A goof portion of this class follows the workshop model. That is, you write story for the class, and the class reads the story so we can talk about it as a group. Most creative writing classes use the workshop in some for or another, and the quality of the workshop depends just as much on the students in the conversation as on the person leading the workshop. That is, what you get out of workshop is directly proportionate to what you put into it as a class.

In workshop, the writer becomes a listener as the group talks about the story being workshopped, trying to identify the identity of the story, looking at what it does well, and then looking to see where it might fall short of being a finished piece of fiction. Our goal is to learn to read like writers, to give friendly but critical feedback, and to convey to one another our experiences of reading the stories being workshopped. Our goal is not to rewrite the story for the writer, not to edit the story for grammar, and not to bend the story to our own use. The writer will have a chance to talk at the end of the workshop, but until then—silence.

Scheduling: In this class, everyone turns in a draft on the same day. We will set up a schedule so that everyone knows what they need to read and when they need to read it. Note that just because your story is posted to Blackboard, that doesn't mean that you can't continue working on it. We'll be trying to illuminate how a story works each week in class. If you realize that your story would benefit from a change or two, go ahead and make those changes. We will, however, be downloading stories from Blackboard the week before your workshop, so in order to be sure that everyone is reading the same version of a story, please don't upload a new copy too close to your workshop.

Critique Letters: For each workshop, you wil have to do critique letters that put your reactions to the piece in question into words. A good critique letter is about one page single spaced, and it does its level best to be quantitative rather than qualitative, and diagnostic rather than evaluative. If the occasions for the different letter types are confusing, don't fret—I will tell you which one you are doing each time, and it will become routine. More about critique letters here. There are three kinds of critique letters that I will assign:

• "Best of the Bunch": These letters are written to me, although I reserve the right to share them with the whole class. These kinds of letters are reserved for flash only, and they respond only to one person in the class, detailing why that piece was the best written that day and why. When I collect these kinds of letters, you will bring one copy of the letter to class for me and one for the writer to whom you are responding. That's it.
• "Letter to the Class" These letters are written to all authors workshopped on the day. You will respond to all pieces for that day in one letter, using at least 300 words on each story, single spaced and stapled together if you go more than one page. You will bring these letters to class—one copy for each writer being workshopped, and one copy for me. You will write "Letter to the Class" letters during the our full class workshop cycle.
• "Letter to the Group": These letters are written in our small group workshops and are similar to the Letter to the Class except that in addition to the critique, you will try to draw comparisons between the different stories you have read for that day. You will bring copies of these letters for each of the writers being workshopped and one for me. You will write Letters to the Group during our small group workshops.

Introductions: For every story that gets workshopped, there will be one student assigned to introduce the story to the class. If you are introducing a story, you do not have to write a critique letter for that particular story—the introduction is worth more points than a critique letter. For more information about introductions, click here.

If you have questions about workshop, be sure to ask me.