This is less of a ‘this writing life’ blog post than usual, and
more of a vox pop, to gather ideas from authors who regularly do creative
writing workshops. How do you deal with the feedback part of the workshop, and
in particular, what are your strategies for making sure the texts shared with
the group elicit ‘good’ feedback from peers ?
In my own workshops, I would say peer feedback time is often, to begin with, the most squeezed. There’s just never enough time for
it – we’ve talked too much before, or the writing bit has run overtime, and
maybe that’s just me being a poor timekeeper but I can never sacrifice a good
present conversation for the sake of a future perhaps-mediocre peer-feedback
session. So, that’s a first issue.
The second issue is that there are so many possibilities for
it that I sometimes end up overthinking it, in a labyrinthine sort
of way. Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer, ever : it’s about
deciding which strategy, this time, for this workshop, for this particular
purpose, will be the right one. Evidently, you won’t organise peer-reading in
the same way for an eight-month novel writing course for adults and for a
one-off haiku writing workshop for 8-year-olds. Not to mention that different
workshop atmospheres might lead you, on a particular day at a particular time,
to decide suddenly to do thing differently. And that’s particularly what I find
difficult, and fascinating : the act of making a final decision, of saying :
‘that hugely important, exposing moment, will be done in that way, structured
as such, for reasons X and Y.’
Here’s a map, really schematic, of some of those
possibilities for the different steps of peer-reading and feedback.
Sharing
When it comes to sharing the work itself, there’s already
two possibilities : do they have to, or is it optional ?
If it’s compulsory, there’s an added responsibility for the
teacher – and everyone – to make it feel safe and comfortable. But if it’s
optional, it’s only superficially more free, because of course some people
might never dare – and yet secretly desire – to get peer feedback on their
text.
In either case, you can also ask them to share it with the
group in class, or later (say, online).
And make it anonymous, or let them see everyone’s
names ?
Whether the latter or the former : do they get to share
it with the whole group, or with just a part of it ?
If the former, of course, it’s a lot of work for everyone –
but theoretically, everyone benefits from seeing everyone’s work – but in
practice, they might take less care in reading and commenting on each
individual piece.
If they share it with a fraction of the group, how
many ? one person ? two people ?
If the former : the person directly next to them – who
they’re likely to have picked as a friendly neighbour – or mix up the papers,
at the risk of causing awkwardness ?
If the latter : as a chain (A gives their text to B who
gives theirs to C who gives theirs to A), or as a triangle (A gives their text
to B and C, B to C and A, etc.) ?
In any case : do they read it out loud ? Or just let
the reader read silently ? If they read out loud : their own piece,
or another person’s ?
And that’s just the sharing part. Then we get to the reading
part.
Reading
Ideally, peer-reading should be guided and focused :
the workshop itself should have introduced a theme, motif, literary device, something to hold onto, that the writing
prompt itself should have contributed to intensifying in a particular writing
exercise : so the reading, similarly, should close that feedback loop by
focusing, ideally, on how well that particular something was done in the text.
Ideally. Because of course, whatever you do, peer-reading is
going to be about a lot more than that something. You might be tut-tuttting all
you want in the corner, but if this particular workshop was about
characterisation and everyone you can hear is telling their neighbour how much
they liked the style or the plot structure, it’s not necessarily your fault.
Texts are of course always in excess of the prompt you’ve so carefully chosen.
So you can structure the reading by asking the participants,
for instance, to annotate the texts or highlight them only for what they do
with the particular prompt. E.g. : if the prompt was about metaphor, only
read for metaphor. Not the most natural structured reading, but after all it is
close to some methods of literary criticism they might already be familiar
with.
You can also ask the participants, while they’re reading, to
divide up their attention, and therefore their feedback, between the
prompt-specific device and the rest.
Or you can ask the group itself, either individually or
collectively, to decide – and tell their peers about – what they would most
value as feedback ; in other words, what they would like their peer to
focus on when listening to, or reading, their work.
Feedback
When it comes to feedback, again, it’s a maze of
possibilities. Ask them to structure the feedback, using, for instance,
feedback sheets ? there’s many examples online and most workshop leaders
create their own, to fit each workshop, each group, tailoring it to the ages,
notably, of the participants.
Or let them give unstructured feedback, and risk an
avalanche of ‘yeah, wow, I liked it’, full stop, at the end ?
Ideally, you’ve talked with the group about the feedback
process. In contexts where workshops are conducted over several weeks, you can
afford to spend half of a session brainstorming all together what constitutes
good feedback in writing workshops. Often, it lasts a long time, because it’s a
real philosophical discussion : it’s not enough to say ‘constructive’ or
‘encouraging’ or ‘honest’ : you have to dig deeper. What does it mean for
feedback to be those things ? In one-off writing workshops, it’s much more
complicated to find the space for that group discussion.
The famous ‘I liked this particular thing, because…’ and ‘I
felt this could be improved, because…’ is a lovely thought always, and everyone
greets the suggestion with energetic nodding, but in practice I haven’t often
observed the phrases tumbling freely out of people’s mouths when it comes to
actually giving feedback...
Should the feedback be written up, or given orally ? If
the latter, who, if anyone, takes notes ?
And then after…
Will anyone get an opportunity to revise their work, and
resubmit it ? If so, to whom ? The same person, or another ? And
how is that second session going to be run ? Oh, no ! we’re back at
the start of the maze…
This is just a very brief overview of some of the
possibilities. Obviously, it’s somewhat pointless to overthink them in the
abstract – they should always be tied to purpose, situation, audience. There’s
also space for much more creative ways of doing things – I haven’t even covered
those here.
I’m very interested in opinions from
authors, teachers, practitioners who overthink those things as we are prone to
doing. So please share your tips, observations and existential questionings in
the comments !
-----------------------------------Clémentine Beauvais is a writer and literary translator. Her YA novels are Piglettes(Pushkin, 2017) and In Paris with You (trans. Sam Taylor, Faber, 2018).
