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Sally Whitney | Writer
When Is a Critique Not a Critique?
Blog / 8 Comments / May 15, 2013

Today I started my day writing a review of a novel for Goodreads. As I wrote, I began thinking about why we write reviews and critiques of books. What’s the true purpose of critical writing? It seems to me that depends on who your audience is.

If we’re writing a book review on Goodreads or Amazon or any other reader website, including the reviews I write on this blog, our intention is to help other readers decide whether they’ll enjoy the book enough to spend the money to buy it. In a good review (not necessarily a favorable review, but a well-written one), we give reasons for our opinions. It’s not enough to say, “I hated this book. It bored me to tears.” We have to tell why it bored us to tears. “It had no plot.” “The characters were one-dimensional.” Something. And a really good review is specific enough (remember our original purpose) that the reader can make a reasonably informed decision about the book, which may not match the reviewer’s opinion.

If we’re writing a critique for a writer about a work-in-progress, our intention should be to help the writer make the piece of writing better. Here again, success is in the details. It’s not very helpful to say, “This doesn’t work for me.” The writer wants to know why a particular scene or character doesn’t work and any suggestions we may have to make the piece work better. Making suggestions, however, means walking a narrow path between truly trying to improve the work at hand and trying to make it into another piece of art entirely. The tendency to want to rewrite the story crops up, too, in reviews we write for readers. We say things like “The father would have kicked the son out years earlier,” or “No wife would do that to her husband.” Well, in this story, the father didn’t and the wife did. If we don’t believe that a character would act a certain way, the problem is not with the character’s actions. The problem is that the writer didn’t set up the character well enough.

A third type of review or critique is written by scholars for other scholars. The purpose of this type of critical writing is to stimulate critical thinking, educate others about writing, and tell the reader how to read a piece of writing. Since most of us don’t deal with this kind of criticism on a regular basis, I’m not going to talk about it here.

I’m more concerned with critiquing for readers and for writers. As I thought about why we write reviews and critiques, I wondered how these reviews sometimes become so harsh and really snarky. Recently I read a review online that said something like “This was a horrible book, painfully targeted to the Oprah Book Club readers of the world and perfectly politically correct.” As a reader, I didn’t learn much about the book from that remark. I learned more about the critiquer. Apparently, the critiquer holds himself or herself above anybody who reads books selected by the Oprah Book Club since those books are horrible. And the critiquer also doesn’t care much for writers who go out of their way not to be offensive.

I think this is where we run into trouble when we write reviews and critiques. When we forget our purpose is to enlighten a potential reader or to improve a work-in-progress (as the writer intended it) and instead we strive to show how much we know, our critiques are no longer critiques. They’re sounding boards for us.

 

 

 



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8 Comments


Larry Matthews
May 15, 2013, 1:14 pm

This is a topic that touches the nerves of many authors and, I suspect, other creative types whose works are subject to the judgment of others. An author friend who has a couple of dozen very good reviews on Amazon recently received a review that trashed everything about his book. It seemed to verify your statement that perhaps the issue was really about the reviewer, not the book. It is as though there are those who believe their role is to criticize and degrade rather than analyze and enlighten.

A well-thought book critique will explain the book and help potential readers understand the work. This requires that the reviewer also understand it. It seems to me that simply trashing a work is no more enlightening to the potential reader than mindless praise.

Sally Whitney
May 15, 2013, 2:38 pm

You know, Larry, I’m thinking some of the problem is the same as a problem writers often encounter—using general adjectives. Good writers know not to describe a character by saying “He was sad.” You have to show that the character’s sad by words and actions. Rather than make a general value judgment about a book, a reviewer ought to be able to describe the book in specific terms, which, as you said, requires a certain amount of understanding.

Diane Booth
May 15, 2013, 3:32 pm

Sally,
Your blog hits close to home, but not in the way you probably think. A few months back I finally reviewed some short stories that the writer had waited patiently for me to complete. Finally, I set a deadline and told the author when the work would be ready for pick up. Then I got the flu and all the miserableness that came with it. Still, I pushed myself to read, comment, justify. I got sicker and sicker but went on with the work. What I did not realize is that I also was sounding cranky. No doubt the author had turned to someone with a comment about a rod being stuck somewhere inside my body.. I always explained my remarks and ways to improve, but I started to dwell too much on the problems that were repeated over and over. My head hurt. I coughed constantly. I wanted to sleep. All this went on for days then I wrote my final note that went something like this: “There is no reason for me to continue reading your work and repeat the same comments to the end, as, I would like to think that by now you can find your own errors and correct them yourself.” End note: I waived my fee. That made me feel better, but I cannot but dwell on how the author feels…still.

    Sally Whitney
    May 16, 2013, 11:11 am

    You’re right, Diane. I hadn’t thought about reviewer personality influencing a review in this way. But your point is well taken. And your tale is a good cautionary one for all of us who write critiques and reviews.

NC Weil
May 17, 2013, 3:17 pm

If a piece of writing is so bad I cannot find anything to redeem it, I would simply excuse myself from offering a critique. Most work, however poorly written, has something to offer – a character who evokes sympathy, a setting that assists the story line, the occasional well-turned phrase.
No writer wants to hear “This is garbage.” We want to know what we did well. After that, we want to know what didn’t work (specifically), so we can fix it. A critique group as mutual admiration society is useless – it should be a forum for fellow writers to tell you in a professional way how you can improve your work.
I would choose not to review something, rather than trash it (possible exception: if I had to read something – for a book club for example – and loathed it, and it was a huge bestseller, I might very well compose a snarky review). But most of us are just trying to stay afloat – slamming seems petty.

    Sally Whitney
    May 17, 2013, 4:33 pm

    I wish all readers felt the way you do about slamming. It disturbs me to see any work of art–writing, music, drama, or visual art–publicly trashed. I guess because I know how much hard work goes into most of that art.

Martha
May 21, 2013, 4:12 pm

I wish I didn’t pay so much attention to reviews – I guess it’s something I need to work on. Reading this makes me realize that I give them too much weight.

Sally Whitney
May 22, 2013, 3:45 pm

Reviews can be helpful to readers, but I’d advise you to be skeptical of the ones that use those general adjectives instead of giving specific details, and give less weight to the ones that say everything about the book is wonderful or terrible.