How to Organize a Writer's Workshop

Writer's workshops are among the best ways for writers to grow, improve their writing and find their voice in a positive environment. Workshops can be general, or can focus on a specific type of writing: short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, etc. There are online writer's workshops, but nothing is as effective as face-to-face interaction.

As an amateur poet and prose writer, I have been involved in multiple workshops, and have organized a couple of my own. Here's how.

Advertise

The first thing you need for a writer's workshop is people, so you'll need to generate interest. You can advertise with flyers and newspaper ads, and those are often effective. But you can be more successful if you target the write audience (pun intended). Basically, you need to gather writers, so good places to advertise are local bookstores. Most bookstores would be perfectly happy to put flyers up advertising your workshop.

On that note, most bookstores would also be willing to host workshop meetings. After all, you'll be bringing potential customers inside the store. Barring that, you can always meet at a member's house or apartment.

Once you've gotten enough people interested (I find around 15 people to be the ideal), figure out when and where you'll have meetings. Try to accommodate as many people as possible.

Start a listserv

A listserv or group email is necessary, not just to make announcements to the group but to send out workshop material. A few days before workshop meetings, members who have a piece they want workshopped should submit it via email to you or another designated member. Then, that person will send all workshop pieces to the entire group. Members should read all the pieces before workshop meetings so they can come prepared to critique them. It's also a good idea for each member to print everything out before the meeting. That makes them able to refer directly to the pieces at workshop meetings, as well as give them back to the authors with written comments after the meetings.

Plan your meetings

Now that you've got members and a listserv, it's time to figure out how you are going to run your meetings. Writer's workshops generally work in similar ways, except for a few small differences. Workshop members take each piece and tell the author what works and what doesn't, and make suggestions on how the author could improve the piece. Tell your members that they should not be afraid of being critical. As any writer will tell you, you can't improve unless you get constructive criticism. At the same time, a rule should be in place that all criticism should be directed at the piece, not the author. You get nowhere receiving personal criticism.

Here's a few other questions you should ask yourself and find an answer to before you begin:

Will pieces be read aloud before they are critiqued? It is especially useful for poetry to be read aloud. In some workshops, the author reads the piece aloud. In others, the author reads it and another member reads it back. This allows the author to hear the words back through another voice. However, the length of pieces or meeting length may prevent this from being possible.

Will you allow anonymous submissions? Some workshops allow them because writers are shy, and because knowing the author may affect the way you read the work. Other workshops want to encourage writers to be less embarrassed about personal topics so they don't allow anonymous pieces.

How many pieces will you workshop each meeting? How much time will you spend on each? If you have an unlimited amount of time, then you don't need to limit time on each piece. But that's unlikely. It's best to put limits on time spent on each piece so everybody has a chance to be workshopped.

Over time, you'll find more questions that need to be answered about how you run your workshop, but you'll also find that your writing improves rapidly.