<p>The goal of this lesson plan is to come up with a three-day workshop focusing on writing in fandom- or subculture-specific spaces. The workshop should focus on building knowledge and camaraderie between the attendees and the facilitator, furthering the body of work within the shared interest and fostering a stronger sense of community.</p>
<li><ahref="feedback-handout.html">What is feedback?</a></li>
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<p>Initial story:</p>
<p>An initial story or stand-alone chapter is provided to the students before the workshop begins, giving them enough time to read through it and be ready to respond. This story should be taken from the corpus of texts related to the topic. For example, when running a workshop in the context of the furry subculture, a story might be taken from Zooscape-Zine.com, while a workshop being run in the context of Supernatural may have a story drawn from AO3. No matter the case, the story should be publicly posted and in a finished state. It should fit the context of the workshop: if the workshop will involve erotica, it should be a piece of erotica, etc.</p>
<p>While it’s not possible to plan for everything, having a few options at your disposal for various scenarios will be helpful. While providing a safe and validating space for attendees, keep in mind possible responses to situations such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>arguments between attendees</li>
<li>attendees feeling hurt or disrespected by feedback received</li>
<li>triggering events</li>
</ul>
<p>Ensuring that you feel like a safe person to talk to in the instance of something going wrong will go a long way to fostering an environment where you’re able to guide without needing to govern. Setting up communication tools such as chats or safety cards, being up front about boundaries and expectations, and providing an environment built on mutual growth and respect will leave attendees feeling welcome and open to collaboration.</p>
<p>Applications may be made through something as simple as a Google Form, sold through a service such as Gumroad, or even set up through a more formal process on something like Submittable. No matter how applications are accepted, a mechanism for providing submissions should be offered, whether that’s via the form as in Submittable or a file upload question in Google Forms, or a provided email address.</p>
<li>Social hours: one at the start as a meet and greet, as well as one at the end to talk about something other than writing (or at least talk about how the workshops feel)</li>
<li>One-on-one meetings with the students and each other or with the facilitator, a place to talk about hopes and fears, as well as defining literary and aesthetic values</li>
<li>Talk about your engagement with the piece — remember list of questions from yesterday</li>
<li>Author:<ul>
<li>Listen to feedback and take in the ways your work affected others</li>
<li>Will talk about writing for workshops tomorrow</li>
</ul>
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</ul>
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<li>Types of workshops and such<ul>
<li>Silent author<ul>
<li>How that works</li>
<li>Why — active listening, no shaping responses</li>
</ul>
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<li>Participatory discussion<ul>
<li>Better for pieces earlier in process</li>
<li>Feedback as to where to take it</li>
</ul>
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<li>The role of the facilitator<ul>
<li>Prevent stalling</li>
<li>Keep on track</li>
<li>Pay attention to mood, etc</li>
</ul>
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</ul>
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<li>Tone<ul>
<li>Talk to the piece, not the author — some don’t even use the author’s name, pretend they aren’t there (not particularly a fan, but also stay away from addressing comments to ‘you’)</li>
<li>Talk about yourself, your responses, your questions</li>
<li>Changing language<ul>
<li>Stay away from generating shared values/taste</li>
<li>Imagine and invite change</li>
<li>We don’t want to over-reward author because then it becomes less about creativity and more about writing for success</li>
<li>How did we feel the plot worked? Was there a structure? Could we follow it?</li>
<li>What was told? What was left out? How did (not) knowing make us feel?</li>
<li>What type of language usage was there? Word choice? Style?</li>
<li>How about emotional impact? Was the story impactful? Did the mechanics help or hinder us?</li>
<li>Was it evocative? Was it furry? Did that work?</li>
</ul>
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<li>Be ready to summarize</li>
<li>10 mins to read</li>
<li><sub>~</sub></li>
<li>Have someone summarize</li>
<li>Talk through the mechanical and subjective layers, drilling down into specifics</li>
<li>Talk through how the exercise felt<ul>
<li>was it useful? Tiring? Enjoyable?</li>
</ul>
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</ul>
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<li>Tomorrow, we’ll go through providing feedback for writing and actually workshop a piece — one of mine that has already been workshopped and published, so just an example of feedback to a present author.</li>
<li>Optional homework:<ul>
<li>Write a short ~500 word snippet (or pick one already written) to go through a gentle workshop, think about what we talked through today while writing</li>
<li>Email it to me and I’ll put it online for all to read in the workshop</li>
