The People who point our your plotholes

Every writer needs a good support group—like AA except they’re doing a searching and fearless moral inventory of your manuscript, not you personally. This can be a collection of secondary readers you can bribe/browbeat/blackmail into looking at your work or a more formal arrangement for critique and commiseration. At some point, all of you will have days when the writing just feels like mush. Here’s what to keep in mind:

1. If you don’t know, ask. Asking questions helps get to the heart of the piece you’re editing and ensure you’re following the author’s direction. It’s their creation, not yours.

   
   

2. But while they give the blueprints, it’s still your job to mention it if the foundation is keeling over. You don’t want the whole thing to collapse with a bunch of innocent metaphors trapped inside.

   
   

3. Without fail, you will nurse a secret hope that this month will be the one where they tell you that everything is perfect. It isn’t. Try again next month.

   
   

4. Someone will always decide to submit their piece only hours before you meet. You may have conversations about how this isn’t a good idea before you give up.   

   
   

5. Choose a group that makes you feel good about your writing. This is possible even with constructive criticism. While toothless critique isn’t helpful, you don’t want to spend precious time with people who put the “brutal” in “brutally honest.”

   
   

Bonus Tip: It’s easier to kill your darlings if you cut and paste them into a separate document so that you can potentially use them somewhere else. They’re not dead, just over in the next tab.