Tutorials

Helpful resources to navigate the platform

Video tutorials

How to get started on the platform

Complete your profile

Search for critique partners

How to transfer your work to the platform

Read and critique your partner’s work

Share a public posting with the entire community

Search for public postings

Instructions

5 Steps to get started

Welcome to our vibrant community of writers, beta-readers, and editors! As you start your journey on CritiqueMatch, we would like to highlight 5 easy steps to increase your odds of success for A) Hiring professionals for critique and editing services, or B) Finding free critique partners and beta readers.

A) If you are looking to buy critique or editing services, follow these 5 steps for success:

      1. Browse Pro-Critiquers
      Go to Hire Professionals and then click on “Search Pro-Critiquers.”
      • Narrow down the list of our freelance professionals filtering by service type, genre, ratings, price, and availability.
      • View the Pro-Critiquers’ sample critique files posted on their profiles to gauge if their critiquing style works for you.

      2. Save Profiles to Your List
      Found a professional that you liked? Click on the heart button to save their profile to your favorites list. This way, you can quickly select them during checkout (See step #4).

      3. Message Pro-Critiquers
      Do you have a question that is not answered by the information on a Pro-Critiquer’s profile? Send them a message before you book a service to get your questions answered!

      4. Book a Service
      Go to My Orders/ New Order to place an order. Upload your work in a Word document, select a service, choose the delivery due date you require, and fill out the rest of the information required to complete an order. Select a professional either from the entire list shown or from your favorites list.

      5. Rate and Review the Service
      The Pro-Critiquers will return the critiqued work in a Word document. Review the critique and ask any follow-up questions or clarifications through the messaging system. Rate and review the service to help build our transparent community!

A) If you are looking for free critique partners and beta readers, follow these 5 steps for success:

    1. Fill Out Your Profile Page
    This might seem obvious, but filling out your profile is essential as it is your first introduction to the community. Imagine coming into a room full of writers who all turn to look at you. You want to say something. It’s your very first “hello.”
    • Use the “About me” section to share your background and interests, and to showcase your unique voice!
    • Tag your experience level to set your partners’ expectations in advance.
    • Mark your preferred authors. What a better way to find a stylistic match with a partner than finding those who share your favorite authors?
    • Finally, you can select the genres and sub-genres you are writing in and/or are interested in critiquing.
    • Before you go, switch your profile to “public” so that people can find you within CritiqueMatch. This shares all the information on your profile, except your email address. When you are “private,” you can still search all other public partners and request to connect with them.
    2. Invite at least 5 Partners when you join
    • Go to the Free Critique Partners section and use the “Search Partners” feature to find partners. Narrow down your search by using the “search filters” button. Filter by genre, the level of experience you are looking for in your partner, and even by their favorite authors!
    • It’s a numbers game: Inviting more people gives you a better chance to find someone who fits your needs. Don’t just wait for them to reach out to you!
    • Additionally, you can always remove a partner (with or without a quick note) if you are not a good fit. No hard feelings. Finding the right partner is hard!
    • Pro Tip: Invite a mix of users with a few as well as many ratings to increase your chance of partnering with others.
    3. Read blurbs of what people are working on
    • You filtered the list of people in your genre, and there are still too many to choose from? Use the “Search Postings” feature to read the blurbs of what people are working on. Think of this as a message board or critique-partner classifieds.
    • Create your own public posting on what you are writing about to increase your visibility within our community.
    4. Initiate Contact using the Messaging feature
    • A critique partner accepted your invitation? Perfect! Time to get to know each other. Chat about what you are both working on and what you need help with. It’s an excellent way to break the ice and set expectations.
    5. Share a Snippet of your Work
    • We recommend exchanging one chapter with your partner to test the waters of whether the partnership will work. Don’t be deflated if it doesn’t. This is a long, trial-and-error process, which is why we’re here!
    • Pro Tip: Do not send your entire manuscript to a new partner unless you pre-agreed to do so! Imagine someone you barely know, dropping tens of hours of work in your inbox without first checking with you. Right? Not cool.
    These are the quick steps that can increase the odds of finding writing partners on our platform. Let successful partnerships begin!

Community Rules

Community Rules
  • When providing feedback to another user, please give specific, actionable feedback. You are encouraged to highlight problematic areas and recommend ways for improvement. Please remember to do so without trying to alter another user’s voice.
  • Be polite. While the ultimate goal is to give constructive feedback, when done in writing, your tone can be misinterpreted. Please make a conscious effort to come across as encouraging while pointing out areas of improvement.
  • Please respect people’s opinions. Hearing that your hard work may be flawed can be discouraging. You have the right to disagree with a critique you received, but please try to be polite when responding.
  • If a writing partner’s style and tone do not work for you, thank them for their time and part ways.
Prohibited Activities
As a CritiqueMatch user, you agree that you will not engage in the following activities:
  • Posting work that is not your own or plagiarizing other people’s work.
  • You are limited to one account per user. Users with multiple accounts will be removed.
  • Using any part of the website to promote violence, degradation, subjugation, discrimination or hatred against individuals or groups based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, or religion.
  • Using the CritiqueMatch website for any unlawful activities.
  • Providing user content that is defamatory, libelous, hateful, violent, obscene, pornographic, invasive of another’s privacy, infringing of another’s intellectual property rights, unlawful, or otherwise offensive, as determined by CritiqueMatch in its sole discretion.
The CritiqueMatch administrators reserve the right to temporarily or permanently suspend users who engage in prohibited activities.

Search for critique partners/ beta readers

To see the list of people that are part of the CritiqueMatch community, click on the “Search Partners” link on the left-hand toolbar menu. You will see a list of users, ordered by the number of critiques they have given.

How do you find the right partner among all users? You can narrow down the list using the “Search Filters” button.

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Here you have three different categories to choose from:
  • Type of experience: search for people who are writing their first book, or those who are only beta readers.
  • Favorite authors: what a better way to find a critique partner by finding those who share your favorite authors.
  • Type & genre: select the specific type of work and sub-genres you are interested in.
Apply the search filters to see the users who match your criteria.

Click on each profile to read further about the partners you are interested in. Read their bio, and more importantly, read the reviews that other people have given to them. These comments tell you how people felt when they received a critique from this user.

If the user seems like a good match for you, go ahead and invite them to become partners. When inviting them, introduce yourself. This is important. It’s your very first chance to make an impression on your potential partner. Tell them what prompted you to want to connect with them and why you’ll be a good fit.

Tip for success: You should invite at least five partners at first. When they accept, send them a note via the chat and exchange the first chapter of your work.

 When they become your partner, you will receive an email notification. You’ll also see their name under “Critique Partners”.

If you sent an invitation by mistake or are having second thoughts about it, go to the “Sent Requests” tab and withdraw your invitation.

Under the “Received Requests” tab you can find people who reached out to you to become partners. See who contacted you to connect. Read their intro, check out their profile, then go ahead and accept or reject their invitation.

You can always drop a partner if you see that they are not a good fit for you. Click on the “delete” icon and remove the partner from your list. No hard feelings! It’s SO hard to find a solid long-term critique partner. Most likely, you’ll have to try more than once!

Now that you are connected, you can also send them a message under the messaging section. Message your partners to coordinate the exchange of your work. Then go ahead and share a sample of your work.

How to create/ share your work with your critique partner

You got a critique partner. Good job! Take the next step and send them your work!

Go to “My Work” on the left-hand side menu and click on “New Work”. You will need to fill up all the fields within this form.

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Enter your book title, your work title (e.g. Chapter 1) and inside the main text editor you can either type your work, or copy and paste it from another document. Please note that when pasting your work most of the formatting will be lost, including indentations. The editor will only keep italics, underlining and bold. You can also use the built-in editor to adjust the text as needed. Note that while you may not see paragraph breaks, your critique partner will see your text's paragraph breaks when they receive your work.

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Once you are done pasting the text, you will need to select the type of work this is, such as query, full manuscript or a chapter. Next, choose the type of critique you need. You can choose as many fields as you need to give your partner a rough idea of the critique you are looking for. Then, from your partners’ list, select the partners you would like to send the work to. Set the needed date you would like to receive the critique by (please note, this field is mandatory. Even if you don’t need it by a specific date, go ahead and put a quick estimated one for reference). Finally, in the “notes to critique partners” section, provide a more detailed note to your partners about the work you are sharing and what feedback you are looking for.

Now you can choose to submit the work, or if you are having second thoughts, you can save this as draft and continue with the submission process later.

When you submit your work, you can track the status of the critique by checking the “Submitted work”tab.

When a partner finishes their critique, you can access it by clicking on the work title and then “View Critique”.

Inside your work, on the right hand side column you can see all the comments that your partner gave throughout your text. Click on the highlighted text in order to bring up the specific comment. Please note that you have to click on the highlighted text to see what comment it corresponds to, not the other way around.

You can mark a comment as “done” if you have finished reviewing it, or flag it as “to-do” if you want to get back to it later. Finally, you can even add a private note, just to yourself, underneath each comment.

Once you are done reviewing your partner’s feedback, it’s time for you to rate their critique. Click on the “Rate” button and select the “Total Rating” for their critique. If they are rock stars, don’t shy away from those 5 stars! Want to elaborate more? Give them a public review that will be visible on their user profile for other community members to see. Furthermore, you can even provide more detailed ratings, which are related to the type of critique you asked for. Although this is not mandatory, it has proven helpful to other users when they are looking for a specific skillset.

Now its time to submit your review! And don’t worry your name will not show up next to the comment or rating you provided, only your initials.

We recommend to “Archive” the work so your “Submitted Work” page is unclogged. You can always access your archived work’s critiques from the “Archived Work” tab.

How to give a critique

When your partners send you their work, you will get an email notification. When you next login to the platform, you will see a notification blob next to the “Partner Work” section and specifically, on the “Requested Critiques” tab.

Ready to give feedback? Start reviewing your partner’s work by clicking on the “Critique” button.

Make sure you read our Terms of Service, particularly related to Confidentiality and Plagiarism. These are key terms that we value on CritiqueMatch. Users that are found not to comply with our Terms of Service will be removed.

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Before you begin, look at the “Type of Critique” that your partner requested. It’s an important step because if your partner asked for high level feedback and you prepared the critique with line-edits, that will not meet your partner’s expectations.

When you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can also read additional detailed notes that your partner gave you regarding their work.

Now, you are all set to start reading and commenting throughout the text. To do so, first highlight the part of the text you want to comment on, and then click on “+comment” button.

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Click inside the text box and start typing your note.

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If you need to edit your comment, click on the edit icon. If you changed your mind and want to delete a comment, you can click the delete icon to remove it.

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Once you are done commenting, move on to the bottom section where you can wrap up your feedback with a few final high-level thoughts.

Can’t finish the review all at once? No worries, you can save your session as draft and continue working on it later. You can go back to it at any point in time by clicking on the “Edit Draft” button.

After you have reviewed your critique and balanced your constructive comments with positive ones, click on the submit button to send it!

If you want to check the status of your submitted critiques go to the “Submitted Critiques” tab. When a user rates your critique, you can see their rating here.

What is a posting and how to use it

Sent out a few critique partner requests and waiting to hear back? To further improve your chances of finding a critique partner, you can reach out to the entire CritiqueMatch community by pitching the project you are working on via the postings session.

In short, the postings section is a message board or CP classifieds. Here you post a short description of your work and what type of critique partnership you are looking for so that whoever is interested can send you a request to become partners.

You will notice that in order to submit a posting, you will have to switch your profile setting to “public”. (A friendly reminder: have those profile sections filled out so that people can get to know you better!)

image_public_profile

Let’s create a new posting.

Go to “My Postings” on the left-hand side menu and click on “New Posting”. You will need to fill up all the fields within this form.

image_posting

Fill up the title of your posting. Sum up what you need in a few works, such as “Need beta readers” or ‘SciFi writers in LA only”. Provide the approximate number of words of your project. Inside the text field, go ahead and provide a short description of your work. Remember: here you want to give a short blurb of what your work is about, not to share the actual work. That can only be shared with your partners privately.

Select the type of work; looking for help with a query, a chapter or a full manuscript? Then mark the type of critique you are looking for. Do you only need help with grammar? Do you have a rough draft and only looking for high-level comments? This is the place where you specify your preference. Next, select the type of critique partners you will be willing to interact with, and finally tag the type and genre your project is about.

If you are not ready to submit the posting, you can save it as draft. To retrieve and resume your draft posting, go to the “Draft Postings” tab on the top. Open the specific posting, and make any changes you deem necessary before submitting it to the public.

Search for public postings

Still can’t decide whom to invite to become your partner? Browse through the “Search Postings” section where you can read about what people are working on and decide whether they are a good fit for you!

If you are interested in a particular type of work or genre, go to “Search Filters” and set your requirements. For example, if you are interested in reading romance and want someone who already has a full manuscript ready, you can narrow down your search using these criteria.

As you scroll through the search results, check out each user’s profile. Click on the title of the posting to read more about it. If you find a project or partner that interests you, click on “Request to Become a Partner”.

When the user accepts your request, your critique partner journey will begin!

User tips

Finding Your Shiny New Critique Partner (by Bethany T.)

Congratulations! Working with other writers here at CritiqueMatch.com can be intensely rewarding and exciting. It’s a wonderful way to have accountability and to know that you’re not writing into the void. And at it’s best, this is a community where you can see your skills blossom and relationships grow.

So let’s jump in on how to set yourself up for success finding these partners who make the magic happen.

  • Step #1: Prepare Yourself.
    Think of your profile as your front door. It’s your statement to the community of who you are and what you’re about. Fill it out. All of it. What are your six favorite authors? What genres are you looking to read and write in? Is your About Me written? State what your work is about. Don’t forget to talk about your experience and what you can offer to the community. Are you really good at catching spelling errors? Have you taken a writing class? Do you speak Dutch and are you willing to take questions? For example, I recently used my experience in martial arts to help a partner. Put as much in there as possible. Short and succinct.

  • Step #2: Know What Your Goals Are.
    Before you approach a partner, take a moment to think about what you’re looking for in the collaboration. Are you looking to trade writing every day, every week, once a month? We all have different levels of capacity to interact. Be honest with yourself.

    Consider where you are in your own process. What kind of feedback are you ready to receive? Are you just trying to learn if your plot is working for you? Are you feeling really solid on your plot and want line editing? Do you know where you are? Not knowing is a fine place to be! Just communicate that with your partners.

    Also, take time to consider what you’re offering to a partner. Are you very well read in a genre and know what works or does not work in that area? Do you have a good handle on POV? Don’t worry about not being very experienced. Part of being on CritiqueMatch.com means that with a little effort, you will gain that experience.

  • Step #3: Make Contact.
    There are two ways to look up new partners. One, you can look at the list of Postings, for work that people are asking to have read. The other is to open the Critique Partners list and either scroll through the pages, or sort by filters. The filters are useful for narrowing down the possibilities. This site has grown a lot since I joined!

    Once you’ve found a name, check the person’s profile. See if there’s any indication that they would enjoy reading what you’re writing. Read their entire profile.

    Then, write a personalized note asking to be partners. Make it at least fifty percent about the other person. This is important. I have received many requests for partnering. Usually, I have no way of knowing if it’s going to be something I’m interested in, because it’s a generic one-liner. My most recent partner only snagged my attention with her note, demonstrating that she knew what she wanted, and had read my profile. I was honestly fully booked, but her proposition was too good to turn down, and I MADE the time to work with her. We both would have missed out if she hadn’t taken that personalized step.

  • Step #4: Follow Up.
    This is so, so essential to success. Once you partner with someone, it’s time to get on the Messages feature, found in the left-hand toolbar, and write to them. Say hello, ask about those details like what they’re open for, offer to exchange some test work.

    Try not to be shy! You don’t want that opportunity to slip through your fingers. Ask for a couple thousand words from them. From experience, I can say no more than 3,000 words for the first trade. That is enough to give you an idea about what kind of writing you will be critiquing and if it’s something you want to handle. If you need to bow out, this is the point to do so gracefully. A simple, “Not what I feel ready to handle,” should usually do it.

    Be prompt on returning this critique. Makes sure to point out good things, but also offer useful feedback. At that point, the other writer will probably ask for writing from you, but if they don’t (maybe they’re shy), then go ahead and use the messaging feature to inquire about whether or not they’re ready to critique your work. If you’ve already read their work, reciprocity is a natural state!

    What NOT to do: Partner with someone and then just send them your entire book, without comment. Yes, this has happened to me. I have enough commitments with my current partners that, if you do this to me, you’ll hopefully get a nice, short note from me asking about it. Most likely, it will sit in my inbox, untouched.

  • Step #5: Commitment and Thinking Long Term
    Many writers on this site have full-length manuscripts that they are looking for feedback on. Other writers only have a few chapters. When looking for critique partners, be upfront about what you’re looking for. The richest partnerships are built over time. There’s nothing like having someone know your work to the point that they can point out when you muck-up your own voice. And for High Level and Plot critiques, a full read is absolutely necessary. That long-term journey is so important.

    If you only have a few chapters but you partner with someone who has a full book, think carefully about whether or not you’re going to want to continue reading for someone, even if they’re not reading for you because you have nothing for them to read. You might not be a good fit for each other if your projects don’t align, at least somewhat, in length.

    For writers with full-length novels, it can be distressing to prepare and send out the first five or six chapters to different people, over and over again, and have interaction die off. Be honest about your commitment level. And if your project is long, be upfront when telling people how long it is.

  • Step #6: The Partnership
    I’m wishing all of us long term, productive critique partnerships. I know I’ve been very rewarded working with my partners here and I look forward to working with more writers in the future on even more projects. Finding and keeping a good partner requires the same skills as any other social exchange. Know what your goals are. Listen to what their goals are. State your needs and limitations and make sure you’re prepared for theirs. Then keep your commitments. After all, we’re all writers and each critique we exchange helps us get better at doing what we love.

    And there you have it. How to Approach Your New Critique Partner 101. I feel like I should be making a joke about “If you give a mouse a cookie…..” except it would go somewhere along the lines of “If you give a writer coffee…..”

    Forget it. There’s a reason I write fantasy and not comedy. Get back to your keyboards. Find some critique partners. Crack open your dictionaries and encyclopedias. Sew up those plot holes. Have some fun!
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About the Author: Bethany Tucker
Bethany lives on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington State, west of Seattle. She has been writing fiction for the last twenty years. It’s an urge she can’t escape, nor does she want to. Bethany writes epic fantasy with heavy dalliances in the paranormal under a pen name as an independent author. She is also a freelance editor and formerly an English instructor, though she would point out that teaching English is not actually what leads her to be qualified to edit fiction. She has lived abroad extensively and credits her ability to write diverse fantastical worlds to those experiences.

Tips and Tricks in Finding a Critique Partner (by Jane Catherine Rozek)

So you’ve written a few chapters or maybe a whole book, and you are saying to yourself, “this is good stuff,” and then you laugh because, of course, you and your family are biased!

Where do you find that stranger with the uncompromised eye to tell you exactly what works and what doesn’t? I’m happy to report on CritiqueMatch.com. On this site, I can exchange critiques and beta reads with total strangers anonymously, and I’m the only one who retains a copy of my manuscript once a critique has been exchanged.

Here are five tips and two tricks I discovered to find awesome CPs – Critique Partners!

1. Put yourself out there! Fill out your full Profile after reading the quick tutorial and browsing the site. Post a unique picture and fill in the About Me section to display your personality. In the Type and Genre section, be sure to keep clicking the arrows open to record the sub-genres you write in. This is important, so later you can search for writers in the same field.

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2. Prepare to give in order to get! State any writing/editing experience you might have and your willingness to critique what others submit. There are no freebies when you exchange critiques, so spend the time to edit professionally, just as you’d like them to do for you! An author’s integrity is a valuable commodity to hold.

3. Next, under the Search Partners menu, look for writers with similar genres and sub-genres as they will have more interest in reading what you wrote and will give you a better critique. Click Set Filters at the top and click your desired level of experience. Then open the arrows under Type and Genre to select the categories that match your manuscript. This will generate a handpicked list of critique partners to choose from. But don’t stop there!

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4. Search Postings in the same way. Open up that screen and click Search Filters to fill out the Type and Genre using the arrow options in the same way. You may be excited to find different partners with this method too.

5. Yay! Now you have a list of critique partners to ‘speed date’. Go ahead and invite your favorite writers to connect with you and send them a message. I suggest exchanging only one short chapter, (or a query letter or a plot outline), and see what kind of feedback they are able to provide and if their material interests you. You can get to know a few critique partners this way before you mutually decide to exchange a full manuscript. Oh, I also promised two tricks, didn’t I?

You’ll get more critique partners if you choose another writer at your level of writing expertise. Have fun working together to edit each other’s work. You can submit your much-improved writing to those with more professional experience later!

The second trick is to check back in a few weeks for a continual progression of critique partners to choose from as they join. CritiqueMatch is your supermarket!

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About the Author: Jane Catherine Rozek
Jane is a guest blogger on CritiqueMatch. Her self-published non-fiction book, The Celestial Proposal, was featured in the Body, Mind, and Spirit category in the December 2013 issue of Foreword Reviews. Currently, she is making final edits to her coming-of-age historical novel (based on a true story), with the help of personal CPs and beta readers.