Critiquing: The Big Picture
- by Elaine Isaak
There’s a great movie called “The Creator” with Peter O’Toole as this rather wacky professor taking on a grad student to help him clone his dead wife. He claims all of the student’s time, and marks him down as receiving his education in, “The Big Picture.”
I was reminded of this lately when looking at the results of two experiences asking for critique on my manuscripts. I gave copies of a YA novel to a group of high school students, and copies of a romance novel to a group of local romance writers (all experienced at critique, all wanting to be published authors).
The results from these two groups were startlingly similar. They noted all kinds of little things–some typos, some personal confusions or unclear sentences. And almost nobody looked at The Big Picture. Read more…



