To Critique or Not To Critique

For those of you who think you don’t have anything to offer a critique… You’re wrong.

If you read, you can critique. You might not yet be at the level of dissecting something to figure out why it doesn’t work and how to fix it, but you are at the stage of being able to say "This doesn’t work for me" or "this doesn’t make sense" or "this is dragging too much." You have your own strengths in writing already, whether that be plotting, character development, punctuation, grammar, or spelling, or something else entirely different.

And the only way you will ever learn to give a better critique is to do it. Read up on giving good critiques, and then do it. Give the most insightful critique you possibly can. And then do it again. And do it again. Then do it a whole lot more.

It really is true that when we critique someone else’s work, we learn how to be a better writer. We learn from their mistakes. We learn how to spot those same mistakes in our own writing. We learn how to not make those mistakes anymore. We learn how to write stronger stuff.

If you want to improve your writing, giving critiques is an excellent way to give the quality of your writing a huge boost.