Reading Your Classmates Fiction

Reading Your Classmates’ Fiction

Writer’s name ______

Workshopper’s name ______

To the workshopper:

Read the story before you several times.

No, I mean it. Several. Times.

Now offer some feedback:

1. What are your initial thoughts or feelings? Don’t worry too much about being perfectly clear or even writing complete sentences. Just jot some immediate reactions, adjectives.

2. What in the story really woke you up? What is most memorable? What, if anything, blew your hair back, gave you pause (in a good way), impressed or simply moved you?

3. What, if anything, leaves you blank, or confused? Is there a particular spot where you get lost, or does the whole story leave you with no clear or meaningful reaction?

4. Put the story away—stick it in a cookie jar or your roommate’s backpack—and re-read it again in a few days. Do you still have the problem you had in #3 above? (If you didn’t have the problem described in #3 above, skip to #5 below.)

5. What’s the story about? That is, what is its subject matter?

6. What category of fiction does this story seem to fit? Or what category is it trying to fit?

a. Realism?

b. Naturalism? (look it up)

c. Minimalism?

d. Magical realism?

e. Supernatural, Horror, Fantasy or Sci-Fi?

f. Action-thriller?

g. Romance?

h. Mystery? i. Epic?

j. Flash or brief fiction?

k. Meta-fiction? (look it up)

l. Experimental?

m. Something else?

7. How well does the story fit its intended genre? If it is indeed what we would call “genre fiction,” especially mass-market genre fiction, does it at least push the boundaries of its category in some way? That is, does it refresh its intended genre, keep it alive? Or is it just another same-old same- old?

8. Assuming that any story can go in multiple possible directions, where would you like to see this piece go in its next revision?

9. Describe the prose style:

a. Typical sentence length

b. Typical sentence construction (simple, complex, compound, complex-compound)

c. Sounds (alliteration, assonance, rhyme, off-rhyme, consonance)

d. Diction (high, low; polished, rustic; baroque, minimalist; etc.)

e. Voice (formal, colloquial; sincere, ironic; loud, quiet; mellifluous, abrasive; punchy, relaxed; etc.)

f. Quantity and quality of figurative language

g. Degree of freshness and originality (watch out in particular for over-used and hackneyed language such as “deep pools of his eyes,” “sly smile,” “evil smirk,” “heart leaped to his throat,” “gasped,” “sighed,” “muttered under her breath,” etc.)

10. Summarize the plot (sequence of events).

11. Describe the plot’s structure (chronological? non-chronological? episodic? traditional? experimental? simple? complex?)

2 12. How well-paced is the plot? Does it move too quickly in spots or overall? Does it slog or slow down too much here or there?

13. Can you tell where scenes stop and start? Would the story benefit from “jump cuts” (quicker transitions between scenes or perspectives)? Or should certain scenes be developed much more— fleshed out with detail?

14. Can you follow the plot?

15. How would you rate the story’s characterization?

a. Are the people in the story vividly drawn and distinctive (can you tell one character from another, or is everyone in the story more or less the same person)?

b. Is the protagonist original (unlike any other character you’ve encountered in fiction before)?

c. Are the characters believable?

d. Are the characters consistent?

e. Is the protagonist, in particular, compelling? Do we have a reason to care about him or her? Does she or he leave an impression?

16. How would you rate the story’s details? Are they sufficiently LUCID and SPECIFIC? (Draw on your Doty text here—yeah, that’s the one: The Art of Description.) Are the details sufficiently IMAGINATIVE, SURPRISING, ILLUMINATING, REAL, or otherwise apt?

17. What fiction writers appear to have influenced the person whose work you are critiquing? Whom has the writer probably been reading lately? (If the answer is no one, this is very likely a bad thing. Bad, bad, and bad.)

18. What would be a good next step for this writer? Continue to work hard at this particular story? Consider this one to be as done as possible, and start fresh? Try another story of the same—or a completely different—type? Read particular novelists or short story writers that you’d like to recommend?

3 19. Having read the story many times now, do you still want to read it again? And again? (Does it hold up to repeated readings?)

20. What story or kind of story would you now like to write YOURSELF in response to the one you just critiqued?

21. Ask the writer a good, real, meaningful question.

22. Any other thoughts, observations, mutterings, insults, non sequitors, lies, manical outbursts, hypnotic chants, hoots or whistles?