it much easier for your critics to read. Note: when you submit the final version to print publishers, it is best to adhere to their manuscript format (no blank lines between paragraphs). Grammar and spelling Was the English readable? Were there too many grammatical errors, misuse of punctuation, run-on sentences, etc.? Did you point out any typos or misspelling? How many times have you missed that in your writing because you passed over it without seeing it? Were there so many such errors that they made reading the piece difficult for you? Did the author use too many exclamation points (one of my weaknesses)? Were there any cliches in the narrative? For example, I once wrote "fruits of mother nature" and "thoughts burning in his mind", both of which are cliches. In dialogue cliches are okay if the character would speak that way. Did the author use melodrama? For instance, I once wrote: "With tears in her eyes and barely able to speak, the head nurse dialed the Chief of Staff. There would be a lot of crying tonight." Can't you just hear the violins in the background? Style You may wish to comment on the style the story was written in, e.g., humorous, wordy, sparse, literary, homespun, technical, etc. SUMMARY ======= Let the author know if this is not your favorite type of story. This may help them better understand your viewpoint. Things you do not like in the story may very well appeal to a fan of that genre. Title - Does it add to the overall effect of the piece? - Does it support the theme? - Will the reader understand the story better because of the title? - Will the reader understand the title better after reading the piece? Consider the target readers. - Do you as a critic have a good idea of the type of readers this author was writing for? - Before you criticize something that you may not like personally, ask yourself: who are the readers this author wants to write for? - Is this appropriate for that audience? Give your relevant experiences (optional). If you have some experience or knowledge that is very relevant to a comment of yours, you might mention it. For instance, when I found the description of a device in a computer to be in error, I pointed it out to the author, suggested an alternative that would be more plausible to computer sophisticated readers, and qualified my comments by telling her of my years of computer experience. By the way, she thanked me. Short stories versus novels. When critiquing a short story, remember that every word must count. - Are there sentences and/or paragraphs that don't appear to contribute substantially to the story and maybe should be thrown out? - Are there too many subplots? In short stories, one subplot may be okay, but two or more is often just too much. - Did the author go overboard on flashbacks? Generally in short stories, flashbacks should be used very sparingly. Novels, however, not only allow more room for expression, talk, details, and moods, but readers of novel expect more. Paul