Interactive Fiction Writers Critique Group

[SusanTheCat]

I am looking for people to create a critique group for writers of Visual Novels and other video games.

The idea would be that you would submit pieces of writing and the other members of the group would offer suggestions on how to improve it.

Purpose: to force members to write to a deadline. To learn to give and receive critiques (not criticisms!)

Group Size: 2-20 people

Group Type: Invite only
Getting an invite is really easy though!

Age: 14+

Genre: Any

Location: It would obviously operate online.
I set up a Google Group since it is very easy to share Google docs that way. (Or writings can be sent as plain text.)

Frequency: Every two weeks
I was thinking that writings would be submitted one week, then the critiques would be sent the next. And so on.

Writing Size: 500-5000 per submission

Writing Level: Beginner to Pro
I am a firm believer in cross pollination.

All these are subject to change based on the group's preferences.

If you are interested, PM me with your email so I can invite you. I think you can apply directly at https://groups.google.com/group/ifwcg?hl=en but I'm not sure.

Susan

[CDRW]

Hmm, sounds interesting. I might check it out.

[Alera]

I like the idea of this! >w<

I'm looking forward to it.

[Elenakiara]

I definitely need practice too! xD It might help me with my writer's block for my VN. xD I'll send you a pm for sure! :3

[Lekhaka]

Hi Susan,

I was just surprised at how similar the title of the thread looked:
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... =38&t=7313

I hope that a strict deadline would make this work (my attempt failed at its intended function).

The only thing I'm wondering is, since I have never used Google Groups, whether it is similar in structure to a forum. Because a forum would be much better than email communication, IMHO.

I have applied on Google.

[SusanTheCat]

Great minds think alike!

I when with a Group because I am old school and I like email lists. It also makes it dead easy to share documents from Google Docs.

A forum would also be sweet since you could make a forum per writer and they could make a thread per submission.

There is no reason why we can't have both -- the email list for reminders and the forum for submissions.

Susan

[Aoyama Ryuu]

I like how this sounds, but is the wordcount limited to 2000? It's a bit less than I'm used to.

[SusanTheCat]

Fairly arbitrary number. Depending on the group, a higher upper end could be used. I didn't want people submitting 50,000 word novellas for critique.

What would suggest?

Susan

[Aoyama Ryuu]

My suggestion would be 5000 words; is that possible? I don't want to force my pace on others so if it's too much, that's alright. The problem I have is that I've already written half the prologue and at a 2k wordcount/2 weeks, it would take about 2 months to get to where I'm at right now.

[SusanTheCat]

Sounds fair to me

One of the things I am working on is that I write very tersely and in point form. I'm working on expanding my sentences so that they span more than 5 words at a time.

Susan

[Aoyama Ryuu]

I've applied. Looking forward to participating

[Radhreni]

I'm tempted, but I have a couple of questions first:

*What does "critiques (not criticisms!)" mean? (I have a guess you don't mean criticism in the literary sense (:D), but bullying masquerading as "critique" - I just want to be sure.) And can we request a certain level of 'toughness' in crits?

*How are you defining "pro"? The dividing line I'm most familiar with is whether someone's made a sale, but there's no real universal definition. (SFWA, for example, sets the bar a bit higher than that.)

[Sapphi]

Argh, I would love to participate in something like this, but at the present I'm too busy on my KN which is just a tad bit long for the group (20k words.. lol).

This is a great idea, though. I think this community (and EVNs in general) would really benefit from it.

[SusanTheCat]

But Sapphi, you can split it up into chucks! That's just the size for submission at one time. Sorry for not making that clear.

The idea is you can write out a chapter, an act, a plotline and then get it critiqued while you write the next section.

Susan

[Veniae]

I totally love the sound of this. *thumbs up* Sent you a PM.