If you don't mind a question in regards, when you have done the group edits/discussion of a piece, was there ever a way to tell whose advice to take, or did that really come from people who are better experienced already in the craft?
The best thing to do is to be objective enough to evaluate the critiques that come in. I know writers who are fabulous about this: they listen to and read over all the crits on a piece, and then they collate, examining them for partial consensus, and also for comprehension. If only one of eight people is making a strong complaint about a story element, they would look at the complaint structurally, and make decisions based on that; if everyone complained, they would take it very seriously.
If the reader didn't get the story at all, they would read for pacing, etc., but they would minimize their revision reaction to that particular crit for that particular piece.
I was not good at this, although I understand it in theory. But because I wasn't, for whatever reason, capable of building that while working on a piece, in the end, I chose to write in a more isolated fashion.
I think I would be much, much better at it now, because I have a much better understanding of my own process, and a more solid grasp of structure. So I think I'd get a lot more out of a workshop process now than I could before.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-05-27 04:26 am (UTC)The best thing to do is to be objective enough to evaluate the critiques that come in. I know writers who are fabulous about this: they listen to and read over all the crits on a piece, and then they collate, examining them for partial consensus, and also for comprehension. If only one of eight people is making a strong complaint about a story element, they would look at the complaint structurally, and make decisions based on that; if everyone complained, they would take it very seriously.
If the reader didn't get the story at all, they would read for pacing, etc., but they would minimize their revision reaction to that particular crit for that particular piece.
I was not good at this, although I understand it in theory. But because I wasn't, for whatever reason, capable of building that while working on a piece, in the end, I chose to write in a more isolated fashion.
I think I would be much, much better at it now, because I have a much better understanding of my own process, and a more solid grasp of structure. So I think I'd get a lot more out of a workshop process now than I could before.