Zk | Writing Workshops for Fandom- and Subculture-specific Spaces

Goal

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.

Preparation

Materials

• Course syllabus
• What is feedback?

• Initial story:

  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.

Safety

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:

• arguments between attendees
• attendees feeling hurt or disrespected by feedback received
• triggering events

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.

Applications

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.

Addtional sessions

There are a few additional sessions that might be worth planning ahead of time:

• 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)
• 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
• Individual coaching sessions

Attendee communication

• Student chat: something like a Discord or Slack server, Telegram group, or mailing list
• Student+facilitator chat: one-on-one spaces such as video calls or breakout meetings
• 1:1 communication: Sharing email addresses, Telegram handles, Discord usernames, and so on
• Writing groups

Plan

Day 1, Session 1

• Introduction of facilitator and attendees
• Going over syllabus
• Setting expectations
• Discussing feedback
• Discussion structure of workshops
• Pass out applicant submissions

Day 1, Session 2

• Introducing workshop format for the remainder of the sessions
• Workshop the provided piece
• Discuss how workshopping felt
• Discuss expectations for workshop of applicant submissions

• Give assignment due Day 3

• What is workshopping?

  • More important, what is it not?
    • Tearing apart a story
    • Tearing down the author (Maslanka story)
    • Editing a piece
  • Talk about your engagement with the piece — remember list of questions from yesterday
  • Author:
    • Listen to feedback and take in the ways your work affected others
    • Will talk about writing for workshops tomorrow
• Types of workshops and such
  • Silent author
    • How that works
    • Why — active listening, no shaping responses
  • Participatory discussion
    • Better for pieces earlier in process
    • Feedback as to where to take it
  • The role of the facilitator
    • Prevent stalling
    • Keep on track
    • Pay attention to mood, etc
• Tone
  • 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’)
  • Talk about yourself, your responses, your questions
  • Changing language
    • Stay away from generating shared values/taste
    • Imagine and invite change
    • We don’t want to over-reward author because then it becomes less about creativity and more about writing for success
• Sample workshop:
  • https://makyo.ink/jump
  • 10 mins to read
  • Workshop discussion with silent author, then bring author in
  • Discuss how it felt
• Tomorrow: writing to receive feedback/actually receiving feedback

Day 2, Session 1

• Check-in re: writing assignment, how reading is going, how workshop is feeling so far
• Supplementary lecture/workshop
• Writing exercise due in evening

Day 2, Session 2

• Workshop applicant submissions
• https://makyo.io/fcww23s
• Writing and vulnerability
  • Vulnerability in creation
  • The terrifying ordeal of being seen
  • How to manage having one’s vulnerability openly addressed
• A lot is on the facilitator
  • Ensuring discussion stays on the work
  • Ensuring uncomfortable silence is filled
    • How silence feels
    • How to fill silence if it happens (ask questions)
• Engaging with responses as author
  • Always good to thank, but overdoing can weaken your position in your own eyes
  • Maintain authorial vision ---- everything you get (even negative) is encouragement and opportunity to change, but not a demand
  • Friction and vulnerability:
    • Maintain openness (even physical — half smile, willing hands)
    • Maintain distance
    • Feel free to maintain boundaries, facilitator is there to help, can guide/move on from topic
• Take notes! Can be overwhelming, so read through and think before blithely implementing
• Workshops:
  • One person summarize and lead in with discussion
  • Try one response at a time vs open discussion
• Reflect on how that felt

Day 3, Session 1

• Workshop the assignment from Day 1, following a similar structure to Day 2

Day 3, Session 2

• Co-writing exercise (75%)
  • Outline a story together
  • Optional frameworks:
    • Caduceus
    • Three-act structure
    • Hero’s journey
• Wrap-up and social, share contact information

Wrapping up

Certificates and letters of recommendation

Attendee surveys

Supplementary lectures

What makes writing on topic pertinent to topic?

Shared language within topic

Critical reading within topic

• Intro
  • Introduce self
  • Allow attendees to introduce themselves
• Ice breaker: what is your least favorite part of your favorite movie?
• Lead into what is a text
  • Books/writing, sure, but also anything that tells a story — film, games, etc
  • Thus, what is critical reading?
• Intentional engagement with a text, especially with regards to the self
  • Back to ice breaker: how do you intentionally engage with your favorite film?
  • How do we intentionally engage with a text in furry?
    • What do we like in a furry text? What don’t we like?
    • Notably, not asking what makes a text furry, that we are furries is what enables us to read into that context
    • Thus, how do we engage with a text that we feel is furry as furries?
• What goes into critical reading?
  • Layers:
    • Mechanical: presentation, word choice, language usage, writing style
    • Subjective: emotional impact, plot effectiveness, evocative descriptions
• Reading exercise:
  • Pick one of these two categories to pay attention to first and read, then read for the second
  • Workshop tomorrow, but preview: we’re not tearing a text apart, we’re asking it questions:
    • How did we feel the plot worked? Was there a structure? Could we follow it?
    • What was told? What was left out? How did (not) knowing make us feel?
    • What type of language usage was there? Word choice? Style?
    • How about emotional impact? Was the story impactful? Did the mechanics help or hinder us?
    • Was it evocative? Was it furry? Did that work?
  • Be ready to summarize
  • 10 mins to read
  • _~
  • Have someone summarize
  • Talk through the mechanical and subjective layers, drilling down into specifics
  • Talk through how the exercise felt
    • was it useful? Tiring? Enjoyable?
• 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.
• Optional homework:
  • 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
  • Email it to me and I’ll put it online for all to read in the workshop
  • Will be asking how it felt etc

Conclusion