Kate Lutow- Editing Narrative

 

Editing in a Workshop Environment 

When in a workshop environment there are feelings of anticipation and nervousness. You don’t know what people will say about your story, whether it’s good or horrible. How many changes need to be made to it? Do I need to change the whole plot?  

 

 I think editing in a creative writing workshop context is very different than regular essay editing that we do in English classes. Specifically, the types of feedback we do, essays usually won’t have multiple classmates editing the same piece while in a story workshop there are multiple different people. When you edit a piece for class it is important to think about how you say your feedback, and say it in a respectful way, no matter what type of form it is.

 

When writers look back on the workshops they have had in the past, they tend to fixate on the bad experiences. Out of the many workshops that I have been a part of throughout my college experience, the worst one was for a story that I had felt proud to show off.   I had written a story about a gnat; the main storyline followed the gnat’s last week alive. He hadn’t accomplished much in his short life, so he set of on a journey to make friends before he died. When I had written this story, I wanted it to be simple and easy to read, without having it become complicated. Instead, the workshop turned into my classmates pointing out unhelpful feedback that they wanted to see added into the story.

 

In a traditional workshop the formatting consists of the writer sitting quietly for a certain amount of time while their classmates discuss the story and give feedback on it. Before your workshop starts the professor may ask what you would like everyone to focus on when giving feedback, unfortunately I did not specify a specific topic. The workshop started off normal and on topic with people complimenting the story before giving feedback, but it soon dissolved into asking me questions such as, “Is there a bug government?” or “Is there a bug Jesus?” These questions kept going on and on becoming the only thing they would talk about.

 

When I was in that moment, I think I was glad people liked my story and so I didn’t think much else on it, but looking back I have become frustrated of how they handled my workshop. In the end they could have given me helpful feedback that I would have been able to use in my revision process. Or the professor could have reined in the situation before it escalated to much off topic.

https://www.92ny.org/children-family/school-engagement-in-the-arts/young-writers-workshop

 

The second workshop that I would like to talk about is one from my Creative Nonfiction Writing class. This workshop was formatted very differently than the first one. Instead of the whole class workshopping one student’s story, we were split up into groups of four. This way each student would be given more time to workshop their piece. Another change was that the professor gave each group different options of how we would like to format the workshop. We didn’t have to do the traditional style, instead we could choose from Question-And-Answer, the Oprah Method, the Generative Method, Explication, or the traditional method which was called the Iowa Method.  In the Oprah Method, other members in the group will ask questions about the piece to the author allowing the author to answer and vocalize their ideas. In the Generative Method, the piece is a starting point for the other members to free write by themselves before sharing with everyone else. Explication has other members describe and analyze everything in the piece, so the author is aware what is and what isn’t getting across to the audience. Question- And-Answer gives the author a chance to ask questions they need help on, and the other members give answers and feedback in response. Having different options for your workshop is important because everyone is different in what type of feedback works best for them. Someone might really thrive in the Iowa Method while someone else might do well in a Question-And-Answer method. I think it is important for people to know what type works best for you.

 

In my workshop I decided to use the Question-And-Answer method so I could steer the workshop in the way I wanted. I was given fifteen minutes to be able to workshop the piece. Through formatting the class this way, it gave each student more focused feedback since there were three other students instead of twenty. This workshop was by far more helpful to me for different reasons, for instance I think being in a group with a couple of other classmates who can give a more direct analysis rather than the discussion jumping around throughout twenty different students lets me have more focus on what the student is suggesting. Another way this workshop was helpful is because I was the one to ask questions that would specifically be helpful to me.  Instead of responses such as the ones in my previous workshop they instead gave responses that helped me think deeper about my piece.

https://smartgallery.org.uk/creative-writing-workshop-2/

 

In the future I think college workshops should be formatted in smaller groups and given options of how they want the class to proceed. This way students won’t have to worry about not getting the feedback they deserve. In the end there will always be workshops that are unhelpful and sometimes rude but it is important to look past these experiences and continue to seek help in your story.