On Thursday, March 8, ENGL 371 did small group revision
workshops. The students brought
revised drafts of their first workshopped short story. This process gave them a chance to
implement the feedback they had received from their peers.
It was fun to work in the small group and hear how the
students interacted with each other in this more intimate forum. The workshop followed much of the same
format as the large group sessions.
I gave my group members the option of talking about how the revision
process had gone for them before hearing their peers’ comments, but they opted
out of this. On reflection, I
think it was a good move. Students
did ask each other about writing choices they had made between first and
revised drafts – why keep this? why cut that? – and so those discussions of the
revision process came up naturally.
Writers also asked their peers about how certain changes appealed to
them between the two drafts.
As is to be expected, there was quite a spectrum in the
amount of revision that the writers had done. On one hand, J. had made only minimal changes –adding some
details for characterization. In
our small group discussion, it came out that his peers felt that there were
still some foundational conceptual decisions about the story that had to be
made (more focused), which would in fact require larger scale revisions. Not having been present at the initial
conversation of J.’s story, I don’t know if these issues were addressed in the
large group workshop and J. had chosen not to incorporate the feedback, or if
this was new input. Either way, J.
seemed open to these critiques. Even though the revised draft did not show much
initial revision, it doesn’t seem like this is because of a resistance to
feedback from his audience on what is working/what is desired.
On the other hand, S. had done a major overhaul and
rewritten her story from a different character viewpoint. She’d also switched from third person
to first person narration. One of
the students commented, “I feel like this is almost a totally different
story.” S. talked about the
reasons for the major shift. Her
peers delineated the benefits of both drafts and how these might be combined in
a third draft. They felt that the
details of the situation were more clear in the revision, but that the first
draft had been more driven by scene and the second sacrificed this to
exposition. In the end, it seemed
like S. would likely have to do another major revision, trying to find a middle
ground between the first two, but S. did say that the second draft had helped
her get a better sense of the story and characters.
The other two students presented moderate revisions
consisting of added, deleted or elaborated scenes. The discussion on these two drafts focused mainly on how the
revised scenes affected the overall arc of the story or thematic and character
development.
Overall, the students provided each other with constructive
feedback, encouraging and challenging, expressing what they appreciated about
the writing in both original and revised drafts, and offering suggestions that
responded directly to the author’s concerns or vision for their story. In terms of my moderation, I think I
probably could have done a better job of asking students to reflect on what the
next step would be for their drafts (ie. what feedback they would focus on in
the next revision).
The class session also raised questions for me about the
process of revision. I think it is
a great practice to have the students revise a piece within a short window of
time. This helps develop the
discipline of revision and also allows the students to receive feedback from
the same people on a piece at different stages. Since the students need to hand in revisions in their
end-of-semester portfolios, it also provides them with the time to allow some
of those major revisions to happen, rather than waiting till the last minute
and not having sufficient time.
At the same token, I know that sometimes in my own writing,
I need to give myself some space to let a piece “cool” before returning to it
with a more clinical, critical eye and willing spirit. The time away allows me to see
possibilities that I would not be able to see previously, due either to
emotional attachment to certain choices or lack of relevant
experience/knowledge. Putting
myself in J.’s position, for example – I may agree wholeheartedly with my peers
that a certain conceptual framework needs to be committed to/clarified in the
story, but it may take a year (or more!) before I can return to the piece with
the appropriate distance, insight, energy, or inspiration to know, “This is the
step I need to take” and carry out that major revision. To what extent might it be detrimental
to “force” a revision at an earlier date?
Of course, S.’s example suggests that even if a major
revision is done, it doesn’t need to be committed to as the way forward – it
may simply be an exercise in sounding out the shape of the story… What are
people’s thoughts on this?
This is a smaller question, but one I’m also curious to hear
people’s thoughts on: do small group revision workshops necessitate instructor
moderation? Would you be willing
to give your undergraduate students a whole class period to discuss each
other’s revisions if you were not involved in the discussion?
