Hmmā¦ Iām not very sure, honestly, just an idea thatās being developed on the fly. There are multiple ways: Maybe people can sign up to be paired with someone, and then it works like an exchange, and we could also have an option where you can opt to change partners at each stage, somewhat like a community facilitated critique partner exchangeā¦
Another way is that thereās say five people in a group and all of them work on 4 books at a time while the other four read their books (but of course, in this method we canāt have an expanding pool, just new groups, because it would be too many books for one person to read), and this would be somewhat like working with a critique group. And then we could also set up workshop chats etc where each of these books gets discussed somewhat like a traditional book club, because by the end of one round, everyone has read all five books. Maybe people have an option of joining a group with just three others, based on availability. And time limits would not be strict, but definitely longer than a week long or month long exercize, because weāre asking people to read multiple booksā¦
One more idea I had that Iām very unsure about is that we have a new category / channel where everyone can post their query (with them being required to read and critique someone elseās query first) and then other people can also go through theirs and give feedback, and the partial / fulls would be asked for if someone feels an interest or something. But with this, people might just leave it there after an intial period, so maybe this category gets wiped monthly, somewhat like the share your story threads on the old forumsā¦ Then again, Iām not sure a lot of people would request to read other partials or fulls at all, either, so this method might not work at all.
This is mostly just half baked ideas, but if it seems like it could be implemented well, Iād be willing to help develop them properly.
Edit: Iām not sure how half written or being writting at the moment manuscripts could fit into this, honestly. Maybe a thread of sorts where ideas / scenes are discussed and talked about, or say chapters at the most, but thereās still a commitment to give feedback to someone elseās work before posting yours, something like the Struggling Writerās Den topic, except this is much more focused on craft based discussions or on a specific thing in a chapter. We have a channel in that discord server where we do this, so if someone wants feedback or help with a specific scene or part of an arc or something, they can post snippets from their work and we help each other with it.
Something regular for books that are being written is much harder for me to think of, because Iāve had bad experiences with having a manuscript criticized when itās still being written, because I tend to rewrite or lose interest in the story, so I canāt really see what would be best