Writing Workshops Will Give You the Best Advice

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

― Lorrie Moore

One of the trickiest things about a novel is you have a lot of room to make mistakes. Short stories won’t forgive these mistakes, but in a book, there’s space and time to recover from those mistakes.

While we all make mistakes and have weaknesses in some areas of writing, getting feedback from others can help us fix them. Taking part in an organized writing workshop and finding out what multiple readers clue into is incredibly helpful in finding out what you need to fix. After all, we all want our finished novel to be a happy marriage.

Whenever I take part in a writing workshop that allows novel excerpts, I’ll bring a novel excerpt, because I know there’s something in that giant work that I need to improve.

Fortunately, those areas you need to improve will usually show through even in a small sampling of your book. Alternatively, if you're writing short stories or persuasive essays, weaknesses show through even clearer. No matter what you're working on, taking writing workshops can be transformative.

We all have elements of writing that we prioritize in our work, sometimes too much.

You might put character development above all else. You might put the intricacy and intrigue of your plot above all else. Whatever it is you care about most, it’s going to be your main focus when you write.

It’s only natural to do this. If you’re writing a suspense novel, then having it unfold at a fast pace is likely one of your focuses.

Each project should have a thing or two that you concentrate on, but in order to have a well-rounded story, all elements of writing need to be considered.

You can be a skilled and experienced writer but still be blind to a weakness in your work.

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

—Ernest Hemingway

For me, it’s setting. I put sparse descriptions into my work here and there, but when I first started writing fiction, I did so exclusively in the first person. Even after I transitioned to primarily writing in the third person, I prioritized plot and character above all else. I didn’t really give setting much thought.

It’s good to leave some things up to your reader’s imagination, but you still need to give them enough to get an idea of where things are happening.

I didn’t realize how overly sparse I was being until nearly half the class agreed that my historical fiction needed a lot more focus on the setting and more descriptions of what made it unique. It’s particularly important for historical fiction, so this deficiency in my writing was particularly acutely felt.

If everyone in a workshop points out a weakness, it's probably true.

Sometimes others will piggyback off of what one person says in a writing workshop, but that’s why you should always read all the notes that people put on your work. Those notes will capture your reader’s initial reactions with the most purity.

For me, over half the notes mentioned something about not enough description or hardly any setting. The feedback was completely true and accurate.

Workshops will help you discover the things you don’t know are wrong with your work.

“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”

—Larry L. King

You might realize that your book needs more tension. You might realize that things are moving too slowly sometimes and the pacing needs to be tweaked.

You might be like me and use a lot of unnecessary words in your first drafts. I say “started to” when I could just cut straight to the character’s action all the time. But I know about this issue, so I look out for it now and it’s easy for me to correct.

That’s all well and good, but you can only edit what you know to be wrong.

There could be something else that a lot of people want to see in your writing. You just don’t realize it because you’re focusing on the elements of writing that you want to prioritize. There’s nothing wrong with doing this, but eventually, those weaknesses or deficiencies need to come to light and be resolved.

That’s where the true value of workshops comes to light.

If you want to try them out, are a lot of different places where you can find writing workshops.

Depending on where you live, there might be some local writing workshops in your area that are organized by other writers. This is a fun, very community-focused way to get involved in a workshop.

There are also a ton of online writing workshops where participants leave comments on each other’s work.

Since I’ve moved around a lot, I’ve personally had more luck finding writing workshops housed at universities. If you just want to get your feet wet and not fork out the big bucks to take an accredited class, look into non-credit or adult education courses held by your local institutions.

Non-credit classes often cost a few hundred dollars and sometimes have fantastic instructors. I took a few non-credit writing workshops at Johns Hopkins University and one of the courses was run by an accomplished, published author who was also an adjunct faculty member that the school. Not only did I get excellent feedback from my fellow writers in the class, but I also got great tips from the instructor.

If you like structure, a university-based writing workshop is a great option.

"The process of editing is what I enjoy most - putting the pieces together and making sense out of them."

—Christian Marclay

Yet wherever you find a writing workshop, it’s going to help you improve. The feedback you receive will help you hone your craft and grow as a writer.

Writing workshops will help you fix the mistakes you’ve made in your book. Even the best writer has a few weaknesses in a long story that can and should be fixed