The principle behind a writing workshop is improving your writing by writing under direction from a teacher, and then receiving feedback throughout the process by sharing your work with the teacher and/or classmates. Workshops usually host a group of writers who work in the same genre, hold the same interests, and are at similar skill levels. These genres include poetry, fiction, short fiction, and nonfiction. Even more specifically, a workshop can focus on a particular topic within a genre, such as research, character development, or dialogue. And these workshops can occur only once, over the course of several weeks, or even longer. A particular workshop can also incorporate such features as:
- Generative-based work (beginning from scratch or creating additional material based on your initial work) or revision-based work (revising a manuscript that you’ve already started)
- Assigned readings focused on the creative writing process
- Submission of your work to the instructor
- Reading and commenting on other classmates’ submissions
- Structured time to brainstorm story ideas or plan your work
- Structured writing time
Advanced workshops might require previous coursework, an application (with or without a fee), or approval from the instructor.
Regardless of what type of workshop you attend, what are some of the pros and cons?
The pros include:
- Practice of your chosen craft, allowing you to develop a personal literary style and/or voice
- A temporarily regular writing routine that can help encourage you to develop a permanent routine, establishing the discipline you need to become better and more prolific
- Constructive feedback on your writing, from other students and/or the instructor; this feedback will allow you to correct your common mistakes and refocus your attention on craft
- A fellowship that provides emotional support, and from which you can learn
- Discovery of other types of writing (from readings or peer submissions) and ideas concerning writing; this exposure can expand your skillset and knowledge base, allowing you to improve your writing technique, gain a better understanding of literary theories, and ultimately boost your creativity
- Further opportunities to learn by asking and answering questions from your instructor and classmates
- A lower entry fee than one-on-one coaching or editing sessions
- Accountability for your writing through submission deadlines and other formalized sharing within the workshop group
However, the cons can include:
- Classmates who treat the workshop as only an opportunity to socialize, so they don’t provide good criticism – either because this attitude has left them unskilled or they just can’t innately provide useful feedback
- Alternatively, classmates might be overly harsh or critical because they believe that’s expected of them, due to a misguided notion that negative feedback is more valuable than positive feedback
- Because each classmate has a different opinion about the quality of your writing or what it needs to be better, it can be difficult to decide which opinions are most useful
- Some classmates might dominate every discussion, making it difficult for you to share your thoughts
- Time and scope constraints prevent the workshop from addressing everyone’s full novel (or poetry collection) draft, so you’ll be able to only work on a part of the draft
- Additionally, because you might need to take time to read others’ work, this cuts into the time required focus on your own work
- Because this is a workshop, you won’t receive one-on-one attention from the instructor
- The constant revision process can lead you to procrastinate, and never actually finish your personal project
- In-person workshops are limited to those who live in or near the specific location
- Some workshops (online and in-person) can still be cost-prohibitive
So, what is the upshot? A writing workshop can be of great benefit to you if you know what you want going in and you know what to expect, and you can afford to attend a workshop in a location near you. Not only can you improve your writing, but you can also establish meaningful (perhaps lifelong!) connections with others in the writing community. In turn, these connections can provide you with valuable feedback and support on other projects, allowing you to reap the benefits of a workshop’s goals beyond the narrow confines of its scope and timeframe.
However, if you don’t prefer others’ input because you feel that it is difficult to parse valuable individual advice from the group, or you find such a group setting to be distracting or overwhelming, you might benefit more from one-on-one coaching or self-guided learning (from in-person seminars or online learning). But because writing is a lifelong pursuit, just because you aren’t ready to participate in writing workshops now doesn’t mean you can’t be receptive to them in the future. The more tools you have in your writing arsenal, the more opportunities you have to become a better writer.
By: Matthew Wade
Matt is an Editorial Assistant at Technica Editorial
