Beta Reading, Commenting, and Critiquing

A discussion with TJ Price, J.A.W. McCarthy, and Alexis DuBon

At StokerCon this year, some friends and critique partners and I found ourselves discussing what makes a good critique, and since there wasn’t enough time to cover it all in person, I suggested we move it over to a text-based discussion we could share—and here it is!

We discuss our views on critiquing here, and we’d love to hear yours in the comments. If you are new to critiquing or have any questions, I’ll be happy to try to address those in the comments too.

Generally, I’d suggest finding critique partners in an online class or a writer’s discussion board, which is where I met today’s guests.

Here is some information about these guests before we get started:

TJ Price's corporeal being is currently located in Raleigh, NC, where he lives with his handsome partner of many years, but his ghosts can be found in northeastern Connecticut, southern Maine, and north Brooklyn. He is the author of The Disappearance of Tom Nero, a mixed-media novelette, with additional work published in venues such as Nightmare Magazine, PseudoPod, and The NoSleep Podcast, as well as various anthologies and assorted grimoires. He can be invoked at either tjpricewrites.com, or go to the darkest place you know and whisper his name. Please note: the author is not responsible for what may answer.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TOM NERO is available from Amazon here 

Alexis DuBon is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. She is the author of It’s Going to Be Fine (Off Limits Press, 2025) as well as co-editor of No Trouble at All (Cursed Morsels Press, 2023). You can find her in various magazines and anthologies, or on Twitter at @dubonicplague.

NO TROUBLE AT ALL is available from Cursed Morsels Press here 

J.A.W. McCarthy is a two-time Bram Stoker Award finalist, a two-time Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and author of Sometimes We’re Cruel and Other Stories (Cemetery Gates Media, 2021) and Sleep Alone (Off Limits Press, 2023). Her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Vastarien, PseudoPod, Split Scream Vol. 3, Apparition Lit, Tales to Terrify, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol 13. She is Thai American and lives with her spouse and assistant cats in the Pacific Northwest. You can call her Jen on Twitter @JAWMcCarthy, and find out more at www.jawmccarthy.com.

SLEEP ALONE is available from Ingram here

OK, time to get to the discussion!

Do you have a general philosophy of critiquing?

TJ: I firmly believe that critique and feedback are highly subjective and need to be tailored to each individual author as well as each individual piece of work. I do not approach critique/feedback as “fixing what’s wrong” or making a piece “better.” I try to remove as much of my own ego from this process as possible, focusing more on the work. I do not address “you” or the author directly; all of my comments and feedback relate only to the story itself, and the writing of same. I also, prior to reading the piece, will often try to engage the author in a productive, generative discussion regarding their goals or aims. During this conversation, I also try to ascertain the general status of the piece, to determine how I will engage with it. I believe that it is also important to discuss the feedback on a whole with the writer after reading, too—sometimes it is necessary to clarify line comments or to provide a more gestalt reaction, or even to ask questions about things that seemed unclear or confusing.

Alexis: Kind of? I feel like it’s best to critique writing when it is by someone you have a pre-existing relationship with and you understand each other as real people before diving into their work in a critical/analytical way. There needs to be some established comfort level to offer honest insights and also to receive honest insights, and an understood mutual respect. Generally I go into things I’m critiquing wanting to offer the author something they can’t do themselves—read with clean eyes. When I’m reading a story that someone else wrote, I wasn’t in their head as they were forming it so all I see is the end result of a lot of deliberate decisions that I am not privileged to. So I think that critiquing other people’s writing lets them see the reactions of someone blind to the intention behind each choice they made—which is useful, I think—to have someone who doesn’t get to see the “work sheet” during math class, only the final equations. For me, when I’m critiquing, I try to look for places where the math is confusing in my own head as I’m reading, so before my friend sends it off, they have someone who is experiencing something they are so deeply entrenched in for the first time. Because that’s something that I know has been useful to me in the past. There are times I do something and I didn’t even realize I did it, but if I took it just a little farther, it would buttress the whole rest of my story in a really satisfying way. Sometimes also the other way around, and I’m like yeah, that doesn’t need to be here.

Also, I have a different version of what TJ was talking about (releasing the ego), where I know I have a lot of deep-seated insecurity about inadequacy, and also anxiety about letting people down when I review their work, so I have to actively remember that critiquing is not an exercise in proving myself/demonstrating that I’m not just a big idiot by fine-tooth-combing stories. I have to really work to keep in mind that I would not have been given that story to look over if the author didn’t see me as someone whose thoughts they valued. It’s hard to do because I’m always scared I’m going to let people down if I veer too heavy in either direction (too much or too little input). Which is another reason I think it’s important to know the person whose story you’re critiquing. Also, if you’re friends with the author then the two of you can agonize over details together until you unlock the secret to breaking down the wall between intention and result and that’s so fun to do. AND! then when the story does get picked up, you get to be so excited about it because you’ve already read it and finally everyone else is going to get to also.

So I suppose my philosophy is that trust and comfort are very important in a critique relationship.

Jen: I love what TJ and Alexis said. One of my challenges is removing myself from the critique, as in the urge to say what I would do. The art of critique is to understand the writer’s voice and provide feedback that is true to that voice and the choices the story calls for. My philosophy is to lead with respect and honesty. The honesty part, when it comes to criticism, is more easily achieved once you have a friendship with the author or have worked with them enough to know the kind of feedback they’re looking for. I appreciate honest critiques where the reader knows my tendencies and faults and isn’t afraid to point them out to me. This can be a little fraught if you don’t know the author and how they’ll react, but honesty–again, done with respect–is a gift. When I ask for a beta read, I know it needs work. Tell me what doesn’t make sense, what could be refined, etc. I aim to do the same for authors I read. But it’s not all bad. Be sure to point out parts you like, interesting things, what’s working. Even a brief reaction to a sentence or scene is good and helps the author see the effectiveness of the piece. 

How do you approach feedback if your critique partner is more experienced than you are--say they have published more or been writing longer?

TJ: No matter where someone is in their writing evolution, they have something to learn from a reader’s perspective. Every single person who engages with someone else’s work should be valued, despite their relative level of skill or experience. It’s true that writers of some longevity may have accrued more knowledge simply due to the length of time they’ve been working at their craft, but I often find surprising observations made by those who have a fresh viewpoint, who remain unschooled in prescriptive methods regarding critique. 

I will say that I often feel a great deal of anxiety in delivering feedback to writers whom I admire; to conquer this fear, I try to ask specific questions in my preliminary conversation with them. Writers of this caliber are often—in my experience—a bit more attuned to their own process and have established a personal craft or voice. Being familiar with their prior work—and by extension, their voice—can often come in handy here, I find.

I will always, regardless of the writer, provide my honest reaction to their piece, and its disparate elements.

Alexis: ALL OF MY FRIENDS ARE MORE EXPERIENCED THAN I AM. I am a little nobody and I critique the stories of people who have been nominated for (or even won) Stokers/Shirley Jackson awards. People who are well established and respected and sought after. And then there’s silly little me giving writers far more brilliant and skilled than I am my thoughts on their work. Like, in what world? So yes, it’s always a little intimidating, but it’s important to force yourself to be brave sometimes. I am constantly fighting demons in my head saying that my friends are sending their work to me as a kind gesture so I can feel like they care what I think even though what I think is probably so stupid compared to what they are capable of. These things are important to do, and it’s important to treat everyone’s stories as individual stories and give each one the same treatment no matter who wrote it. Working on conquering my insecurities in the context of writing has translated into me having a firmer footing out in the real world, which is nice. Also, I will second TJ once again and say yes, these more established authors that we look up to are often more attuned to their own process and voice and they are probably going to be good at parsing any fumbled attempts at critiques by people newer to the landscape.

Jen: This comes back to removing the self for me. I’m honored if a more experienced author wants my opinion. I owe it to them–same as any author at any point in their career-to be honest. Constant praise doesn’t help anyone improve, and isn’t improving our craft what we all need and want to do? 

What are some of the problems you have encountered when it comes to giving or receiving feedback, and how have you addressed them? 

TJ: I have encountered some pretty unhelpful feedback from time to time. I once received a comment on a short story of mine that simply said “this is going on way too long,” or something similar. This kind of off-handed response, with no real explanation as to why the reader felt this way, seemed to signal to me that the critiquer had no real investment in the piece, barely caring enough to engage with it beyond a yawn and a shrug. This was the first time I ever interacted with this person creatively—and it was also the last. It’s entirely possible that we just weren’t a good fit, but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and maybe also explains why I explain my reactions as thoroughly as I do when I leave comments on someone’s work.

Christi: The three types of problem comments I’ve encountered are what I’ll call rule-based comments, unconstructive critical comments, and critique that is too idiosyncratic. Examples of rule comments might be In a horror story, X comes before Y, so you have to reverse these two things, or You have to avoid using “be” verbs, or You should never tell when you could show, etc. If it feels like the reader is checking off a pre-existing list, rather than engaging with the work on its own terms, that rarely works for me, probably because I don’t agree with whatever rules are being enforced (or I would not have broken them in the first place). Unconstructive critical comments would be like what TJ mentioned, “this is going on way too long.” It’s a statement with no attempt to help the writer understand or address the problem. I am sure I have made this sort of comment before, but it’s something I try not to do. This particular comment might actually work for me if there was an opportunity for conversation after they read the piece, if I could ask them more about what was happening in their mind as they read, but otherwise the comment just sits there. And then an example of idiosyncratic critique would when a reader doesn’t like some arbitrary thing—first person, second person, present tense, mermaids, revenge plots—and then instead of acknowledging they are not your ideal reader and doing their best to comment helpfully anyway, they focus their critique on that element. Sometimes they really enjoy some arbitrary element instead of disliking it, but the result is the same–they focus on expressing their taste so that the critique becomes more about them than it is about the story.

I think these problems are all more common with less experienced commenters, so some ways to address them are to one, keep modeling more thoughtful comments for them and two, make time to discuss comments after receiving them. You can talk about whether to follow or reject a rule in context, for example. You can ask them to explain comments after the fact, and eventually they will begin explaining things more in their line notes. If the commenters are not receptive to discussion, or if the workshop situation is set up to discourage communication (which is surprisingly common), then I would move on.    

What advice did you receive about feedback when you were first getting started? Did it turn out to be good advice?

TJ: Honestly, I’m not sure I ever really got any advice about giving feedback when I first started. I’m sure my first instances of critique were horribly self-oriented—as Christi mentioned before, more via the lens of ‘expressing taste’ rather than centering the work itself. I think a lot of this is due to insecurity—someone who is new to providing feedback may have an instinct to prove “bonafides,” which compensate for the innate feelings of fraud/impostor syndrome that may come with applying one’s own subjective opinion to another’s art.

Alexis: When I first learned about beta readers/critique partners/workshoppers/etc. one thing I heard a LOT was to use the “sandwich method.” I hate this approach. It feels so patronizing and insincere and I feel like I have benefitted so much more from real-time reactions and instinctive questions to choices I made than from forced compliments buffering any interrogation to my work. It makes me not trust the reader when I think they feel obligated to present any challenge with a lick of salt before and a lime wedge after. But obviously, this doesn’t mean jackhammer and diminish me. I mean like, there is an obvious and mutual respect and we don’t feel like we need to be performative with each other.

I also feel like “write to market” is terrible advice. Don’t write what you think will sell or alter stories to be more marketable—write what you feel like. After all, this is something we are choosing to do. Why not do it how we want to do it? Otherwise it’s less of a thing we do for pleasure and more something we do for some other goal that we ultimately have no control over. Do what’s fun to do for you. No one is holding a gun to your head telling you to be a writer. You are choosing this. So have fun. If someone says it isn’t XYZ enough to sell, who cares? Do you like it? Don’t let this whole thing turn into a source of anxiety and grief. You’re choosing to do it, do what you choose. Not all writing needs to be sold to be something you can be proud of. That’s a weird mindset that is too deeply ingrained in us all—the only value something has is its appeal to others. No. There is value in creating something you enjoyed creating. Who cares if it goes nowhere. If someone’s criticism is that your story isn’t mArKeTaBlE enough, that doesn’t mean you have to “fix” it. One thing that I try to think about is how many amazing Lady Gaga tracks there must be that didn’t make the albums. Does it mean there’s something wrong with them or that they’re failures? No.

How has your approach to providing feedback changed over time, from when you were new to offering comments to how you go about it now, with more experience?

Jen: When I first started critiquing with other writers, I was anxious about how honest I should be–I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. That meant my early critiques were fixing minor typos and grammar and letting some things slide developmentally because maybe I was wrong or simply didn’t understand what the writer was going for. This was a lack of confidence on my part (and making the critique about me, rather than the work) and not very helpful to the writer who requested my feedback. As I worked with a variety of people who critiqued my own work, I started to see different styles and took note of the ones that helped me most, which was honesty with encouragement. That’s what I moved forward with in offering my own feedback. This means always being respectful, but also stating when I didn’t understand something and offering suggestions for clarification, etc. This is much easier to do when you’ve gotten to know and trust someone, but even in a new relationship, leading with this approach can be helpful. Fixing a couple typos and saying “yeah, this is great” when there are confusing portions, inconsistencies, etc isn’t helping the writer. I now critique work as I would want my work to be critiqued. I think of it this way: you wouldn’t let a friend leave the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to their shoe, would you?

Christi: I definitely also learned about the “compliment sandwich” method that Alexis mentioned, but feel like a lot of the advice I received presupposed an over-confident writer, with the goal of showing them what didn’t work (assuming they believed everything did work), and so I think I was quite critical early on. I tried to balance the criticism with praise, but overall the criticism seemed to be the point. Now I try to react more as a reader just saying what I am thinking and feeling as I read. It’s rare that I point out anything being wrong (who am I to even judge that, anyway?) and instead I just offer my moment-to-moment thoughts as well as some summary thoughts. This seems more intuitive, and I hope it is helpful.

Have you received any especially memorable and useful critiques? What made them stand out?

Christi: My favorite thing, and it happens more frequently than I have any right to hope for, is when a reader identifies what is meaningful about a story and then focuses their comments on that, downplaying the less important things they might otherwise comment on. Two of my longtime critique partners, Sam Moss and Ken Hueler, tend to do that, which is probably why I’ve so enjoyed working with them, but it’s happened with many different readers. They hone in on the themes and the meaning, and they remain focused on the big-picture stuff throughout their critiques so that everything is fixed on how to make the meaning of the story come through. Love that! 

I also had a series of remarkable critiques from someone years ago (so sorry I am not sure of his name) who started with a long list of craft elements such as opening, voice, pacing, dialogue, etc. He would comment on each and every one of the elements, often with a full paragraph. This was the opposite of the focused method I mentioned above, but it was also very helpful because it gave a kind of 360-degree view of the story as well as what he was seeing in my work overall.  

Alexis: Yes one of my favorite things is when there is a conversation with a lot of back and forth to figure out why I put something in a story and why it works or doesn’t and how to get it to the point where it is as significant as I want it to be, or how to make it so that it fits with everything else just how I want it to. I often learn so much about the characters I’ve created and find new ways to enrich them and flesh them out because me and my critique partner really needle the gap between what I was going for and what they read. Sometimes I end up deleting a whole bunch and then other times I end up adding a few thousand words I didn’t realize the story wanted. Like a little puzzle.

Jen: The most memorable and sometimes most helpful critiques I’ve received are the ones where the reader was brutally honest with me. These are friends whom I trust, so there was a comfort in expression there that may not exist in a more formal relationship. I know they respect me, so it’s not cruel to hear “this is really hokey/cliche/etc.” It’s often something I’m already thinking, but due to laziness or lack of inspiration, I left that scene/phrasing/metaphor hoping no one would notice. Sometimes I need that kick in the pants to push myself creatively. I need to hear that I didn’t get away with anything and I need to do better.

Can you think of resources, such as books or articles, that would help those looking to become better at giving feedback?

Christi: I really like Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses, as it discusses the conventional MFA workshop style while offering loads of ideas for more varied and inclusive commenting formats. It is probably most helpful for those who already have some experience giving and receiving feedback. For those who haven’t commented on work before, I might recommend the short article “Responding–Really Responding–to Other Students’ Writing” by Richard Straub, which I used to use in first-year college classes. It focuses on college papers rather than fiction but does a lot to define the attitude of a helpful commenter. There is also some material on my site, at https://christinogle.com/the-art-of-dread/

TJ: I don’t know of any books or articles that specifically focus on giving feedback or critique, but I have found the following helpful to consider when doing so—Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, by Virginia Tufte; and Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles & Ted Orland. The latter helped me to understand (in a broader sense) the insecurities that someone making art might have, and—by extension—how to assess the same when observed in other writers’ work!

Thank you so much, TJ, Jen, and Alexis!