From: mcq@en.com (Maureen F. McHugh)

[Writing about being an instructor at Clarion]

...My critique
template starts with a sentence summation of what the story is about.
(You'd be surprised how often someone summarizes your story and you
think, hey, wait, that wasn't the important part--which tells you
something about where the weight is falling in the story.)  Then they
had to tell how the story was effective, how the story wasn't
effective, and make a suggestion for improvement.  

Oddly enough, this is an amazingly good formula to get critiques that
feel useful rather than savage.  (You always feel savaged a bit after
critique, I mean, that's your baby on the later, you know?)  And it
worked really well.