By the way, it doesn't have to be a private group, but my reasoning behind that was the room won't get too cluttered with a lot of posts like The Fireside has at the moment; so there won't be tons to wade through.

However, if people would just prefer an open room for critique groups, I can easily change the permissions. What would you all prefer?

I'm not sure, as I don't quite understand how this is going to work yet...

*Chuckles* My perception of it is it's a place where you can create your own critique group, with a few people. Or it's a place where you can post your work, specifically for critique, for anyone to look at. There won't be tons of posts to work through like there is in The Fireside, and we won't allow posts like 'nice work' and nothing else - the replies to posts there will have to be proper critiques of the work posted.

Also, I'm hoping to keep it so that massive chapters aren't just posted, and we'll have a break down of chapters into shorter sections. I think one of the reasons large chapters don't get critiqued is that people don't have time to go through them all; so if parts of long chapters were posted for critique instead of the whole chapter at once, I think the results would be good.

Just a few thoughts anyway.

I wonder if anyone would be willing to provide critique training... I know I would like a better understanding of what goes into a good critique, even if just so that I can better edit my own work. What do you think?

I was thinking that maybe posting detailed guidelines would be really helpful. I remember Roager spoke to me about that a while ago and said that there should be detailed write ups about How to Critique work.

I'll PM you what I found. It's really quite in-depth, but it explains really well what you should be looking for when you critique. I've heard a lot of people say that when you critique someone else's work, you're also bettering yourself as a writer. Through the process, you can teach yourself a lot, too.