Knowledge Base

The Newbie Queue is designed to give Critique Circle's newest members a chance to get fast experience of the CC process.

You must submit your first story to the Newbie Queue. The only restriction is that you cannot post an Erotica story in the Newbie Queue. After that, you may submit a further two stories (maximum total of three submissions) or you may choose to submit to any of the other public queues.

To give all stories in the Newbie Queue the best chance of receiving a fair share of critiques, stories in this queue will move into 'older submissions' once they have received five critiques.

Anyone can critique stories in the Newbie Queue.

Newbies can critique stories from any queue they choose.

For now, we have to do this manually. Please let us know which changes you'd like to make and we'll do it for you. Quickest way is through the CC mail system, recipient administrator.

The number of stories in review each week depends on several factors and the admins are constantly re-arranging the queues, right until the last moment.

The factors that influence how many stories are reviewed are, for example: How many critiques were submitted in the previous crit-period in a particular queue, how many stories are in the Newbie queue and how many stories are upcoming. We don't want a queue to be empty so that comes into account.

So be prepared for your story to be bumped up or down.

We review the queue each week and move stories that seem misplaced. If you believe your story has been moved to a queue where it doesn't belong, please contact us HERE.

If your story is in the 'Upcoming' section and you've decided to remove it, you can choose, 'Remove from queue' under your options when you view your story. With no crits on your story, this will refund your credits.

If it is 'In review' and you decide to retire it, you simply view the details of your story and select, 'place in older.' This will move your story out of the review period, and the crits on the story will be viewable by others (or other members of a private queue). 

Once a story is in Older Submissions, you can choose to hide or delete a story, or you are able to revise the story if there are no crits currently in progress.

Before you move a story out of the 'In review' period into 'Older Submissions' in the public queues, consider that there may be CC members who have critiques pending or are wanting to critique your piece. As a courtesy, you may wish to offer a warning/explanation on your 'story discussions' thread to let these people know that you are pulling your story 

Unless you submit to the Newbie Queue, your wait time may stretch into several weeks for your story to rise into 'In Review.' This is because stories go up in the order that they are submitted.

In order to minimize wait times, do your best to critique in the weeks leading up to your piece being 'In Review". This will open up more story slots in the queues, and stories will be bumped up, coming up for review faster.  This is also why it is beneficial to critique in the same queue you submit to—you will be directly affecting the wait times in that queue.

The public queues can change based on how many critiques happen in each queue each week. The more critiques a queue gets one week, the more story slots will open the following week. If there is a significant drop in critiques, less story slots will be available for the following week, creating a longer wait for some. If everyone does their part by critiquing, it benefits everyone through shorter wait times.

Also, active critiquers always get the most critiques when their work comes up for review. So to get lots of great feedback, give a little critique karma first! 

The Hook queue runs once a month during the first weekend of the month from Friday 00:01 GMT through to end of Sunday and accepts stories for the next Hook weekend during the rest of the month.

This queue is unique in that, here, the critter is playing the role of an unpaid slush editor - searching for that special perfect snowflake of a manuscript among a pile of hopefuls.

Anyone can post into this queue, but you must have extremely thick skin. The queue is meant to give you an indication of how good your hook is and where editors might stop reading and, more importantly, why.

Submission guidelines

* You should submit the start of your story and it should be less than 1000 words long.

* Only one submission per person is accepted at a time. You can submit your next piece into the next hook crit cycle once the current one completes.

* Submitting a story costs 3 credits but those 3 credits are refunded if you crit 10 other pieces in this queue in the same period.

* Story submission is completely anonymous. No one knows who posted what story.

* Story submission into this queue should not affect your statistics.

* You are welcome to fill out author's notes.

Critique guidelines

* There is a special "Hook" crit mode for stories. You click on the paragraph where you stopped reading and fill out the form telling the author a little bit about why you quit where you did.

* Remember, this isn't a full crit; a paragraph or two is usually enough.

* If you read to the end there is a special link for that for you to click on as well.

* The time which it took you to read the story until you click that paragraph is saved with the crit, giving the author an indication of how much time people spent on the story.

* You gain no credits for critting stories in The Hook but if you have a story up as well you can get those credits refunded.

* Crits in this queue should not affect your CC statistics.

* Do not be nasty! Purposely hurtful comments will be rejected.

Remember, story submissions and crit submissions are entirely anonymous. Your critters will not know that you submitted the story and you will not be able to see who said what (if you can, please tell the admins!). You are welcome to post story beginnings that you have already posted on CC but keep in mind that this will let certain people recognize you (which is fine if you're okay with it).

If you submit a story into this queue you should crit as many of the other stories as you can. Expect to spend only a couple of minutes on each one. When you're done with one crit the system will give you the option to jump directly to the next one. If you finish 10 of these you'll get the credits you spent on your own submission refunded.

You should only post into this queue if you have very thick skin!

However, crits should not be be rude or just plain mean. Keep it constructive! Critters, you are not here to vent but to provide helpful guidance to the authors. Please report crits that you feel are stepping over the line.

To find the queue click here.