What are the guidelines for asking for a critique of my work?

Question

I want to ask for a critique of my work? Can I do that here?

Answer 1

Are you coming to Writers with a specific question about a specific text you have written? Great. Writers is a community of professional and aspiring writers, editors, agents, and others in the business of writing, and we would love to help you.

In order for us to be able to successfully answer your question, it will need to fit within a few criteria.

• You must have either a specific question about your sample or specific guidelines for the critique. Below would be examples of on-topic questions:
  • "Where are the unneeded words?"
  • "Does this character introduction seem smooth?"
  • "How can I show more and tell less in this instance?"
  • "Does this paragraph make you want to keep reading?"
  • "How can I improve this dialogue to create a sense of suspense?"
• Your paragraph must be a concise illustration of your larger question
• Your question must be phrased in such a way that answers can be objectively voted on by the community here.
• Your question should encourage answers which explain their reasoning and back up any subjective statements with experience or recognized authorities.
• While your question should give us an idea of your own style and what you intend to do with your included writing, the question should encourage fair and impartial answers.
• Please do not ask us to proofread your work for grammar, spelling, or punctuation issues.

What if my question doesn't meet these guidelines?

First, see if you can edit your question to make it meet these guidelines. Writing a good question is a process that can include re-writing. If at the end of the day your question is off the mark slightly on one of the criteria, you may consider asking it anyways. The community can help you tighten it up (or may determine that it is still on topic). If your question does not meet many of the criteria, it is likely to be closed if you ask it.

What if I don't have a specific question about my writing?

Give us guidelines for what you want your writing to do. Are you looking to create suspense? Do you want to provide an accessible explanation of a software product? Are you looking to submit to a peer-reviewed journal and want to know if your writing has a scholarly tone? Asking for a critique without telling us your goals isn't helpful, and we will follow up with asking for an edit and likely closing the question if you don't edit.

(Please note that, while the site doesn't support general, free-form critiques, you can bypass the main site and general critiques on our chatroom. Many of our users have gotten great general feedback there.)

What if I see another question asking for a critique that doesn't meet the criteria?

See if you can edit the question to meet the criteria without substantially changing the author's intent. If that is not possible and you have close permissions, vote to close. If you believe the question is a getting-to-know-you/poll type of question which is likely to garner lots of cheap reputation for all involved, please flag it for moderator attention.

Legal issues

Regarding posting excerpts from your work here:

An excerpt posted here could conceivable be looked at by a publisher as the basis of a later, published novel or story (or part of it). Does that mean that your novel must be published as Creative Commons or at the very least a derivative work of a CC work? Here's the Stack Exchange legal team's reply to this question:

Anything posted on our site is CC-Wiki with Attribution, no exceptions. However you can post the excerpt on an external site and link to it from SE without compromising your content.

Users can flag questions with excerpts and the like for moderator attention. Moderators can delete a question (which will limit its visibility significantly) and edit out proprietary/personal information. Intrepid users are also free to file a DMCA take-down request with Stack Exchange if need be.

(See the bottom of each Stack Exchange page for a link to the CC license and its terms.)

As always, ask a lawyer, but if you're concerned about this, use a link and don't publish the text here!

Answer 2

Important:

Policy change: critique questions are now off-topic

As of November 2014. See the explanation there for how to ask on-topic questions about your own writing. Bottom line: Ask the core question (about style or dialogue or plotting or whatever) instead of asking about your writing excerpt.

Answer 3

Important:

(DEPRECATED) Policy on Writing Critiques