FICTION WORKSHOP 1

FICTION WORKSHOP 1

Reviewer:_____________________ Reviewed:_____________________

1) For the first step of today's workshop, exchange hard-copies of your rough draft with someone in your assigned workshop group and read their story from beginning to end.

2) Once you read your partner's entire story, diagnose the Point of View (POV). Is it third-person limited omniscient, first-person peripheral, second-person, etc. Afterward, list any portions of the story wherein the POV may be inaccurate. For example, if the story is told in third-person limited omniscient, does the narration ever fall into third-person omniscient? Or, if the story is told in first-person, does the speaker ever have access to scenes and thoughts that are not his/her own? Furthermore, does the narrative struggle to maintain that POV? By this, I mean, must characters in the story (or the story itself) engage in overly contrived or unreasonable acts so they have access to particular scenes of knowledge? Kercheval, for instance, uses the example of the grandmother putting her ear up to the door of a closed room so as to overhear a conversation as an example of strain narrative (and a clue as to why that POV may be the incorrect choice).

3) Write at least two paragraphs on how the choice of POV shapes the conflict of the story. These paragraphs should also address sections of the story where the external and internal conflicts can be re-arranged or augmented from that POV so as to offer a clearer or more full understanding of those conflicts. Perhaps, for example, we, as readers, do not have enough access to the POV-character's thoughts so as to provide us with knowledge of that character's internal motivations and desires that propel the narrative forward.

4) Select one POV that your partner has not written his or her story in. Write at least two parargraphs addressing how this alternate POV would change the overall framework of the story. What would this new POV offer that the current POV does not? How and why would this POV be more beneficial than the current POV in a particular context?

NOTE: When writing your responses to your peer's short stories, make sure you incorporate specific concepts and terminology from Kercheval's Building Fiction. Likewise, when offering revisions to your partner's POV, refer to particular examples from the selections we've read in Best American Short Stories during this genre cycle as models of justification for why you've made certain suggestions