I'm teaching an advanced creative writing course this semester, and for the past few weeks we've been having full-class workshops of short fiction. The teacher's role here is to facilitate collaborative learning across the class, by having students share their editorial assessment of stories with an eye toward helping a particular writer revise.

The process for running the workshop is simple: we go around the room, one student at a time for precisely two minutes, presenting our feedback to the writer. The teacher goes last, bringing up any significant issues that haven't been raised, or summarizing the key revision strategies he feels need reinforcing. The writer whose manuscript is on the table must remain silent, listening carefully and taking notes until the end, when he or she can respond or ask follow-up questions. This structure encourages fairness and equity; everyone gets to speak and -- ideally -- everyone learns from listening to each other.

When you do this for class after class, the process gets stiff. Things get a little too habitual for comfort. Some students read blithely from their written comments or go page by page through the manuscript, just punching their clock. Others say the same thing each time, having found their niche. Class begins to seem stale, repetitive, mundane. Our class has been pretty good at keeping the energy alive and I think it's fair to say that everyone is still interested and active. But I began to worry about the routine -- and wanted to make sure that students were paying attention to each other and not going through the motions. So earlier this week I broke the routine by adding two new twists.

First, I refused to just play timekeeper and notetaker, and insisted on asking questions to each critic as she presented her ideas. "What do you mean you don't like the character?" I'd ask. "Is it the things the character does, or the type of person the character is?" I'd press critics to give examples, reference the ideas in the book, and generally defend their arguments. This threw many of them off -- after all, they thought they were the ones doing the critiquing, not the other way around! But I wanted to remind them to be critical thinkers, generally -- and to use the writer's manuscript as a subject of discussion and dialogue, not simply dismemberment.

The second wrench I tossed into the works was allowing students to affirm or disagree with critics as they delivered their feedback. This is a method that's common in some writer's workshops, where members of the group -- who are usually required to silently listen -- can politely say "ditto" or "dissent" if they very strongly agree or disagree with a critic's comment. (And I mentioned that when I was in a workshop that did this once, I would often bark out "Dissent-o!" because I didn't agree with this method at all). The idea here is that if a lot of people say "ditto" then the comment is particularly significant and the writer better listen (or, with dissent, vice-versa). It also helps to save time, since the primary points that have been "ditto'd" are ostensibly already clear, and there's no need to repeat that point when it becomes your turn to offer feedback.

The class seemed to enjoy the more vocal and active workshop method on the surface, but some were uncomfortable being challenged by me when they presented their feedback. One significant drawback was that the writer whose manuscript was on the table obviously wasn't prepared for this turn of events or necessarily willing to be treated different than others, and found it difficult to concentrate on what was being said to her about the manuscript. Naturally, the student will still have the written feedback from her peers to review and can always seek follow-up advice from them after class. But I can understand how frustrating it must have been to have been treated differently.

At the beginning of today's class, I asked the students to write a brief reflection on whether or not they felt the "ditto/dissent & questioning" method worked, and why. I was surprised by their reaction: 62% of the class preferred the new method! "It added some spunk to the class," a student wrote. "It was nice to learn how others felt about a point you made," said another. "It helped the writers get a broad sense of their audience's response, and it enabled everyone to feel more actively engaged," said another. "It broke the monotony of the single voice," one student said, adding "the 'bursting' of voices adds to a relaxed atmosphere and lessens tension." Indeed, the spirit was rather convivial during the workshop and one student even confessed, "My husband and I have already implimented this technique into our everyday speech and it's provided good comic relief."

However, some did see the new method as a rupture of civility, which "opened the floor to a lot of chaos and rude interruptions" and that "it may not be a good idea for [the] first round...maybe later in the semester". One student compared it to Communism and said it not only "broke their train of thought" but that it "definitely made the critiquing process take longer." One felt "most people say whether they disagree in their own critique anyway" and that the interruptions forced students "to lose their train of though and often spend more time with 'un' and 'uh' than on comments for the writer."

All valid points, on both sides of the equation. As a whole, I think the process was a success for everyone except the writer -- ostensibly the person who stands to gain the most from the workshopping process in the first place.

Out of fairness, if I do this again I will do it for everyone, right from the start...maybe even later in the term, as one student recommended. But I honestly don't think I will do it again with this particular class. It's not a good idea to invite open "dissent-o" too often, if you want workshops to run on time and avoid "herd mentality" agreement. I also think people sometimes get too caught up in looking for an opportunity to blurt out their assent/dissent, rather than learning from one another through active listening (which is the ideal, I think).

But I do like mixing (shaking?) things up once in a while just to keep students actively participating and on their toes -- and it's good to expose them to alternative models should they ever want to run their own writing workshops in the future.

[ For those interested in managing the interpersonal quirks of writing workshops, I turn you to an article in my newsletter, The Handy Job Hunter for Writers, called "Working the Workshop". ]

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