In a writing workshop, readers provide feedback on an author's text. This can be approached in different ways. At NeuWrite Nordic, we draw on an evolving mix of the American creative-writing workshop model and the Nordic folkbildning tradition of democratic collaborative learning, including the "text conversation" approach featured by the European Association of Creative Writing Programs—and then, uniquely, we apply this mix to science writing. Because American creative-writing MFA programs have an interesting but weird and controversial history connected to the Cold War, and their workshop style has inspired some worthy debate about enforcing certain norms and excluding certain approaches, in our science-writing workshops at NeuWrite Nordic we aim to center the following:
Cultivating awareness of our internal reactions
Rather than evaluating or judging a text, or trying to edit it, or telling the author what we think they should do, as readers providing feedback we:
- Try to be conscious of, and understand, our own internal reactions as readers, while we read, and then simply prepare to describe these reactions accurately and with insight, with reference to specific places in the text.
Dramatizing our own experiences, then discussing them
During our workshop sessions:
- First each reader, in random order, tries to "dramatize" something about their own experience as a reader, so that the author of the text understands what happened to that particular reader at a certain point or points in the text.
- When everyone has described an experience they had as an individual reader, we then discuss the text further as a group.
- We try to be kind, generous, and encouraging, but also honest, in describing problems that we experienced when reading.
Examples
Here are a few very generic and simple examples of the sort of comments that could "dramatize" a reader's experience at particular points in a text:
- I wanted to feel drawn into something unexpected here, but this part didn't feel surprising enough to me. I wondered if this part could present some sort of unexpected question about this to make me feel more curious.
- I had to read this part a couple of times. I understood why this added credibility, but to me it felt abstract, and lacked concreteness. I wanted some specific details that I could visualize in my head.
- The text mentions X here, which made me think about Y. I wanted something here also about Y.
Helping authors anticipate reader experiences and their diversity
NeuWrite is unique in bringing both writers and scientists together into a writing workshop to hear each other's feedback, with the goal of advancing techniques for communication about science.
This diversity of reader feedback across disciplines lends itself especially well to what researcher Ronald Kellogg has called the "cognitive development of writing skill" to the most advanced "knowledge-crafting" stage.
At this stage, an author has acquired enough experience of different reader's feedback to be able to better anticipate and account for diverse reader experiences of a text while the author is still engaged in the initial writing process.
