Critique Partners

Dark Desire of the Druids: Tryst is now available from Ravenous Romance!

I belong to a wonderful critique group. I haven't used them in almost a year but it's a wonderful group nonetheless. They know what I write and understand my time period, the Victorian Era so I don't have to explain the neat inventions that came about then. And they always nitpick those punctuations and grammar issues. Overall plot is harder, since we do a chapter at a time over 2 weeks. By the time they read chapter 10, months have passed.

That's what self-editing is for before they even see the story. Plot points are tricky little buggers, but they're what drives the story. You can't rely on others to pick up those things from your story.

Now that I have deadlines (not as cool as I thought it'd be and that's a shame) and more stories to work on that I even conceived of 4 months ago, I've started keeping a file of plot ideas. Basically, I have a story, say book 2 in the Dark Desire of the Druids series, Sex and Subterfuge. I have an overall synopsis for the major points, then a chapter-by-chapter breakdown.

Each chapter has some sort of cliff at the end. It wasn't hard to come up with the cliffs, but it was difficult to fill in the blanks between chapters. In the long run, it made the story tighter and more interesting. Easier to write, too.

And now that I know where I'm going, and with my Victorian critique group set to start up again after the holidays, I think they'll enjoy the story. And not find so many problems with it. *G*