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Results of `Jon-Law's Workshop on Humour | `Beccalicious's Workshop: THE GREAT REVISION EXPEDITION: PROSE | What's so special about this cycle of workshops? | First time you've heard of *Writers-Workshop? This section is for you.

Results of `Jon-Law's Workshop: Humerus Isn't A Bone? (Get it? Bone?)

*Writers-Workshop: Good work with a lot of variety this time; from stories to limericks, we enjoyed it all.

Thank you, `Jon-Law, for workshopping with us, and doing it in style, too.

Special Mention: I don't remember *Writers-Workshop receiving a limerick before, so this may just be the first. Even if it isn't, Life: a limerick by ~Amy--Louise is good fun to read.

We also recommend reading `Jon-Law's critiques at the entries and his shorter comments here.(Funny and erudite -- beat that!)

`Beccalicious's Workshop

For those who don't already know her, `Beccalicious is a lit senior (denoted by her `) and one of the most resourceful people in the lit community. She is one of *Writers-Workshop's admins and founders. In cycle two, she hosted a hugely successful workshop on character: What is in a name?.

Take a look at her workshop on revising prose pieces.

THE GREAT REVISION EXPEDITION: PROSE

Many people expect to write a successful story in one submission. True, there are elements of success in a first write up, but isn’t there always room for improvement? Usually when you return to your writing after a period of time, you can find the flaws and often dislike it. Wouldn’t it be great to feel for that piece again and consider rewriting it?

It is always important to remember that writing is a process, not just a splurge of creative words on paper. It involves development, accepting critique, revising, changing, understanding and consistency. All these elements don’t come at once and have to be worked at until you meet that polished piece. They may not even come on a second draft -- some writers can take up to 20 redrafts and still not be completely satisfied with the results. Writing takes a lot of patience.

It is also important to remember that revising work isn’t about the technical aspects of writing. Although grammar and spelling is important, revision focuses on the content -- the actual story the words are telling you. Some elements that fall into revision, and should be considered include: character development, descriptions, hooking the reader, consistency of the plot, whether things make sense, consideration of audience, etc.

As part of the literature communities incentive for revision month, *Writers-Workshop is encouraging our members to consider their writing and taking it to the next level. This workshop is a window of opportunity for you as an individual to spend some quality time on your writing and work towards that new draft.

These useful articles have been written by ^GeneratingHype and create the baseline to which we are working towards in this workshop. There are also many useful articles and resources on our resources section.

Polish that Poetry and Prose!
What is Revision?

The Task

Take any piece of your own prose which you would like to revise. Put your old copy into scraps and submit a newly drafted version of your piece. Consider the critique you have received on this piece and try and use some of this in the rewrite.

There is no word limit, but please bear in mind due to submission volume, the lengthier pieces may not have the same level of response. Please only submit one piece per member.

Tips

Start by reading your piece all the way through. Don’t stop to amend anything on the first read, but just refresh yourself with your story and get a feel for it.

Printing off your draft and sitting down with a red pen can keep you focussed -- how many of you slip onto dA when you’re in the middle of writing?

Learn to be self critical. This doesn’t mean hate yourself; you have to believe in yourself that you can make this piece work. However, you need to be able to take that step back from your work and take it all on your own chin. Be brutally honest with yourself, even if the emotional attachment cries something different.

Ask yourself questions -- are the characters interesting? Do they connect with the reader? Will this keep the reader interested? Does this make sense?

Do you have some helpful tips and advice into redrafting? Why not share them with the group in our forum discussion thread??

When it comes to critiquing each others’ work, try and focus on the revised elements more than the technicality. Again you don’t have to ignore it altogether, but too many critiques tend to look at the technical aspects over the content, this time you need to look more at the content.

Remember!

This workshop is for PROSE only.
Please do not submit more than one entry for this workshop.
Try to follow :debeccalicious:'s workshop as best you can.
Feel free to revise a previous workshop entry as you are likely to have received more critique on these entries. But obviously, this is not necessary.

How to submit

Submit your revised entry as a new deviation or scrap and send us a link to it in a note. Please also send us a link to the original, unrevised version of the piece (and indicate which is which, please). The subject line of the note should be "REVISION PROSE". Entries must come in on or before midnight (GMT/UTC), May 14. `Beccalicious will respond to the entries on May 18.

How to accept critique

Always thank the critic. This gratitude must be as sincere as possible, even if you did not like the critique given, because the critic has taken time to offer his/her opinion of the piece.
If you do not like the critique, it is not necessary to mention so. Simply thank the critic and move on. You can always ignore their suggestions, while not making a scene of it.
If you are unsure of what the critique means, feel free to ask the critic what s/he meant. Building rapport with your critic is one of the best ways to survive in a workshop and to learn. If you want examples, ask. Similarly, if you like the suggestions given, mention it. Critic's have feelings too.
In the unlikely case that a critic offers rude/sexist/racist/etc comments, feel free to contact *Writers-Workshop in a note and we will try to help you. A decision regarding the rudeness of the critique will be taken, and if we're not sure ourselves, we will consult with one of the GDs or anyone else high up on deviantART.

What's so special about this cycle of workshops?

Sure, we kept it a secret by not revealing what would happen during this cycle in our workshop schedule (which is what we usually do). And yes, there is a change in focus, as we are looking at transformation or revision in writing -- an integral part of the writing process.

But also, the beginning of this set of workshops marks our 6-month birthday! We've been bringing you workshops consistently since November 11, 2007. Although the date looks strange, think about it: 4 cycles of workshops successfully completed. Each cycle is a month and a half long. 4 * 1.5 = 6

Some fantastic statistics and facts

Since November 11, 2007, 12 different workshops were hosted. Our guest workshoppers so far (in chronological order) are:
`GunShyMartyr, `PoeticWar, ^StJoan, ^GeneratingHype, ~TheHungerArtist, `Beccalicious, ~apocathary, ~EveningDownpour, ^lovetodeviate, `conorschild, *MSJames and `Jon-Law. In addition, the admins hosted a personal review week.

We have received 229 submissions (and 2 late submissions) to our workshop in all! These submissions have been for workshops on plot twists, ekphrasis in poetry, jazz in literature, dialogue, lipograms, characters in prose and poetry, magic realism, non-fiction prose, exploring the self in writing, brevity in prose, tanka and humorous writing.

4 of the above submissions and 1 resource article written by a guest workshopper have received Daily Deviations -- the highest honour for art on the site! These have been featured in our journal shoutboard.

Although pageviews are not always important, they are to us, because it means that people find our club useful and/or interesting (most of the time, anyway). So it's good to know that we have had nearly 13,700 pageviews to date.

Most importantly, our huge group of members. We shan't number you (because we can't; there are too many of you), but we appreciate you very much.

Thank you to our members, supporters, contributors, guests, anyone at all who has offered us a kind ear. A workshop is nothing without writers and critics.

A special thank you to *itzjusdrama and *inspiredimperfection for these stamps:



And don't forget to check out our swanky new CSS!

(But don't let any of this distract you from revising and submitting to this workshop, eh?)

First time you've heard of *Writers-Workshop? This section is for you.

*Writers-Workshop is a literature community that focuses on the development of a writer. We intend to provide a non-competitive workshop environment on dA, as well as to push good, polished writing over winning prizes or "networking".

Workshops will be conducted every fortnight; prose, poetry and free-for-all sessions will be rotated. For more information, read our FAQ section or note us with queries.

We have been working on a list of resources for our writers: Resources for Writers which we think is worth going through. We are open to suggestions as well.

Our Diary has a list of upcoming workshops.

You can host a workshop, too.

Look out for the poetry part of this revision cycle coming up in a fortnight!

Staff