Southwest Writers offers both members and non-members professional critiques of manuscripts at a price far below the usual market cost per page. Professional authors and editors critique your work with thoughtful, constructive insights with a quick turnaround.

This process includes comprehensive, general feedback on your writing style and ability, as well as a detailed analysis of your work. We also offer specific suggestions for improving and marketing your manuscript.

The critique for fiction includes a review of voice, plot, theme, conflict, pacing, hook, characters, setting, dialogue and structure. A nonfiction critique includes an analysis of hook, premise, slant, content, conclusions, voice, point of view, pacing and structure.

The Critique Service critiques writing in the following areas:

• Query letters
• Synopses
• Articles
• Nonfiction books
• Book proposals (for fiction or nonfiction)
• Short stories
• Mainstream fiction
• Genre-fiction (including mystery, sci/fi, horror, fantasy, romance, historical, YA)
• Screenplays or stage plays,and
• Poetry

I am so pleased with the SouthWest Writers Critique Service. I am a new writer with no formal training in the craft, and have few opportunities where I live to attend writing workshops or join a writer's critique group. I live on the island of Puerto Rico, which has meant literary isolation for me.

My lifeline has been the SouthWest Writers Critique Service. Through my relationship with the critiquer assigned to me, I feel as if I have my own personal writing instructor guiding me through the complex task of bringing a story to life.

The critiques sent back have been thorough and extremely generous in content. It is obvious the critiquer takes a good deal of time to read and re-read the manuscripts before writing her comments. She looks thoroughly at technical elements, but also offers her impressions not only as a professional editor, but also as a reader. She has helped clarify what touches a reader, and what does not. I have learned things about my characters that I didn't see for myself. And that's a good thing. It has helped me understand my character's journey, and my own, better than I had before.

Because of the SouthWest Writers Critique Service, I now feel part of the energy and joy that unites us as writers. Thank you for offering such a valuable service.

—Susan Nadathur
Puerto Rico

Our talented team of critiquers includes a diverse group of 15 professionals, including authors, novelists, editors, teachers, poets, and screenwriters, who each have expertise in a certain area of writing and editing. Manuscripts are submitted to the critique service chair via the SWW office so the critiquers remain anonymous throughout the critique process.

We have created a dynamic community of professional writers and editors, who all share the same common goal - to nurture, support, and encourage the creative vision of writers of all levels of expertise. Our job is to generate helpful, specific comments about how a writer can develop their existing skills, and to allow their "voice" to emerge into different directions as well. The nature of creative energy is unpredictable, restless, and expansive. Your muse, and the collective muse of all writers, longs for the same thing - to be heard! The mission of the SWW Critique Service is to use our writing and editing expertise to encourage you and help you progress on this very worthy path.

• $15—Poetry of no more than 3 pages
• $15—Query letter of no more than 3 pages.
• $25—Synopsis of up to three pages; additional pages are $3.50/page.
• $35—Minimum charge for up to ten double-spaced manuscript pages; additional pages are $3.50/page.

Decide what you'd like to submit for critique. Before submitting, check to make sure that you've proofread your work - this will allow our critiquers to spend all their time properly evaluating your manuscript, rather than pointing out obvious typos.

Evaluate what you hope to gain from the critique - make an outline of which points they should cover and whether you want an overall critique or a more detailed analysis of a specific part. Our critiquers have specific guidelines that they follow according to the genre of work. But please feel free to include specific information on what you hope to gain from the critique and what points you'd like them to focus on (e.g. point of view, plot structure, voice, etc.).

Submit your work to the Critique Service chair, in the following manner:

• Hard copy - print out ms, print out submission form from website and mail with the appropriate fee to the SWW office (3721 Morris NE, Albuquerque, NM 87111).

The critique service chair, upon receipt of your manuscript submission, will confirm receipt and forward your submission to the appropriate critiquer.

Submit Your Work Now:

Edith Greenly
SWW Critique Service Chair

When you receive your critiqued manuscript back from the critiquer, you will also receive a blank Evaluation Form. Please take a moment to fill this out and return it to the SWW office c/o the Critique Service. We place a great deal of value on this type of feedback, as we want to consistently provide both constructive and helpful critiques.

Turnaround times for submitted manuscripts vary, depending on length and the number of submissions in a critiquer's queue, but every effort is made to return submissions as soon as possible. Please allow sufficient time for manuscript processing, delivery to the critiquer, the actual critique process, and delivery time via USPS back to the submitter.

SouthWest Writers agrees to provide a critique of the work referenced above by a qualified editor. The editor is not an employee or agent of SWW. It is understood that the opinions expressed and suggestions made in the critique are those of the consultant, and not those of SWW, its employees, officers, members and/or agents.

Although SWW accepts responsibility for providing the service, it can accept no liability for consequences arising from any opinion expressed or any suggestions made in the critique, and does not warrant that the editor's comments or suggestions will result on the sale or publication of the work, or the winning of any contest(s).