Back by popular demand, this Thursday we will be holding a speed critique!

How does this work? Bring your spiffy first page as a printout to the meeting and we will conduct 5 minute critique sessions with other participating members. If you want, bring multiple copies, so each person who critiques yours can mark on and leave comments on a fresh copy. It’s up to you.

We will array all participants on two sides of a long table and start the timer. You swap pages with your partner and quickly read. What you want to look out for and comment on are initial first impressions, what emotion/mood this has, or any place where the wording tripped you up. You won’t have time to get into line edits and the like. What this helps you see is if your first page is hitting the right mood, giving the right impression, etc. It’s extremely helpful to get this initial quick impression. Sometimes a first page is all an agent or editor will look at. After you both have finished reading, use the rest of the allotted time (that’s why you just want to read for initial impressions and speed bumps) to tell each other what you found. Please be courteous and when the timer goes off, the side that’s switching to the next promptly does so. It’s not fair to the person waiting for you to keep discussing your work as you’re eating into their 5 minute time (because yep, the timer will start again immediately).

See you Thursday!

Questions? Leave them in the comments or email mobilewritersguild@gmail.com.