How do you....

[livewire]

Ok...I am supposed to be critiquing two of my classmates' stories for my writing class at 4:20 today....my problem is that I feel that they are both better written than anything I could possibly produce and I can't figure out anything constructive to say to either of them about these previously revised pieces of art. I mean, the one story doesn't match my aesthetic at all....but, still, it is well articulated. How do you give constructive criticism to people whose work is better than your own?????

[TurkishMonky]

At least tell them the parts of the paper which you think are best. Then try and find the parts that aren't as good as the best parts, and try and figure out how they could make them match up. Or look at the paragraph breaks and see if there are any that could flow between better, but be sure point out that their work on a whole is fantastic, and WHY.

I'm not really a essay writer, but that's how i did it for my classes, and they seemed to be ok with that. Just DONT say "Good job" You have to explain why.

[kazekami]

You need to tell them:

A. what is well done.
B. does anything bring up any questions? Are there any holes in the story or arguement depending on what it is.
C. Does something seem out of place.

Those are the 3 questions I always think of when reading others work.

[Kaori]

How do you give constructive criticism to people whose work is better than your own?????

That's always difficult; it does become significantly harder to give good criticism when you feel that a work is very strong to begin with. Like TurkishMonkey said, it's important to say why you thought their stories are good--the more specific you can be, the better.

Other than that, since these are stories you are critiquing, not essays, even your basic emotive reactions can be helpful. You can comment on which characters you liked or disliked, which scenes or lines were or were not convincing, and so on.

Don't feel too bad if you can't come up with anything negative, though--positive comments can be helpful, too, as long as you are telling the writer why its good aspects work, not just that you like the story.