This past year, I was involved with two writing groups. My original writing group was made up of an international group of women. They were wonderful for plot development. The best writer of the group dropped out for employment reasons, leaving three of us. Now, I'm finding the two who are left aren't what I'm looking for when it comes to in-depth story structure. I like them. But I feel like I'm helping them at this point more than they are helping me. This group isn't going anywhere, I'll still participate. However, I'm starting to zone out.
I also got with a writer friend in Arizona and she and I formed another group last summer. One woman in our group, Alice, oozed passive aggressiveness. She had control issues and kept changing the meeting time. Plus, Alice wouldn't send us a chapter for our meeting. She'd send us weird stream of consciousness and a list of themes she'd want her non-existent story to cover. We were then expected to discuss this--though we had no earthly idea what her story was about. One day, my friend congratulated me on how I kept my cool when Alice didn't want to show her face in our Zoom meeting. That truly was a shining moment of my adulthood.
The feedback Alice would give would be to purposely misunderstand the basics of narration. In my chapter I'd write, "I walked towards the road, mindful of the heavy rush hour traffic." and her feedback would be "How can the reader be sure your character is really doing this? Also, when you say 'road' do you mean an asphalt street? Dirt path? There are different kinds of roads in different cultures. Does your character have the phycological wherewithal to make these kinds of decisions?"
In my imagination, I put her in a writing group with great authors and thought of how she'd approach her feedback to them. She would have told Mark Twain if she was beta reading Tom Sawyer, "How does your reader really know Tom and Becky are in a cave and not in a space ship instead?" Steven King would have gotten pointless feedback such as, "Andy Dufresne. Should he really be in prison? Are you sure that's the best spot for him? Prison reform is such a hot topic" (DuFresne was convicted of murdering his wife in 1947 and the majority of Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption takes place in a prison. So, yes!) And of course Jane Austen would have gotten, "I'd rather see Mr. Darcy end up with someone like Lydia. A better match for him."
Anyway, the last time Alice decided she needed to change the meeting time, I wished her well and changed the Zoom access so she couldn't come back.
We also had Olive in this group. Dear, Sweet Olive. I've been working with Olive since June. I brought her into the group, thinking she'd benefit from more than me telling her how to fix her story. Olive spent a great deal of each chapter letting the reader know what her character was eating: McDonald's baked seabass, tuna sandwich and when we pointed out the reader will assume if the character is living, they are eating, Olive just changed the order of the meals and didn't add any more actual content to her murder mystery.
Olive's story seems to be in the same place it was when we started, which is nowhere with better subject-verb agreement thanks to my friend and me. Additionally, Olive doesn't provide beta reading feedback to either my friend or myself, other than to say, "I'd like to compliment you on your use of strong verbs."
After banging our heads for months, my friend and I decided to let this "group" fall apart. Now, I've put my friend in charge of finding us two qualified writers who will give critiques that are in line to our plots. They don't have to be at the same level of writers as us. But they must be team players. We'd like to see people who want to grow (like us) and want to offer us feedback to help us grow as well.
Currently, my friend has rejected more potential writers than she's let move through this process. As of right now, there is one person she's strongly considering. My friend sent me a copy of her writing for me to read. I sent something terrible I wrote years ago and asked for feedback in return, just to see how this person would respond. If we can do better than, "Is your character really running through the forest like you suggest?" I'm probably on board.
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