Augustine Harper

Once you’ve finished your first draft, whether its a novel, novella, or short story, you’re going to be doing a lot of editing. A lot. It’s one of the most tedious aspects of the writing process, but also one of the most important to crafting a solid final version of your work.

After a few revisions, though, your work has still only been read by one person: you. The next big step is finding Beta Readers, or people who can read your unpublished work. Generally speaking, you should do at least one thorough edit to correct mechanical errors and inconsistencies before recruiting readers. (For me personally, I did about three drafts before I found my first beta reader, though this isn’t required). Ideally, your work will be polished enough so that your beta readers can focus less on fixing typos (though those will always sneak in) and more on the story itself.

So, how do you find beta readers? Many people- like myself- started with friends and family. While this is a convenient and quick way to find people to offer feedback, it definitely has its drawbacks: people who know you personally may be less likely to give honest (and hard to hear) feedback, and they may not have the adequate time to give a full read-through. Thus, I present to you perhaps the most valuable resource I found during my editing journey: Critique Match.

Critique Match is a website that links authors together to read and critique each other’s work. When looking for beta readers online, I came across many, many sites with the same gimmick: you trade writings with another author and offer feedback, usually on a deadline. Many of these websites have catches, however. Some require you to pay to use the service. Others require you to post a certain amount of feedback before you can have your own work critiqued. Critique Match cuts through all that. With this handy website, you can find free partners to trade and review work. It’s easy to navigate, and did I mention– FREE?

Why Critique Match Rocks

1. It’s Free: As I mentioned before, Critique Match is free. There is a service through the website that allows you to hire professionals to edit your work, if that is what you’re after. However, the site boasts hundreds of writers who are looking to critique and be critiqued at no cost.
2. The user base is diverse: the writers using Critique Match are all different. Some may be writing a science fiction novel, while someone else may be working on a romance. They all have different skill and experience levels and outlooks on writing. This is important: you don’t want your work to be judged in a bubble. Critique Match hosts writers with different genre preferences and writing experience, meaning you’ll be getting a well-rounded reception to your work.
3. You can choose your genre preferences: I mentioned in the last point that everyone has favorite genres. A science fiction writer may not be the best person to give feedback on a historical romance novel (or they may be a great choice, as their different perspective can help weed out tropes and offer unique insight). When creating your profile on the website, you can select favorite genres as well as favorite authors, allowing you to connect with someone that has mutual interests- or completely different interests, if you’re looking for an outside perspective. If you tend to write and read certain genres, you can choose partners whose work you feel both interested and qualified critiquing.
4. It’s a Trade-Off: when you match with a partner on the website, the assumption is that you will read their work, and they’ll read yours. Everyone knows that reading is the best way to improve writing. Editing others’ work allows you to practice the process of editing yourself, which can help you better judge your own work. Also, you’ll get to read some pretty cool, unpublished writing. I personally learned a lot about writing just from reading others’ work.
5. Communication is Key: the website has a feature that allows you to direct message your critique partners. This allows you to brief them on what your story is about and set expectations on your turnaround for offering feedback, and vice-versa. At any point during the process you can update your partner on your work or voice concerns. As someone who was a full-time college student while writing and editing my novel, it was important for me to give my critique partners an expectation of my schedule and how quickly they could expect my feedback.
6. Feedback is Honest: take it from me, I got a few bitter pills getting critiqued on this website. My novel is my baby, and it hurts when someone identifies flaws after you worked so hard on something. I implore you to keep an open mind and take even the negative feedback with a positive attitude. The partners I’ve had have been so genuine, honest, and kind even when telling me the hard stuff. Of course it was hard to hear, but my writing is all the better for it!

Having your writing critiqued is a very scary process. When you’ve worked on something for so long it can be difficult to hear it criticized. However, opening yourself up to feedback is incredibly important if you want to create a great final draft of your story. And if you are ready to find beta readers, I definitely recommend you check out Critique Match!