My second short story was workshopped in class on Monday, 11/28. I was less nervous going into this workshop than I was going into the first workshop because I knew what to expect. I was hoping that the feedback that I received about my last story would carry over as improvements I made in this one. I was happily surprised that a lot of people felt like this story was more relatable and felt realistic to their own lives. I was also happy that they had distinct feelings about character, and the ones that they knew less about, they wanted to more. I felt like achieved my goal of making my characters more attainable and making the reader more attached to them.
As I revised my story, I used several comments from the in-class workshopped. One comment was that I needed to focus more on Asher’s character development and more about Ash and Sophia’s backstory. I added a line or two about their development, changed their story up a little bit, and allowed the reader to know more about Ash while also leaving them with some necessary and intentional questions, since I bring him back up at the end of the story. I also got feedback that my peers wanted more of Noah’s side, and I also was told to maybe consider putting it in first person. Putting the story in first-person allowed me to focus more on Sophia’s side while also leaning into her description, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and dialogue to capture Noah’s character more. This also improved the tone of my story – another workshop point – to make it feel more personal rather than flat.
I am happy with how the workshop went, it was extremely helpful in revising my final draft and I used almost every point we talked about to improve my story during revision. Overall, these in-class workshops were helpful throughout the semester and I loved the feedback I received from my peers.
