“God, I love what you’ve written. I do have some thoughts though…first off, can we maybe have less commandments? Twenty-seven’s a little much to remember and recite!”
For the first half of my creative writing class this semester, we’ve been going over some of the fundamentals of writing fiction, including plot, dialogue, and characters, among other things. We’ve also been told to each write a shorty story between 8 and 20 pages, or 2,000 and 5,000 words, and while I certainly had trouble writing my story, mostly because it’s literary, I’ve been enjoying reading and critiquing the stories of my classmates.
We’ve actually only read 4 stories so far, but they’ve all been interesting in their own way. There was a story about the rivalry between two princes, a vignette about a day in the life of a soldier, a crime story, and even one involving a virtual reality game. And later today we’re recieving a new story, so I’m wondering what that’s going to be about.
After we read the story, we have to type up a critique in the form of a letter and hand it in to both our teacher and the writer of the story in question. We also give our impressions orally to the writer during class, allowing them to absorb some more feedback before they start editing their story. Although I like getting critiqued myself (because I want to know what problems my stories have and what I can do to fix them), it’s another story entirely to critique someone else’s work (pun intended). I like the feeling of helping someone improve a story they wrote, especially if the story is good. And it’s different from when I look over my own work, because I’m not looking at my classmates’ work with a biased eye.
I’ll be turning in my own story for critiquing in early November, a few days before my science-fiction short story “Ripple” is set to hit the web. Between now and then, I’ll go over my story and do a few edits before I turn it in, because I like to give my short stories an edit or two before I turn them in for critiquing by anyone. But for now, I’ll just sit back, get my homework done, and critique other people’s work.
What about you? Have you ever been critiqued or critiqued someone else’s work? How does it feel when you do?
Rami Ungar The Writer 
Plenty of times, and it depends on the nature of the story. I have reviewed stories that are really quite bad and I felt guilty and burdened by the fact that I had to find a nice way to say so. Other times, the stories had real potential or were downright excellent, and that was a pleasure to convey. As for feedback I’ve gotten, I’ve never had cause to regret getting it. Good or bad, it’s usually helpful, and you always have to remember that there are always people you cant please.