Against Mark-Ups

Why My Writing Workshop Doesn't Use Them

Starting in the fall, I’m teaching a class that has been a dream of mine for a long time: the no-homework novel-writing workshop. The structure is partly based on Jennifer Egan's writing group, a model my own writing group has been using for 10 years. There are lots of great classes that use a different model! For a novelist, though, I think this one has a lot to recommend it.

IMAGE: Piero di Cosimo's "Perseus Freeing Andromeda," c. 1510, aka you slaying your novel in a trusted group of mutually supportive writer-friends

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For starters, most of us need as much writing time as we can get. We're busy and tired, and a weekly meeting is already a big time commitment. Advance mark-ups and class readings cut into precious writing time.

Moreover, mark-ups and readings often get short-changed between our other commitments. When reading other people's work becomes a slog, not a joy, our feelings toward it tend to skew negative. (Ask a teacher.) And, as we know from the internet, people are much harsher when they can't see the person they're talking to. Despite our best efforts, written critique can become nit-picky and adversarial.

But even if that weren't true--mark-ups and critique don't work until a novel is done! You can’t effectively critique a single paragraph of a short story or a single line of a poem in progress. Those kinds of judgments do not make sense while drafting. Novelists (even plotters!) generally leave a bit of slack or scaffolding in the first draft, because it helps us trouble-shoot, problem-solve, and deepen the story along the way. This gets cleaned up or cut in revision, but it's impossible to know what will be extraneous until you've completed the draft. It's an organic process.

Reading aloud gives you in-person, real-time feedback on that process. I cannot stress enough how much more useful it is than a mark-up. When you read aloud, you see and hear people's unfiltered gut reactions. They nod thoughtfully, laugh, gasp, make little cheering motions, frown, look confused or just zone out. This is all extremely useful information. Their comments and questions are helpfully tied to the moments that stick with them on first reading; respectful dialogue helps steer the conversation in the most useful directions for moving forward. It also helps develop your ear for writing and self-editing at the line level. You can really hear the clunky prose when you read out loud, especially to an audience. Learning to write stronger sentences in your voice (rather than getting them dissected before it’s time) will serve you well in the long haul.

And writing a novel is such a long haul. You're going to get discouraged. Sharing your work in a trusted circle committed to support and encouragement as well as feedback and (invited) critique helps get you through those low times. Ask me how I know!

So far, this is all stuff you could do by yourself in a writing group, and I encourage you to try it. In my class, I also teach plot, structure, character, and other craft tools throughout the drafting process. I believe this, too, can be accomplished in class, with no advance reading. If a craft book actually delivers useful advice rather than just inspiration or food for thought, its techniques can be taught independently (credited, of course). That's not to say that craft books aren't worth reading--I love them! My aim is to extract the most useful bits and teach them to you, so you can decide for yourself whether you want to read the book on your own time. If you don't have the money to spend on craft books, you'll still get plenty of useful knowledge from the presentation, discussion, and in-class examples.

So there’s my spiel. I hope some of you will try the reading-aloud thing! If it doesn’t work out, blame Jennifer Egan.

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