To further our mission of helping writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror improve their work, the Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, provides writers of all levels, from beginners to successful pros, in-depth, insightful, professional-level critiques on their work.

One of the most effective methods of improving your writing is to discover how others experience your work. A critique that explains the reader’s experience, why the reader had that experience, and how that experience can be strengthened, helps the author gain perspective and provides valuable direction for revision.

The Odyssey Critique Service provides an honest assessment of your manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses are then explored in depth, so you see very specifically which elements aren’t working well, why they aren’t, and how they might work better. The critique is also instructional, explaining concepts and techniques relevant to your work as needed.

You’ll receive your manuscript back with significant line edits and marginal comments written on it. This will be accompanied by the critique. Critiques average over 8,000 words each.

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.

All material must be submitted at once.

1. Print out the stories or chapters/synopsis. Make sure that your work is in standard manuscript format. This provides the critiquer room to write comments.

2. Calculate the appropriate fee, or contact me for help. The fee for the first two options listed above is $300. If you are submitting more than 20,000 words, the cost is $15 per 1,000 words. So, for example, if you are submitting a novel of 80,000 words, the cost would be $15 x 80 = $1,200.

3. Make your payment. You may pay via US personal check, bank draft in US dollars, or PayPal, a service that allows you to charge the cost to a credit card.

4. Mail the following four items to this address:

Odyssey Critique Service
P. O. Box 75
Mont Vernon, NH 03057

• • The printed copy of your submission.
  • If you are paying via check or bank draft, include that in your package.
  • An unaddressed envelope large enough to hold your submission, with $7.50 postage on it. We will use this envelope to mail your submission to your specific critiquer. Those outside the U.S. should simply add $15.00 U.S. to the critiquing fee. This will cover the $7.50 postage as well as the additional postage cost involved in returning your edited manuscript to you.
  • Your regular address, email address, and phone number.

5. We will email you to let you know the date we received your package and who will be critiquing your work.

6. If you have submitted 20,000 words or less, you will receive your critique within 60 days. If you have submitted a longer work, we may need up to 90 days. Once we’ve received your work and identified an available critiquer, we can let you know whether this extra time will be required. You will receive via regular mail the critique and your original manuscript marked with line edits, comments, and suggestions.

7. After reviewing your critique, if you have any questions for your critiquer, you may send one follow-up email with those questions. Email your questions to me, and I will relay them to your critiquer. The critiquer will respond as her schedule allows.

Scientific studies have shown that revising or critiquing on an electronic document discourages major re-conceptualizing of a text. The author or critiquer sees only narrow windows of the text rather than the whole. While this can allow for very useful line edits and minor comments, it hampers the ability to compare distant passages of text or to consider big-picture issues, such as whether a scene is necessary, whether a character or plot is developing in a strong arc, or whether a change in the order of scenes might benefit the story. We work on print documents to maximize the help and insight we can offer to you.

If exceptional circumstances require electronic transmission of your manuscript, or require that you receive line edits and marginal comments within an electronic document, contact me.

You are the author, and whatever changes you make to your work, including ideas or wording suggested by the critiquer, are yours. Our critiquers operate very much like editors at publishing houses function, suggesting ways to make the work stronger. Those suggestions are for you and belong to you, just as the original work you submitted belongs to you. An editor at a magazine or publishing house doesn’t own any part of the copyright of a work that she edits; your Odyssey critiquer doesn’t either.

Unfortunately, no. The Odyssey Writing Workshop is a unique and powerful experience. 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.

The Odyssey Critique Service can’t substitute for that experience. 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. 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.

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 how to solve that problem.

While using the Odyssey Critique Service in no way guarantees admission to one of Odyssey’s programs, one of the reasons I wanted to start the service was to help applicants. Many writers apply year after year. Some of them improve each year and are ultimately admitted to the workshop. Others struggle, their skills remaining the same. I’m unable to give more than a few sentences of personalized feedback when I respond to applicants. 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 that. 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.

Bestselling author Carrie Vaughn graduated from Odyssey in 1998 (the year Harlan Ellison was Writer-in- Residence). She returned in 2009 as Odyssey’s Writer-in-Residence and in 2020 as a guest lecturer.

Her latest novels include the post-apocalyptic murder mystery, Bannerless, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, and its sequel, The Wild Dead. She wrote the New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, along with several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, and upwards of 80 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com.

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.

Barbara Campbell has been praised by reviewers and readers alike for her compelling characters and her “emotional, heartfelt” storytelling. Her background as a professional actress, lyricist, and librettist has helped her delve deeply into character and explore the complexities of human nature on the stage as well as on the page. Her musical adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd has been optioned for Broadway.

Barbara’s first published series was the dark fantasy trilogy Trickster’s Game (written as Barbara Campbell). Published by DAW Books, Trickster’s Game was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Society’s 2010 Fantasy Award for adult literature.

She drew on her musical theatre roots for her second novel series (written as Barbara Ashford), the award-winning Spellcast and its sequel Spellcrossed, set in a magical summer stock theatre. DAW Books released the two novels in an omnibus edition: Spells at the Crossroads.

A 2000 graduate of the Odyssey workshop, Barbara has taught eight online courses for Odyssey and has served on the staff of the Odyssey Critique Service for more than a decade. You can visit her dual selves at barbara-campbell.com and barbara-ashford.com.

Barbara believes that thoughtful, in-depth critiques are vital to becoming a better writer. “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.”

Lane Robins is a 1999 Odyssey graduate who has her bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. She is the author of Maledicte (Del Rey) and its sequel, Kings and Assassins. Under the name Lyn Benedict, she wrote the Shadows Inquiries series, which includes the novels Sins & Shadows, Ghosts & Echoes, Gods & Monsters, and Lies & Omens. She attributes much of her success to critiquing. Critiquing allows the writer to have new eyes on a manuscript, highlighting that often crucial gap between what the writer intends and what’s actually on the page. Critiquing can be an extremely useful diagnostic tool that has the potential to expose rough spots in a writer’s repertoire beyond the needs of a single story or manuscript, that improves not only the critiqued manuscript but the ones that come after. Visit her website at authorlanerobins.com.

Elaine Isaak writes knowledge-inspired adventure fiction, including The Dark Apostle series about medieval surgery (as E.C. Ambrose), The Singer’s Legacy fantasy series (as Elaine Isaak), and the Bone Guard international thrillers (as E. Chris Ambrose). In the process of researching her books, Elaine learned how to hunt with a falcon, clear a building of possible assailants, and pull traction on a broken limb. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside, Warrior Women, and Fantasy for the Throne, among many others, and she has edited several volumes of New Hampshire Pulp Fiction. A 1997 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, Elaine has returned there to teach, as well as at conventions and writer’s groups across the country. She has judged writing competitions from New Hampshire Literary Idol to the World Fantasy Award.

Elaine dropped out of art school to found her own business. A former professional costumer and soft sculpture creator, Elaine now works as a part-time adventure guide. In addition to writing, Elaine creates wearable art employing weaving, dyeing, and felting into her unique garments. To learn about all of her writing, check out RocinanteBooks.com.

A founding member of the Poet’s Unbound workshop, Elaine also belongs to the Science Fiction Writers of America, the Professional Authors’ Network of Romance Writers of America, and Novelists, Inc. She has run an invitational genre critique group locally and worked with teen writers as part of the Young Writers’ Conference. Writers at all points in their careers benefit from thoughtful and timely critique of their works in progress, geared toward the needs of the writer and the goals of the work. While there are many public writer’s groups and on-line resources, it can be hard to get the sort of in-depth reading that can help to advance your work to the next level. Aside from the direct benefit to the work at hand, receiving an insightful critique helps to train the mind of the writer—transitioning from reading for pure pleasure, to reading with an understanding of the tools and techniques that top authors use to win your attention and earn your loyalty.

A Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award finalist, and winner in the Writers of the Future Contest, Eric James Stone has had dozens of stories published in Year’s Best SF 15, Analog, Nature, and Kevin J. Anderson’s Blood Lite anthologies of humorous horror, among other venues. His first novel was released by Baen in 2016.

One of Eric’s earliest memories is of seeing an Apollo moon-shot launch on television. That might explain his fascination with space travel. His father’s collection of old science fiction ensured that Eric grew up on a full diet of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke.

While getting his political science degree at Brigham Young University, Eric took creative writing classes. He wrote several short stories, and even submitted one for publication, but after it was rejected he gave up on creative writing for a decade. During those years Eric graduated from Baylor Law School, worked on a congressional campaign, and took a job in Washington, DC, with one of those special interest groups politicians always complain that other politicians are influenced by. He quit the political scene in 1999 to work as a web developer in Utah.

In 2002 he started writing fiction again, and in 2003 he attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. In 2007 Eric got laid off from his day job just in time to go to the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He has since found a new web development job. From 2009-2014 Eric was an assistant editor for Intergalactic Medicine Show.

In addition to attending critique-based workshops, Eric has actively participated in several critique groups since 2003 and believes they are extremely helpful in getting his work ready for publication. He says a good critique is not just about finding mistakes and weaknesses in a manuscript—it’s about understanding what story the author is trying to tell, so that the manuscript can be improved to best convey that story to the reader.

Visit his website at www.ericjamesstone.com.

Barbara Barnett-Stewart (or Barbara A. Barnett, as you’ll usually find her credited) is a Philadelphia-area writer, musician, and orchestra librarian. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), and has had over 60 short stories published in magazines and anthologies such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Fantasy Magazine, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Black Static, and Wilde Stories: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction.

Barbara earned her Bachelor of Arts in music and English literature from the University of Maryland and a Masters in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University. A 2007 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, she currently serves as managing editor of the workshop’s blog and spent several years as Resident Supervisor for The Never-Ending Odyssey (TNEO), a workshop exclusively for Odyssey graduates.

Since 2005, Barbara has participated in both online and in-person critique groups. She has found critiques—giving them as well receiving them—to be an invaluable part of her growth as a writer. She values critiques that are truthful yet constructive, detailed yet not prescriptive, that recognize what kind of story the author wants to tell and what tools might help them get there, and that acknowledge what the author is doing well, not just what needs improvement.

You can find Barbara online at babarnett.com.