Preparing for Workshop & Pointing

During period 7, please prepare for the workshop (period 8).

Look through your portfolio and your writing files and select a poem, short story, play script, etc. that you would like to revise and/or get feedback by your peers on.

If you can print enough copies for your workshop groups, please do so. If your piece is short and your workshop group willing, you can instead read the selection or poem to the group without printing, but it often helps to have the words in front of the reviewer.

When your workshop is over (with everyone having the chance to share and discuss their work) please revise or continue working or write a new piece. You may at this point select fiction, poetry, or plays.


Workshop procedures: POINTING
Why use it?: Great for diction (and therefore tone), poetry, or making sure important lines are noticed by a reader. Works best with poetic verse.

POINTING is a workshop tool where each workshop member hears or reads the piece up for workshop and selects a word, phrase, or sentence from the piece. Going around the group taking turns, each workshop member reads his/her selection (word, phrase, or sentence) out loud so that the author hears the line that the reviewer liked. Effectively, you could continue doing this practice as long as there is something the reviewer liked. Each time the author hears a word, phrase, or sentence selected, he/she makes a check mark next to the word, phrase, or line on his/her copy of the workshop piece. At the end, the author should have various lines checked. If a poet, for example, has everyone in the group say that they liked a line, there is physical proof (the check marks) that the line works for the reader.

What to do with this information?: After pointing, go back and see what you might be able to cut (usually the words, phrases or lines no one selected). Consider WHY the word, phrase, or sentence worked and try to replicate that throughout the piece.

While pointing is meant to be a positive experience, the author is in full control of what is kept and removed in a piece, realize that some lines or words are essential, but may not draw the reader's attention. If the line is important to the writer, and no one selects or notices it, the writer should take this into consideration.

A workshop group could also be more critical, POINTING at words, phrases, or sentences that the reviewer did NOT like. But this takes a strong backbone and trust.

HOMEWORK: Please finish reading The Martian Chronicles. Try writing a story in Bradbury's style. Some literary devices that he uses that you might consider using are:

• Allusion
• Symbolism
• Science Fiction tropes (spaceships, aliens, communication, speculative ideas, utopias/dystopias, etc.)
• Setting and vivid description
• Conflict: human versus other; or human versus setting