I've been in several in-person critique groups by now, looking for feedback on various MSs, and the one pattern I've seen is that most groups dissolve when members have the feedback they need and are rewriting. They dissolve when members finish one piece, need new / different readers, or are starting a new story and drafting and aren't ready to share yet. The worst was when one group stuck together but probably should have broken up, as it was no longer healthy or productive.
There are plenty of Facebook beta reading and critique partner groups, where you can put out an advert and have folks respond and CP or beta read for a swap, but the responses and the readers vary widely. I've found a few really good CPs that way! (Thank you, all of you!)
Now, this service is not free. But neither is an in-person critique group. We always met at a coffee shop or small eatery and, not wanting to be table hogs, always ordered something. I had to get something a little extra to take home to my two kiddos and husband. And there was the tip. There's the gas to get there and back.
But the biggest cost, for me anyway, was the rather inflexible requirement of being in place X at time Y every Z weeks. With two kiddos participating in sports teams, music and other assorted high school activities, the majority of which take place on weekends, I needed more flexibility.
And of course, with any CP group, there's the cost of my time, reading and giving feedback. But that I don't mind giving, especially if I know it's going to come back to me, in kind.
So far, I've participated in one Pop-Up group with a fantastic organizer / moderator and all of the authors, several agented and one published, were excellent and provided great feedback, some of which I incorporated into the MS. I'm trying out a second group, just to see how it works, and we start in March.
What I really liked about this forum was that there's a way to download and save critiques.
Remember when I tried out another beta reading service, one that provided free reader "metrics?" (See my review of BetaReader.io) I discovered too late there was no way to save the readers' comments at the end. I had to improvise, using various snipping / capture tools, to save it.
Well, this service seems to realize that as writers we sometimes need to sit on feedback, think about it, and come back to it to write solutions, try out techniques, etc.
The downloaded comments appear as color-coded footnotes (one color for each commentator), at the end of each "page." Final comments appear at the end of the document.
There have been some glitches with the downloaded pdfs, but the moderator took it upon herself to look into them and find out if they can be fixed. I haven't heard back, and I wasn't one who had an issue, another writer did, so I can't say exactly what the issue was.
There was an issue with how the moderator set up the time frame for critiques. It had to be adjusted, and then she also adjusted the length of the accepted critique (to accommodate more words) at the request of another member.
I'm still trying it out, and as other positives and negatives arise, I'll let you know.
Have you ever tried Inked Voices? If you have, let me know what you thought in the comments. I'd love to hear from you!
