- Visit Website
- Bookmark
- Share
- Claim listing
- Leave a review
- Report
- prev
- next
Description
Critters is an online free community that provides critiques and workshops for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers.
The idea is to bring together writers and artists that help each other identify strong and weak points in their work. How does it work? It's quite simple. You submit a text, book chapter, story, or another piece of writing. For this, you need to use the proper format, which is outlined in a guide. It includes instructions regarding headers, format, line width, spacing, paragraphs, underlining/bolding, proofreading, page numbering, genre, and more.
Once you submit your text, it joins a waitlist and one month later, it's distributed among members' emails. They have one week to reply with feedback. Each piece receives at least 15 critiques.
There is a special program to have novels reviewed. It's called "Request for a Dedicated Reader" and works through chunks of 5000 words. On the other hand, Critters has a library with critique references, forums, tools, other workshops, and market info. It also has a store of books and music by members.
Details
- Membership: Free Community
- Year Founded: 1995
- Founders:
- Amount of members: 15,000
- Online Group: No
- Job board: No
- Language: English
- Method: Virtual
Benefits
Receive useful feedback:
Once you submit your work, you will have to wait a month to receive comments back. These comments are developed by dedicated readers who will go beyond "it's good". Thus, you will learn to evaluate and improve your work.
Buy members' work:
The community has an online store. It contains books and music developed by members. You can find products from $0,99, and it's a great way to support the community.
Access relevant resources:
The community has a library with tools and materials to learn how to critique a piece of work and improve your own writing. You can also participate in diverse forums and find other community recommendations.
Categories
Requirements
No requirements.
Place
Virtual
Networking Events
Members exchange information and feedback via email. It's the main channel used to send members' writing once they have reached position 1 on the waiting list. From that moment, others have one full week to review and critique the work. It's important to keep in mind that before being able to ask for feedback, you should have sent several reviews.
Content Library
The Critters community has a section of writing and critiquing resources. It's called "The Critters Library", and it's divided into 7 categories:
- Critiquing references: It guides members on how to critique.
- Critiquing discussion forums: They are not so commonly used but they discuss books and other useful topics for critics.
- Writing/critiquing tools that live on the site: This is a collection of useful tools.
- Writing resources: Links to writing-related information.
- Other workshops: A list of other online and in-person workshops.
- Market info: It allows writers to access data on the average response time of diverse book publishers and magazine editors.
- Other references of interest: Handbooks and FAQs.
Besides the library, members can also explore the news & notices section. It's constantly updated with different posts.
Quote
"The critters in Critters are very good at critiquing. I've gotten some excellent feedback on my story... I would highly recommend Critters to anyone online interested in improving their genre writing." -Michael Burstein
