Kraftwerkshoping

on critique worksops and why I dont like the formal, usual brand

Way back in the ancient past of November 2023 I wrote about external feedback. In that post I excluded writing groups or student cohorts. Today, whilst I’m not going to specify those groups, I want to talk about something often associated with them, critique workshops.

https://stephenmcgowan.substack.com/p/that-bit-in-predator-where-arnie

Bear with me as this is a long one, and I’m writing it listening to Kraftwerk. I have used adobe stock images here, but I excluded AI from my search. If I’ve missed anything let me know.

In the past five years I have attended a lot of workshops. In the past two years I’ve led more than a few. What I say not are observations on the processes, strengths, and weaknesses of these and how I run my own.

Let’s set the scene

A critique workshop is usually where a few authors (usually 2-4 for time constraints in my experience) sit and listen to their peers discuss their work. Hopefully those peers have had a chance to read the work and form opinions in advance. The readers are generally diverse in their own writing and reading habits and in my experience a mix of culture, socio-economic and gender, though I understand this isn’t necessarily the norm. The writer sits, listens, and takes notes as one-by one the group gives their feedback. Sometimes the writer is able to respond afterwards but usually isn’t able to talk about the work beforehand.

This isnt real. The people are paying attention, except for the redhead at the back, shes playing WOW

This method of critiquing has some strengths and weaknesses, though in my opinion mostly weaknesses. The most glaring of which is the idea that the writing must be evaluated on its own merit away from context. Why did we decide this? You’re only usually able to give 1-2k words for evaluation and what work can be properly read and critiqued in isolation? Try it, pick a book and turn to a page at random and critique it without thinking about what comes before or after. A lot of the feedback is going to be about what we don’t see.

Why is that character doing that? – It’s explained elsewhere

What does that mean? Elsewhere

Is this going to be resolved? Elsewhere

Etc etc

One thing it does do is force the feedback to be exclusively craft related. Spelling, grammar, punctuation et al. This could be good, but thew writer has not gone to a proofreader, have they? They want to find out if their work is any good. Does the story hold? Do the characters feel real? Is the dialogue working? Chances are the spelling mistakes fed back to them would have been picked up in an editing pass or by an actual proofreader.

How many times in the real world do we do this? When deciding what to read next do we do it in isolation? No. We pick up a book in a genre we like, read the blurb, probably have read some reviews or know a little bit about the author beforehand. When pitching we write a synopsis (shudder) that explains the story to the person you’re pitching to, and a bio that explains the writer.

This is why it’s baffling to me that the voice of the writer is often left out of the critique process.

The other problem with this is that it forces us to fall back on our own biases. Without context we are forced to form opinions of the work based upon the genres we read/write, our own background, our traumas, the culture we belong to etc. This is where critique groups can be difficult for genre writers.

Let’s take an example.

A few years ago, I wrote a short story of about 3500 words. This short story was one of the best I’d written at the time and featured a space cowboy that was a “sleeper.” Stop a moment and think a bit about what that means.

If you’re a SFF writer or reader you either think that stasis is somehow involved, or that it’s a term that will be explained when necessary. We learn that humanity has (mostly) left earth voluntarily in order to start anew leaving the old biases behind) and sleepers are people who remember living on earth. They each have a barcode on their wrist and the space cowboy has had a hard time adapting to the new normal.

By now this should be screaming STASIS or CRYOSLEEP to SFF writers. During a critique workshop I attended which was mostly attended by lit-fic authors they said that they didn’t understand what sleepers were and I should add more to elaborate. This was years before I learned to trust the reader, so I added some details that looking back made it clunky and bloated. I abandoned the story though I am in the process of rewriting it.

Five more minutes please

What happened there was the critique audience weren’t my audience. I gave no context beforehand, and they responded with lit-fic feedback. The few SFF writers in attendance got the reference.

A.N. Other Example

Another workshop, another story. This one was an early chapter of what eventually became Joy-Land.

The main character is working class. I’m working class. My family are, and a lot of my friends are (though I once had an argument with my Mam about that fact which I turned into a poem for the Newcastle Poetry Festival 202).

Again, no context, no discussion, just feedback, one piece of which from a relatively well-off lit-fic reader was “The working class don’t speak like that.”

Now the dialogue isn’t written as a pastiche in the vein of the Irish-Cockneys of 2004’s Churchill: The Hollywood Years. Protagonist Hank speaks…normal. Normal to me anyway. The lack of glottal stops and some slang (there is slang but that’s another story) meant that they weren’t real.

I know how the working clases speak

I resisted the urge then to talk about Ken Loach and how he’d described the Working Class as some of the most eloquent people he’d ever met, or citing the conversations and debates I’d often heard from behind the bar of my then local working man’s club.

Luckily, I was experienced enough to ignore the feedback, but it was there and the person in question felt ok giving it because it was based upon their own biases.

Or…Just Naratives

Look at it from the POV of a current hyperfocus of mine, that of non-western narratives. Without the context, a writer seeking feedback on say, a Kishōtenketsu narrative has a problem in a formal writing critique session.

“Where’s the conflict?”

“Four Acts?”

Without the option to explain the story or style the feedback can be unusable or damaging to the story or writing. A writer may come away thinking they were wrong to write in that way and seek to rewrite to conform to what others want.

Lastly there’s the issue of such writing groups ran by established authors or in a university setting, lecturers. Now not all do this (I had some great lecturers who didn’t) but sometimes when the feedback starts, they go first. This poses a problem.

Being far more experienced with critiquing than the writer, in addition to their own biases (I keep using that word a lot I know) they pick up things the students also picked up on, thereby making the peer support part moot. It turns the rest of the class’s feedback to,

“I agree with X.”

Best practice here was the lecturer/runner go last. That way everyone gets a chance to contribute, and they can pick up on anything not noticed after which becomes a teaching moment for everyone.

What I do

So that’s my problem with a lot of critique groups. As I said I’ve ran some. Mostly university level during strikes and other periods of disruption. This is how I run my critique sessions and why.

1. The work is disseminated a week before at the latest.

2. The writer gives an intro to their work, including a short synopsis leading up to the set work, and any particular things they want the readers to focus on (this can be done as part of 1).

3. The writer reads their work out lout or if they want a proxy does.

4. The readers give their feedback, often asking questions to the writer.

5. The writer asks questions to the readers.

I don’t know how this person is holding a concept

Why?

1. Gives the readers a chance to read and reread the work and begin to form opinions

2. Let the readers know what to expect and might answer some of the readers questions.

3. Let’s the readers and writer hear how the work should sound. Sometimes a writer doesn’t listen to their work read aloud and I’m a big fan of that as an editing tool. Also refreshes the readers memory of the story.

4. The use of questions avoids judgment-based feedback and lets the writer think about their work. I often use questioning in my editing work as it fulfils another one of the things I think writers should always do, that is to interrogate their own work. “Why did I make that choice?”

It also generates a dialogue with the writer and makes the whole process less formal and more conversational allowing everyone to open up more and makes the writer a participant in the feedback rather than just a scribe, passively writing notes.

5. The writer can clear up any misunderstandings or clarify feedback. They can also ask specific questions of the readers at large that perhaps wasn’t covered. This can often lead on to a wider discussion about things like plotting or character that can be beneficial to the entire group.

Cons

There are weaknesses to my method. The obvious one being that you are limited to how many writers you can get through in a time period. I usually manage 2-3 in a two-hour slot, but it is dependent on the number of attendees.

The other weakness is that it doesn’t get round the genre problem but the solution to that is to only run genre specific workshops which you can’t really do in some settings.

Shoutout to Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses which inspired this blog post, and which I’m two thirds of the way through. Matthew also suggests questions from both the readers and writers. It’s a good book. Please read it.

A book to make you go hmm

If you think of some other weaknesses or want to add what you like/don’t like about workshops ad they are, then please do so below in the comments.