The Most Valuable Tool of a Writer

The dream of literary stardom is an intangible thing to chase, but there are steps you can take to give yourself a cutting edge and elevate your writing to a standard that will set you apart from others in the race.

Standing alone against the trickery of spelling and grammar, the violence of dialogue tags, and the deviousness of narrative arc, there’s one device which surpasses all others to protect you from the dangers you’ll face as a soon-to-be author. It takes a moment to get started, but in my fourteen years of writing, it is by far the most valuable tool I utilise and well worth the effort.

1. What are Workshops?
2. The Recipe for a Strong Workshop
3. Workshop Ground Rules
4. How to Give Constructive Criticism
5. How to Receive Constructive Criticism
6. Mediating Workshops
7. Other considerations
8. Conclusion

What are Workshops?

I was surprised recently to find out that workshops — which have featured prominently in my development as a writer — aren’t nearly as known or utilised as much as I would have expected. Though as most of my writing career has been in academia, this makes sense as it’s difficult to convince people to join something when they aren’t sure what it is.

Workshops are where a group of people get together to look at a piece of work, which one of the attendees has written, to discuss the contents with aims to develop and uplift the writing. In some workshops, multiple pieces are discussed from different attendees, while others might encompass only one piece of writing, usually if it is a longer section.

There are various positives to attending a workshop, a few of which I will cover in this piece, but my main aim is to empower you to begin your own.

The Recipe for a Strong Workshop

The strongest workshops I’ve been to feature a mediator; someone who is experienced in workshopping and who never gives their own work. Instead, they act as a referee for the others, ensuring that critique is given (and received) in a constructive and respectful manner.

That said, the lack of a mediator doesn’t mean that you cannot have a strong workshop. It does, however, require an increased amount of trust in your fellow workshoppers. There might be a feeling of nervousness when a new workshop group starts up but that feeling will soon pass as you get to know each other, your strengths and weaknesses as writers, and how each of you best receive critique.

If you do want to attend a public workshop, and there’s one accessible to you, I would suggest you go for at least 2 sessions as a reader, without taking your own work. This will allow you to assess not only the climate of feedback style, but also the mediation style — these can differ in and of themselves as I will cover later.

Your other option is to create your own workshop with a few friends. To begin with, in my opinion, the best number of people for a workshop is 3 people minimum. For an unmediated workshop, don’t exceed 6 people, as this is where opinions can get strong. Without a mediator, it’s easy for dominant personalities to take the fore, and for more introverted readers to feel unheard. Also, as anyone who has ever attempted to play a tabletop RPG game knows, trying to organise a time for people to be free simultaneously is chaos at best, so the fewer people to arrange the better.

Once you have your group on board, the next step is to establish functional rules of how the workshop will be run. Here are a few things to consider;

• How will you meet? Both in-person and virtually are very doable, and both come with their own positives and negatives. If you’re meeting online, discuss which platform you will use. I have used WhatsApp, Facebook, and Zoom video calls, and Discord voice chat to host workshops with all three platforms working well.
• How long will the sessions be? The standard is 2 hours, which seems to be a good amount if you’re limiting the time. With the casual sessions I have with my friends, we have a start time and then go until we run out of things to say — which can be a few hours!
• How are you going to share your work? Personally, I am a big fan of sharing work prior to the session, so you can read and react individually and then the session is purely for discussion and feedback. Decide together how much time you’ll have the work prior to each session. 1 week is perfect personally, but it can be more or less depending on participants’ workload. You can also read your piece in-person if you want to have live reactions to your work, but consider this when discussing session length as additional time will need to be dedicated to it.
• How long will the pieces be? If you’re critiquing multiple pieces of feedback per session, I’d recommend the absolute limit to be 2k words per text. 1k words is a good amount for a 30-minute-per-writer session. If it’s one piece per session, I’d suggest 5k per hour to be discussed. This also depends on people’s capacity outside of a session too — reading and note-taking can be a long task for some! (Timings are based on reading external to sessions.)
• How do you best receive feedback? This is both an emotional and a physical question. Emotionally, everyone is at different points of their writing journey. Is your writing your precious baby that you want protected and encouraged at every turn? Or are you so far down the path of being jaded about your own work that when people say “it’s good” you are barely able to stop yourself from screaming “BUT WHY?!” into their shocked, confused faces? In physicality, do you best take feedback in spoken or written format? And how will people get written format to you after? If you are providing written feedback it is better to send it after the workshop so the critiquer is able to contextualise the notes for the writer in session.

Once you’ve discussed these things, and set a time and date, you can set your ground rules for the sessions.

Workshop Ground Rules

Sharing your work with anyone can feel daunting, especially if it’s something you haven’t been able to do before. The process of writing is isolating in nature, so getting your work in front of other people is a hang up that is difficult to overcome. But if we are to become Authors of Novels (or other mediums) then we must endure this pain.

Workshops are excellent for this hurdle. People attend workshops because they want to help and want to see the writers succeed. Especially if it’s a workshop with friends. Once you have that in your mind, sharing your work gets a little easier. But as I’ve said above, not everyone receives feedback in the same way. So here are some things to consider implementing in your workshops.

How to Give Constructive Criticism

This might not seem like a skill to learn, but it is. Giving constructive criticism is absolutely one of the most important skills out there when it comes to any creative activity. The vital thing to remember when you’re giving criticism is that it has to be constructive. This is the zero-sum, non-negotiable bare minimum. Tactless critique has absolutely no place in any workshop. But how do you make sure all criticism is well-presented criticism? Well, in workshops I run there are three main formats that are the easiest to use as critique:

• Feedback sandwich. This is probably the most well-known of all the formats. Pose your critique as ‘good-change-good’. Find at least 2 things that you like about the piece and cushion the thing you’d like to see developed between them.
• Bring solutions to problems. This is also a way to get to know your own writing. When you spot an issue in someone else’s writing, think about how you personally would fix that. When you present this solution, others will also think of how they’d address it, and there might be a pool of suggestions for the writer to select from. Present these as suggestions, not instruction.
• Ask questions. This might seem the simplest, and curiosity is one of the easiest types of feedback. Once you start questioning work, the writer will also. They’ll be able to see what they have put on the page and identify what remains in their own mind. This is very difficult to see in your own work, so having someone else’s perspective is very useful here.

• Don’t give absolutes. Within this realm, we are not The Sith. A piece of writing is neither entirely bad, nor entirely good. Avoid using phrases like ‘I don’t like it’ and ‘this is nice’. Don’t refer to the text as a whole. See beyond your personal preferences and try to build on what is presented in front of you. Everything has value. Everything can be improved.
• Don’t be closed off to new concepts. If you suggest something as a solution, and someone gives an alternative, don’t argue that your way is the only/right way. This can leave the writer feeling like they don’t have options and that they have to write in a specific way to be ‘correct’.
• Don’t be rigid in your feedback. This is similar to above, but notably don’t pressure a writer to take your advice. It’s their piece of work — not yours. They are well within their rights to disregard what you suggest.

Using these basics, you can have a very fulfilling and productive workshop session. Though there is one last thing that you will absolutely have to discuss.

How to Receive Constructive Criticism

This is genuinely something that I feel everyone needs to learn in general. How do I receive criticism? Well, the first thing to consider is whether the criticism is being given in bad or good faith. But how do we know that for certain? My mother always told me “never take critique from someone you wouldn’t go to for advice.” It’s very reductionist, but that is where I begin trying to decipher whether criticism has been given with intent to build me up or to tear me down. I question “would I take advice from this person?” Often, if it’s a stranger, then the answer is usually “no”. So unsolicited critique is likewise dismissed.

That said, we are talking about workshops where we are presenting our work explicitly for constructive criticism; how do we approach receiving it? What attitude should we come to a workshop with?

There is only one thing to say on this, and it is excruciatingly simple:

Listen.

It’s as simple/difficult as that.

It might seem like a stupid thing to say, but if I had a pound for every time I have attended a workshop with a writer who was so absolutely assured of their own brilliance and only attending to hear more compliments — only to become combative when they didn’t receive the glowing praise they were expecting — I would be able to buy myself a very nice treat.

The other people who are attending the workshop have done so because they believe in you and your work. They want to see you grow and elevate your skills. Be respectful of their time.

You may not agree with everything that’s being said (in fact, I will guarantee that there will be disagreements — but keep them lighthearted) and it’s entirely up to you whether or not to take the advice you receive. But while you’re in the moment; live it, question, listen, seize the opportunity.

Mediating Workshops

This section covers how to be a mediator, but also how to spot a good mediator. The most knowledgable mediators are people with experience of either writing or the publishing industry. Personally, I have undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Creative Writing and I’m working on my Doctorate. I’ve also been an attendee to workshops run by professors, agents, professional editors, and marketeers from big publishing houses. But professional experience doesn’t always translate to aptitude as a mediator. The best mediators are patient, encouraging, and can adapt to the needs of the attendees.

In my experience, they also encourage the attendees to disagree with them. When you’re faced by someone who has Knowledge and Experience of the finer elements of the writing world, it can feel like their opinions are Law. They aren’t. Writing is subjective. You will find people who love what you do in equal measure to those who don’t.

Some mediators like to give their feedback first, while others give it last. Others prefer a free-for-all and give it whenever it feels natural. I like doing the 2nd option — though I frequently stray into the 3rd.

There are positives and negatives for each option. Giving feedback first makes it more likely for others to agree with only your perspective as the mediator, but it does fill that awkward gap where no one wants to go first and say the wrong thing. Giving it last can sometimes feel like a death knell, but it does allow you to get the temperature of the general feedback before you give yours. Giving it alongside other people’s feels the most natural and can promote organic discussion, but it does also lead to the most passionate discussions if you’re wont to get lost in the debate, leaving it difficult to extract yourself to mediate efficiently.

As a mediator, there is an expectation that your feedback will be more thorough and detailed for every participant. This will add to your workload, so if you are considering mediating, do take this into account. It does pay off to be a mediator, as seeing the writers you assist go from strength to strength, knowing that you have directly nurtured that talent, is incredibly rewarding.

When mediating (or when vetting a mediator at a workshop you’re attending) thoroughly consider these things:

• What are their qualifications?
• How are they enforcing good constructive criticism?
• Do you trust what they are saying?
• How are they interacting with the text and conducting themselves as a person?

The last question is very vibes-oriented, and will lean heavily on your personality, experience, and preferences. They may be established, they may give excellent feedback, and you might trust them, but do you gel? I refer back to the beginning of the How to Receive Constructive Criticism section — ask yourself if you would take their advice on a non-writing topic? That will guide whether you feel comfortable taking their critique too.

Other considerations

There are a few things to keep in mind with workshops whether you are attending, writing, mediating, or just reading. They are important to consider, but can be easily overlooked, so here’s everything miscellaneous to consider while workshopping.

• Trigger warnings. This is a big one for public workshops with strangers. If you’re attending, figure out whether there’s provision for the inclusion of trigger warnings with texts, and if there isn’t, be very cautious. I have been caught out a number of times when people have brought poorly-disguised r*pe fantasies to a public forum, and so this is now an absolute must for when I’m running or attending a workshop. This is still important even with a self-lead group, just as a consideration for each other.
• Diversity. Try to look for (or build) a group from all walks of life and from as many backgrounds as possible. This small step will go a huge way in elevating your work. This isn’t only in reference to marginalised people, but it can be as simple as growing up in a different place to you. One of the main issues I had with the London workshop was that whenever someone shared a piece referring to London districts or to the city in the past, most of the attendees would lose their minds over it. I didn’t grow up in London, and my experience of the city was very limited to the touristic areas, so I had no frame of reference for 80% of what the writers had included. It meant that the same things that other people were praising, I was completely ostracised from. Diversity among your attendees will highlight when information needs to be clarified in the writing.
• Accessibility. Consider the needs of your attendees. This isn’t only a matter of physically getting to somewhere, but also familiarity of software if meeting virtually. One issue I’ve encountered multiple times in workshops is the expectation for work to be read aloud, which can discourage attendees who may not feel comfortable doing so, so offer options wherever possible.
• Differences in genre. You may be critiquing work that’s not to your tastes, so keep an open mind and work towards what the writer is intending to acheive rather than what you would do in their shoes. Also, broadening your horizons and reading pool will improve your own writing. Many devices and issues with writing aren’t genre-specific so the critique will apply to you even if the genre doesn’t.
• Adapting your expectations. Meet the writer where they are. Skill sets are very diverse; don’t expect beginners to be able to critique the same way an experienced writer will, and don’t simplify constructive criticism for someone who is more advanced.
• Check on your mediators. They’re people too! Feed them sometimes. Check on how they’re doing.

Conclusion

In all, I hope this guide will encourage you to try a workshop or build one with a group of friends. When you are a published author, you will receive reviews and critique from many different people. It can be difficult to take if you haven’t already built up that tolerance to it. Workshops are perfect for learning that skill. They are designed to come before your writing sees an editor, before you submit to an agent. Their communal spirit will build relationships with contemporary authors and bolster confidence in yourself and your writing. Reviews are all well and good, but they are given after the publishing date — once you cannot go back and change anything. Workshops are a safe environment for you to iron out any of the issues before your writing is set in ISBN.

Cover image by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash