This takes time, a lot of time. As an author, you’re already busy writing. You’re already busy reading and finding new inspiration. And if you're grinding getting critiques and eyes on your work (as I argue you should be in Receiving Feedback), you have a full plate of critiquing to do once every few weeks (or more) as well.
Reviewing someone else's work is one of the most sacrosanct thing you can do. Someone oppening up to you and inviting you to step in and constructivley lift them up (not to walk into their home and hurl insults at them). This should involve highligting the good and bad. It's important to know what they're doing well just as much as where they need imporvement. Lets get into it.
Keep things developmental. (If you’re unfamiliar with that term, do some research into developmental editing versus line editing.) If someone wants line editing, they’d go to an editor. They don’t care that they should have used a comma on line five, that sentence will get rewritten numerous times in future drafts anyways, they want to know: was line five interesting. The one exception to this rule is if they do something systemically. “I noticed you keep using this word like that, and I don’t think it means what you think it means” type stuff.
I can really give two answers to “what do I watch for?” Answer one: characters, throughline, and causation and beats, (worded differently, the essentials of a story, as I discussed in First Drafts - Essentials of a Story). Answer two: Whatever catches your eye, really. It’s so hard for writers to get out of their own head, it’s such a luxury to be able to see writing with fresh eyes. You’d be amazed how often reviewers point out the simplest funny things that pass by us as authors. For example, when they say a character’s name out loud for the first time and it’s not pronounced as you’ve been saying it in your head.
You're here to help them. And also, perhaps even learn more about writing yourself in the process of doing so. Don't assume what the author wants. I’ve submitted gritty interrogation scenes before and received comments back about ‘the sexual tension’. Or I’ve read something and said ‘I hate this character’, only to realize after the author wanted that. Now, it’s okay to say that you, as a reader, didn’t like something. But assuming where they had intended to go with something is usually a bridge too far.
A nice balance I’ve found for this is: “if your intention was to scare me, then my critique”. This shows the author what my impression of their intention was with a piece of their writing, and then my comment if that’s correct. And often times they will say, “oh, that wasn’t my intention.” To which I say “great, then let’s discuss why I felt that it was when I read it.” That too, can be amazing feedback.
More here on ‘taste versus criticism’, your subjective feedback is valuable! An author is here because they want to know what you think. But - that being said, remember, you are just one person with your own opinions. Just because you don’t like romance or torture scenes doesn’t mean they aren’t written well. You need to be able to discern between your personal tastes, and to have the professionalism to set aside your own preferences and still have an eye for compelling writing, on whatever topic it may be. That being said, I personally think it’s very valid to seek out critique groups based on your genre, and to value giving and receiving reviews from people writing in your genre. That’s not to say that cross genre efforts don’t have a lot to teach you, they certainly do, but it’s also valid to want to give and receive critiques grounded in genuine interest as both an author and a reader.
That obvious disclaimer out of the way, there’s also such a thing as ‘over reviewing’. If the submission was 15 pages, and we're 2 hours into your break down of my work… yeah, I think we’re a bit too in the weeds here. First of all, people can only absorb so much in one sitting. But secondly, your verbal delivery of your critique should really just be an overview of your strongest take-aways from
having reviewed their work, something that accompanies your marking up and commenting their document. There’s also a more practical point here - readers will only try so hard. An author doesn’t want your academic dissertation on their writing, they want an honest opinion of what impression readers would get, and some approachable commentary on those impressions. That’s it, that’s the assignment.
The first few sessions with a new group are like a minefield. When someone hands you hot trash, do you tell them? How much do you say? …that’s a deeply personal question. I’ve gone too easy on potentially amazing partners that (non-verbally) realized as such and became disinterested in exchanges with me based off of this. I’ve gone too hard on authors who were just here to have fun and now not only disagree but are clearly somewhat hurt. I’ve attempted to deliver feedback to argumentative types that have a retort to my every point. At the end of the day: writing is deeply personal.
People are exposing themselves and opening up and being vulnerable. Giving an honest critique on someone’s ‘baby’ is just hard. Likewise, people have different goals. You should straight up ask them what they want before you get too far into your review. Are they attempting to get published? Writing for fun? Just experimenting with opening up and sharing for the first time. This will really shape your reviews for them a lot.
My rule is honesty, but be nice. I’d rather be too harsh on someone than not enough, and presumably they’ve gone through all the work of writing this thing, and then reviewing my work to pay it forward, such that I will then review theirs - they deserve honesty. That being said, even when ‘being honest’, there’s a large gradient there. And I’d be lieing if I said I was as harsh on my first time submitters as I am to close friends that already I have a rapport with and who I’m already well versed in exchanging feedback with (which in that case, watch out, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and do so practically every day).
Whatever you decide, please just keep in mind that part of your responsibility as a critiquer is to keep them coming back for more. Don’t attack or insult them, encourage and excite them. It’s okay for someone to write and submit hot trash, we all do that quite often, but walk over and lift them off the ground and walk this journey with them together.
You’ll notice this looks strikingly similar to my “10 Page / 1 Chapter / 3 Chapter” section of Receiving Feedback. Either works, one is clearly meant for long form exchanges (full manuscripts), and the other for individual chapters (or a few). Either way, they’re the same rule, just stretched to fit the size of the submission under consideration: First Impressions, Forming Impressions, ‘Decision’ Impression.
Vibes are not enough. Your vibes of someone’s work could be colored just by your stress from work or the fact that you're having a bad day. If you feel a certain way, notice something about someone’s work, highlight/comment the example. Talk in specifics when you're delivering the feedback. As an author, hearing “Henry is an ass” is perhaps not the most helpful, but having someone point out “this part where Henry yells at his mom makes him seem like an ass” is extremely helpful.
Likewise, if you go to make some big sweeping statement about your take aways of someone’s work, and realize you only have one concrete example, maybe check yourself. And by that I mean, realize perhaps that’s your mood talking and there’s less evidence than you’d originally thought. Certainly still mention that one example, but don’t present the feedback as if it’s prevalent throughout the submission piece if it isn’t. (And vice verse, absolutely do if it is, as that’s valuable too!)
Don’t beat a dead horse. Yes, I know you mentioned you don’t like Kelly’s Southern accent in a comment on page 5, but it’s page 105, surely you can look past that omission and deliver some more concrete feedback on if you find the story direction and characters compelling at large.
People don’t get a lot of opportunities to receive feedback from people, and cutting them short of otherwise good advice because you're hung up on one issue is frankly a pretty shitty thing to do. Respect their time.
Different groups have different opinions on this, but it’s always safe to claim that you noticed or felt something, it’s less safe to tell someone to do something. It’s legitimate to say that you lost interest while reading a piece. It’s a shakier thing to then add on, “I really would have preferred he started slashing the knife around to prove how unstable he was”.
As with all things writing, this is a gradient. This really harkens back to what does the author want? At the risk of repeating myself, I’ve found my best balance is to say something to the effect of: “if your intention was to scare me, then my critique”. Or for example, a real critique I’ve given in the past went something like: “you worked so hard to build up this suspense, and then let the character down and sent them into a depression in the most epic way possible. I think this is awesome, but if your intention was to pull at their heart strings hard there, I really would have liked to marinate in that moment longer.” That statement is inherently bleeding over into being prescriptive, but notice I’m not specifically telling them what the character should do, just that I want more of what I already like, and it comes with the caveat of my assumption of what they want.
This is a fun one, critique lingo. All the fun little words and phrases we discover to say the most emotionally ruthless things as politely as possible. This often entails speaking in a ‘passive’ grammatical tense to distance everyone involved from the work your absolutely ripping apart. You will inevitably pick up this lingo from others and build your own over time, but it is surprisingly useful. Some of my favorites:
You compare feedback you receive to others, why wouldn’t you do that with feedback you give out also? When you’re in a group setting, just keep in mind how your critique holds up to others. Do you tend to think another reviewer finds awesome points you missed? Perhaps you constantly have opposing views to someone else? Or maybe your noticing that you're picking up on the same things many others are as well. I always find comfort in numbers. If I’m picking up on things that other thoughtful reviewers are as well, I take that as a confirmation that I’ve given the piece the appropriate amount of attention, grasped it fully, and walked away with the correct conclusions. Or worded differently, I feel confident I have a good pulse on what readers like - which is the whole point of all of this! (Even if ‘readers’ is just me alone with a coffee smiling to myself!)
Everyone and their mother wants your critique, not everyone and their mother wants to critique your work. There’s an awful lot of people who want you to review their work, and then mysteriously make themselves not available when it’s time for the tables to turn. Likewise, there’s a lot of open critique groups that do things like “the first two pieces dropped in this Google Drive folder at 6pm on Saturday will be what the group is reviewing” … and then everyone races to get in. Or sometimes those groups will have submission limits of “two times a year”. That’s… not great for you as an author in my opinion. If you want to do that to be fun and social, that’s totally fine! But at some point, especially if you have a day job, there’s only so many hours in the day. Funny enough, book reqs work like this too. People are so fast to suggest that you read all of the books they consider seminal to literature, and they all pick different ones. Hell, I’ve had people tell me I have to go to a few orchestra shows with them before I can truly understand art enough to unlock that next step as an author. Yet, when you flip the tables around and start hurling suggestions at them, it’s all silence. Point being, there are endless people and groups that will ask for quite a lot of your time and not respect giving it back in return to an extent that’s constructive to you as an author. And that’s not that any of these people or groups are malicious, it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
But don’t get jaded! There are amazing people out there too. People that want both to critique and be critiqued, that want more long running friendships along the way. People you might be able to support, and subsequently lean on, for years. Kind of like dating apps, it takes a lot of hunting and trying different groups and etc, but they’re out there. And they’re totally worth it once you find them! Respect others and respect yourself, and you’ll eventually find them.
Someone requesting feedback from you is one of the most vulnerable things that they can do. You have to be careful, but its importance really can’t be under stated. Keep things developmental, and keep things encouraging. Focus on things like character/dialouge, throughline, and beats/causation/progression, as opposed to the choice in someone's use of commas. Be honest. Be nice. Respect both their time and your time. And you will make some very cool friends along the way!
Enjoy!