Louisa Burton has an excellent article called Critiquing: To Give and to Receive on her website. It's invaluable if you're about to critique someone's work or you're due to get a critique back.
In fact, I used to try to get my friends and family to read it before approaching my novel. I suspect some of them skived though, so now I settle for paraphrasing this paragraph when handing over the MS:
"Try to maintain some kind of balance in your comments. It always surprises me how often critiquers point out all the problems in a manuscript, but make no mention of the good points. It’s just as important to know what does work as what doesn’t. If something made you laugh or cry, mention that. If something was particularly well worded or moving or effective, for heaven’s sake, let the writer know, so that he can analyze why it was good and hopefully reproduce those results in the future."
Apart from Louisa's advice, here are two guidelines I picked up somewhere that have been very helpful:
- Your reviewer's identification of a problem in your work may be spot on. But their suggestion on how to correct it could be pants.
- If one person identifies an issue but you don't agree, it could just be their personal taste. If two people or more come up with the same issues, then like it or not you have a problem.
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