Since the Odyssey Writing Workshop began, we have been inundated with requests for help from writers unable to attend the six-week program. Some feel they aren't yet ready to attend Odyssey; some have applied but haven't been admitted; some are unable to attend due to work, family, or finances; some are searching for a taste of the Odyssey experience so they can decide whether it's right for them. People have asked for critiques on their application stories so they can improve them for next year; they've asked to come for part of the workshop; they've asked us to create a shorter workshop; they've asked to participate in the workshop via the Internet--in short, they've asked for some way to get help with their writing.
The mission of Odyssey is to help developing writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work. I've been searching for the best way to extend that help beyond the sixteen people who attend Odyssey each summer. To that end, we've created the Odyssey Critique Service.
The Odyssey Critique Service provides authors a method of receiving professional-level feedback done in accordance with Odyssey principles and with the thoroughness and depth for which Odyssey is known.
What are the Odyssey critique principles?
There are only two, and we follow them both at the workshop and in the critique service: All critiques should be both truthful and helpful.
Isn't that what you want from a critique? It seems simple enough, but many workshops and critiques do not adhere to these principles.
Truthful means that a critiquer won't say, "I really liked your story," unless she really liked it. It also means a critiquer won't use your story as a target for cheap shots meant to make her look superior. For the critiquer, the responsibility to be honest with you about your work is a sacred trust.
Helpful does not mean nice. Helpful means being specific, identifying problems as precisely as possible so the author has an idea how to improve the story. If a critiquer says, "This story sucks," it may be truthful, but it certainly isn't helpful. What does the author take away from such a critique? "Ah, yes, of course, I see it now. All I need to do is remove the suckiness, and I'll have a winner!" The author is left with no direction. If, instead, the critiquer says, "Your characters are unbelievable, and your plot has no suspense," at least the author has some idea of what to focus on in a revision. The more specific the feedback, the more helpful it is. At Odyssey, we try to give feedback that is specific, detailed, and thorough, and that explores the work in depth.
What distinguishes the Odyssey Critique Service from other editing, workshopping, or critiquing services?
Aside from the quality of the feedback, the main element that distinguishes the Odyssey Critique Service is the "big picture" overview of your skills that you will receive in addition to the detailed, in-depth critiques.
We thought very carefully about how to structure this service, and we settled on a structure that parallels the beginning of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Applicants to Odyssey submit one piece of their writing with their application. If they are admitted, they must submit a second piece before the workshop begins. They then submit a third piece during the opening week of the workshop. I critique all three of these pieces. This practice has proved incredibly successful in quickly revealing recurring patterns, tendencies, and stylistic tics. With a clear sense of the author's strengths and weaknesses, I meet with him during the first week of the workshop to discuss those and suggest ways that he begin to address the most serious weaknesses. This starts us on our Odyssey.
Similarly, with the Odyssey Critique Service, you will submit several pieces of your writing. The critiquer will not only provide feedback on each individual piece, but will also provide an overall assessment of your writing, including specific strengths and weaknesses that appear repeatedly in your work, and suggestions for improving those weak areas.
How much of my work can I submit?
The Odyssey Critique Service offers three options:
- Short story writers may submit up to three stories, with a total word count of no more than 20,000 words.
- Novelists may submit the opening chapters of their novel, and if they want, a synopsis of the remainder. The synopsis can be no more than 1500 words, and the total of excerpt and synopsis can be no more than 20,000 words. The chapters should be consecutive.
- Writers can submit more material if they want, up to an entire novel. Fees are calculated on a case-by-case basis. Those interested should send me a description of the material to be critiqued along with the word count.
All material must be submitted at once.
Who provides the critiques?
Your work will be read by one of the critiquers listed below. They have all graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop and know its critique principles well. Since Odyssey, they have all become successful professional writers. I handpicked these authors for their outstanding critiquing skills.
What is the process?
It's simple.
- If you have any questions before you begin, contact me at jcavelos@sff.net.
- Print out the stories or chapters/synopsis. Make sure that your work is in standard manuscript format (http://www.sff.net/odyssey/cfaq.html).
- Mail the following four items:
- The printed copy of your submission.
- A check or money order for $275. (You may also pay through PayPal [www.paypal.com], an Internet service that allows you to charge the cost to a credit card. You will need to set up an account with them, which doesn't take long.) Those outside the U.S. should pay by International Money Order in U.S. Dollars.
- An unaddressed envelope large enough to hold your submission, with $6.05 of postage on it. We will use this envelope to mail your submission to your specific critiquer. Those outside the U.S. should simply add $12.00 U.S. to the critiquing fee. This will cover the $6.05 of postage as well as the additional postage cost involved in returning your edited manuscript to you.
- Your email address.
To this address:
Odyssey Critique Service
P. O. Box 75
Mont Vernon, NH 03057
- We will email you to let you know the date we received your package. We will also let you know who will be critiquing your work.
- Within 60 days of our receipt of your submission, you will receive via regular mail typed, in-depth critiques of your pieces, along with an overview of your writing. You will also receive your original manuscripts marked with thorough line edits, comments, and suggestions.
- If you have any questions for your critiquer, you may send one follow-up email with those questions. Please send that email to me at jcavelos@sff.net, and I will relay it to your critiquer. The critiquer will respond as her schedule allows.
Why don't you allow submissions and critiques to be emailed back and forth?
It would be much easier to do this by email, to give your work a quick read and fire back a brief critique. But that is not the type of feedback that will help you have major insights into your work and make significant improvements. If all you want is a quick reaction, there are many places on the Internet that can provide one. We offer something different.
Working on a hard copy of the manuscript allows the critiquer to make more line edits. While some line edits and marginal comments can be made with word processing software such as Microsoft Word, these systems work best when the edits are minimal. As the number of edits and comments increases, they become very difficult to read and untangle. Working on a printed copy of the manuscript allows line edits and comments to remain clear even when they are extensive.
The line edits, comments, questions, and suggestions handwritten on your manuscripts are a critical part of the feedback you will receive. For beginning writers with weak skills, line edits and marginal comments are often critical to conveying basic, pervasive weaknesses that must be conquered before the author can advance. For more advanced writers, the devil is often in the details, so close line edits and marginal comments can be incredibly helpful.
Is the Odyssey Critique Service a substitute for Odyssey?
Unfortunately, no. The Odyssey Writing Workshop is a unique and powerful experience, which I would bottle if I could, but I can't. Getting away from your "real life" and focusing only on your writing for six weeks allows you to make progress at a much accelerated rate. Listening to the extensive lectures, doing the journal entries, producing new stories, revising old ones, critiquing classmates' work, receiving feedback from me, the guests, and your classmates, and working in this challenging environment all help sharpen your critical faculties, give you insights into your strengths and weaknesses, provide tools and techniques to improve your writing, force you to break bad habits and form better ones, open new worlds of possibility, and often lead to dramatic breakthroughs. Discussing all this with your classmates can lead to the formation of great friendships that will provide a supportive network to keep you writing once you get home.
The Odyssey Critique Service can't provide all that. But it can provide you with key insights that will help you see your work in a new light and make major steps toward improving it. As I described above, the service parallels the actions we take at the beginning of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, which kick-start students' progress. The feedback you receive will give you a clear sense of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, and it will provide you with direction. You will know where to focus your efforts to make the greatest improvement and conquer your greatest problems.
Will using the Odyssey Critique Service guarantee that I'll be admitted to Odyssey?
No. Using the critique service can certainly help you to improve, but how much you improve depends on how you use the feedback you receive. For years, I dismissed all the criticism I received on my writing, thinking, These people just aren't smart enough to understand my work. That made me feel better, but it didn't help my writing at all. Only after many wasted years did I finally begin to listen, and learn, and improve. Even so, it sometimes takes me months or even years to understand the underlying problem in my work and to figure out how to solve that problem.
While using the Odyssey Critique Service in no way guarantees admission to the workshop, one of the reasons I wanted to start the service was to help applicants. Many writers apply year after year. I see some of them improving each year and ultimately being admitted to the workshop. I see others struggling, their skills remaining the same. I'm unable to give more than a sentence or two of personalized feedback when I respond to applicants, which I know cannot be much help. I've often thought that if I could give a full critique of each application story, perhaps I could help the writer. But time doesn't allow. With the critique service, though, a writer can receive assistance.
The journey to become the best writer you can be is an unending one, and it's not easy--that's why I chose the name Odyssey. How much a writer will improve and how quickly he will improve are different for each person. We've set up the critique service to be as helpful as possible. I hope it will help you to make significant progress down that road toward making your work as vivid, powerful, and moving as it can be.
Will the fee I pay to the critique service help to support the Odyssey Writing Workshop?
Yes. We try very hard to keep the tuition for Odyssey as low as possible. Most years, the tuition just manages to cover the expenses. Some years, we lose money.
A portion of your fee to the Odyssey Critique Service will go to support Odyssey, helping to keep the workshop alive and to keep tuition costs down for current and future students. We very much appreciate your business and support, as do those attending the workshop. And when you're ready to attend Odyssey, it will be easier for you to afford it.
MEET THE CRITIQUERS
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Carrie graduated from Odyssey in 1998 (the year Harlan Ellison was Writer-in- Residence). An Air Force brat, she's managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. She has a Masters in English Lit. Her second novel, Kitty Goes to Washington, is due out July 2006, and she's hard at work on the third and fourth books in that series. Her short stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Talebones, Paradox, Polyphony, and various anthologies. Read some of her work at www.carrievaughn.com, www.futurismic.com, and www.talebones.com. She writes novels and short stories across the genre, from science fiction to traditional fantasy, urban fantasy, space opera, horror, and paranormal.
Carrie's been in various critique groups almost continuously for over ten years, where she's critiqued novels and short stories across all genres. She's critiqued beginning, unpublished writers, as well as award winners.
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Theodora Goss attended Odyssey in 2000. Her short story collection, In the Forest of Forgetting, is forthcoming from Prime Books in the spring of 2006. In 2004, she won a Rhysling Award for speculative poetry. Her short stories and poems have been published in Alchemy, Realms of Fantasy, Polyphony, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, Flytrap, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and have been reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens. Her short story "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm" was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Visit her website at www.theodoragoss.com, and find out more about her short story collection at www.forestofforgetting.com.
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Barbara Campbell attended Odyssey in 2000. Her first novel - Heartwood - was published by DAW Books in May 2005. Bloodstone, the second book in the series Trickster's Game, will be published in August 2006. A lyricist and librettist as well as a novelist, she is a member of SFWA and ASCAP. Visit her Website at www.barbara-campbell.com.
A member of the Gandalf Grants Review Committee for Odyssey and a regular participant in The Never-Ending Odyssey (for graduates of the workshop), Barbara believes that thoughtful, in-depth critiques are vital to all authors. "It's hard to get enough distance from your work to view it critically. Whether it's a scene that provokes a response you weren't expecting or prose that muddies the impact you're trying to achieve, the critique process can highlight strengths as well as weaknesses, and provide insight into aspects of your writing that may be interfering with your story-telling."
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COMMENTS FROM OUR CLIENTS
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"The critique exceeded my expectations. It was clear, comprehensive, and helpful."
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--Keith Sen
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"EXTREMELY HELPFUL!!! I've been working on this novel for over 10 years. The critique I received through this service was the best I've ever had--hands down. . . . The service is worth every penny."
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--Marques Dillard
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"Theodora [Goss] identified both strengths and weaknesses in my writing, and suggested clear and specific ways to improve. The difference between the 'before' and 'after' versions, once her feedback had been incorporated, was pretty significant--I'd definitely recommend the critique service to anyone trying to improve."
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--Steve Clancey
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"Carrie Vaughn's in-depth critique plus substantial line edits delivered a lethal one-two to the flaws in my manuscript. . . . Worth the investment and more."
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--C. R. Steevens
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"This was absolutely the best, most useful feedback I've ever received on my writing. It was clear that Barbara [Campbell] had not only read my manuscript, but read it twice, and tailored her feedback to help me identify what she saw as my strengths and weaknesses. Her comments were useful and specific. She challenged some of the basic assumptions of my plot and characters. She didn't allow me to get away with any shortcuts as a writer."
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--Josh Roberts
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