English 221: Intro to Creative Writing
Agenda: March 13

• Story & Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, & Poetry
• Sample Draft Workshop: Image, Voice, Character, Setting, Story
• Swap First Drafts (choose a different partner from last Thursday)
• Read through the draft once, without a pen in hand. Experience the story, essay or poem, without judgment. Write on the back an answer to the question: What is it about?
• Read it again, with a pen in your hand. In the margins, make notes: Nice image or great dialogue or good description or Funny or great transition or good characterization .  When I like something in a draft, I usually put a checkmark by it.  In your margin notes, heap on the praise and good will and fellowship. 
• After the second read, on the back, make notes to these questions:
• How do you relate to this piece? What does it remind you of?
• What effect on the reader does it seem to want to produce?
• What is it trying to say about what it is about?
• What is it's most compelling craft feature: Image, Voice, Character, Setting, or Story? Why? How might this area be enhanced or expanded?
• What other craft areas might be developed to make the draft more compelling?  (A more precise image, a characterization more complexly drawn; a scene written that's only suggested; a scene expanded; the setting better described; an object or metaphor put to further use.)  What if...
• Does the piece give all the basic orienting facts and context necessary for the reader to understand it? If not, what's missing?

FOR NEXT TIME: 3/13

WRITE: Choose one of the two pieces that you've swapped with a partner and received feedback on.

1. In one WORKSHOP FEEDBACK paragraph, (a) summarize the feedback you received from your partner, and (b) include in this paragraph what was most helpful about this feedback, and why.
2. Choose one craft area to emphasize in revision. Re-read the chapter discussion of this craft area, take note of the essential aspects of image, voice, character, setting, or story.
3. Revise the draft for Thursday, incorporating (a) your peer's feedback and (b) more attention to one particular craft area. Feel free to expand (if you're working with prose), to a maximum of six pages.
4. Once you've finished revising, in a REVISION REFLECTION paragraph, (a) discuss the changes you've made and why you think they strengthen the piece, and (b) include in this paragraph at least one way you still might revise or deepen the piece.

So, for Thursday, I'm expecting: a Workshop Feedback Paragraph, A Revision Reflection Paragraph, and a revision of one of the pieces you swapped with your partner.