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PhosphorusDecree
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Joined: 3 May 2016
Age: 43
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Location: Yorkshire, UK

27 Jun 2018, 8:20 am

To be honest, I'd tailor my critique to the level they're writing at. For absolute beginners, it's more important to encourage- they can be pretty inhibited about writing, or showing their writing. And they aren't going to suddenly get good without writing an awful lot of bad stuff first, no matter how good the advice they're getting.

Slightly more experienced: advice of the "why don't you try this?" kind is most useful, to get them to widen their artistic toolkit. And to hint at where they're going wrong without excessive ego-puncturing...

It's when they're starting to get some good that I'd unleash the point-by-point critiques and the "Yes, but that bit just plain does not work". By then, they're robust enough to handle it, and actually have the skills to either do something about it or present a viable defense. So essentially, the better a writer is, the "harder" I'd be on them!

My experience is actually based on a songwriter's group I've been in on-and-off for years, which I also ran for two years. But I think the principles should be the same. I'm thinking of one particular member who started off both hideously shy and writing pretty dreadful songs. In two years, we went through those three stages and I saw her become far and away one of the best songwriters in this town. Being part of that was magical.


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grahambaster
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Joined: 2 Jan 2018
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27 Jun 2018, 9:13 am

ThePen wrote:
All I want is for people to do things right.


If I knew for a fact that people should only wear blue clothes and then went to work correcting people I might be ridiculed and shunned. Having standards isn't the problem here.


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