GFF Literary Workshop: A Proposal
 

NEWSFLASH
The first trial week has begun! Download, read and comment upon our first entrant here. Updated rules and queue are there too!

Project Outline
While browsing the old WotW threads, it occurred to me that WotW is a lot like the Best Song Contest—brackets, voting, held once a year. But there's no real counterpart to the Song of the Week feature, which offers similar content to the BSC year-round, at regular intervals.

So I'd like to throw out this idea: how about a semi-permanent, rotating literary workshop here at GFF?

Unlike War of the Words, where pieces of writing are pitted against each other in death combat (not that there's anything wrong with that) this would revolve around reading and offering constructive feedback to pieces of original writing with the aim of helping people become better writers and editors. Obviously, the more one participates, the more likely others will be to read their work when it's their turn.

So here are the main things I'm curious about:

Would anyone be interested in doing this? There'd have to be a decent pool of people to allow for failing to make deadlines and life intervening.

What format would it follow? I was thinking of something along the rough lines of SoTW in GGMD: every week, or two weeks, or month, the author at the top of a queue submits a short story, poem, essay, play excerpt, or novel excerpt, and people read it and offer constructive feedback (it wouldn't have to be brand-new; pre-existing works would be fine too). At the end of the period, the author gets to make a statement and respond to the criticism. But that's just one possible method.

Who would run it? I'm happy to volunteer my time for reading and thread creation, but it doesn't have to be (and maybe shouldn't be) a one-person show.

Relationship to WotW? This struck me as a possible entry-level venue for WotW—that is, it would allow people practice in writing, editing, and making comments (as well as providing a little off-season action).

Any thoughts or comments?

Well, I probably would only be able to participate if it were every 2 weeks to a month, but sure I'd be interested.

Well, this is kinda cool, since this forum lacks an active writing thread. WotW is simply not enough to cover the whole thing up.

You could count me in.

I'd definitely be interested in helping out or participating.

I support this idea completely. :) Sounds very cool.

Hm, there's some interest! While I'm waiting to see if there's any more, does anyone have any thoughts about the time period that ought to be involved?

Would two weeks be too long for a single session (keeping in mind that if we had a queue of 5 people, it would take 10 weeks for your turn to come) or would one week with the possibility for extension work better? In that case, a queue of 5 people would mean your work would get reviewed every five weeks.

I was thinking of something along these lines:

Queue
Person1
Person2
Person3
Person4

Week 1 sees Person1 turn in a short story. We all read it and post critiques, and at the end of the week Person1 makes their own comment. The next week, Person2 submits a poem, and we all read it and post critiques in the following week, and so on.

That way, you'd have notice in advance to prepare something, and we'd move along at a designated pace.

I agree that two weeks could be a bit cumbersome and maybe too long to keep up with. One week is direct and understandable, and as long as there was notice it might work out.

Of course, Person 1 would need a week or so to get their piece ready...

There'll be room for improvements, surely, but let's just see what happens with it.

I'd be up for submitting and reading some writing. It'd be nice to see this section pick up again. I remember back in the day (2004 I think) when this part of the forum was pretty active.

I'd be interested in participating, but I'm a little unclear on a few things.
Like how long do you expect submissions to be?
As much as I'd love to read other people's stuff and write my own, I don't have very much free time on my hands.

Also, will there be anything in place to prevent this from turning ugly? I'd hate to start seeing authors compete or try to one-up each other.

Granted, I never bothered with the WotW stuff, so this might not even happen. I'm just used to seeing a creative project go from starting out great to turning into a competition thanks to the photography classes I had in college. Man, where those classes ugly...

Well, I'll throw out my ideas and see what people think.
I thought that we'd have a minimum and maximum word count, at least as far as fiction goes. Less than 500 words is probably too short for even flash fiction, while 5000 words is pushing ten pages. So I'd say 500-5000 words would be a good guideline, with the 2500 of WotW serving as a nice medium. People could always submit part of a longer work if they're over the limit, and it wouldn't be hard-and-fast, just a general guideline.
Having taught a writing class, I know what you mean. We'd have to be on the honor system, and people would probably want to follow the standard procedure of starting out with positives and keeping criticism mild and professional. If it does get ugly, we could ask one of the mods for housekeeping support, I suppose.

I'll participate, no matter the limitations.

Count me in.

People just have to learn how to take criticism. If someone says something bad about your work, suck it up, read what they said about it, and work on that area of your writing. Don't try to debate it, or offer up reasoning. That just gets shit going.

Would this be the limit for poetry as well? It sounds fine for all the other forms you mentioned, but a little much for poetry. Then again, I'm not queing up, so feel free to ignore me completely.

I don't know enough about poetry composition to make a determination; I taught prose writing. Do you have any suggestions?

Just say that they should be at least a couple stanzas long, with at least 5 lines in each stanza. Okay, a simpler way of saying that is 10 lines. lol

That's what should be done, but I've seen art classes turn ugly because someone will just try to be better than someone else. It's like they'll pull all the stops and try to out-do someone. It's pretty annoying, really.
I'm thinking that in a writing context it'd be done somehow with thick symbolism or flashy adjectives or some such nonsense.

Yah that's true. But this is about bettering your own writing, not being better than other people. Gamingforce has alot of decently mature people so I'm sure it'll be fine.

10 lines minimum sounds good; no real need to put up a maximum I suppose, since I doubt anyone'd be submitting an epic poem.

No one's mentioned it, but I suppose a similarly base 10 rule for drama (10 pages or less, at least 500 words) would work nicely.

I'll join. Count me in.

Btw, about poetry stuffs. Does it have to be only 10 lines long? I have the tendency to make a long poem which sometimes have more than 30 lines in it.

I don't know about that. Anomalies does happen all the time.

Count me in as well!

10 lines was just the minimum, so 30 lines would be fine. Any attempts at epic poetry would probably be curtailed by the 5000 words/10 pages limit that seems to be evolving, hopefully.

Here's the list of interested parties so far:
Dark Nation
Lycanthrope
Acro-nym
Fresh Frank
Matt
Pyromaniac
Ozma
RainMan
orion_mk3

Just Pyromanic, not Maniac. lol.

Well, I suppose I'd best get keep the ball rolling.

I was thinking of running a couple sessions just as a trial run--two people submit, two week-long threads are made, and we see what sort of participation we get.

So, would anyone like to volunteer to be a guinea pig? This would involve having a story, poem, or play already on hand and submitting it at once. I'd need two to start, and any additonal people with ready submissions could go to the head of the queue.

I'd like to, but how to submit them?

I would like to put my name down for probably participation. I have a very defined period of time in which i have to work on extra curricular pieces. As of Wednesday i'll be entering this period, and towards the end of November i'll be right in the middle of essay season again.