Everything comes together in the Capstone. You will draft a complete story, narrative essay, or memoir of 8–15 pages. With the advice of your peer readers, you will revise, rewrite, and complete it. The skills you’ve learned of plotting, setting, physical description, characterization, and stylistic clarity and innovation will culminate in an original work of art all your own. We’ll discuss the steps that professional writers take to bring their work into the public world. Along the way you’ll learn the patient habits of revision that make up the writer’s life.
Workshop Demonstration, pt. 1
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From the course by Wesleyan University
Capstone: Your Story
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From the lesson
Peer Review
Now that you’ve finished your first draft, it’s time to get ready for the first big peer review. This week we’ll talk about how to give good critique, and we’ll present a sample story and sample workshop. At the end of the week, you’ll write critiques of three of your fellow students’ work while they are busy critiquing yours.
Meet the Instructors
Salvatore ScibonaFrank B. Weeks Visiting Professor of English
All right Sam, read us a page and then we will go Veronica-ward around the room.
>> All right, I'm taking the central portion of page four, section Marsha.
[NOISE] Everyone should meet someone.
If you're lucky, that someone should make you want to kill for them.
To do anything for them.
That girl, the girl you love, she's everything and you're a chap.
Every time you see her, should take you back to the first time walking down Smith
while you drink Espresso at bar 2Bok.
You lift your gaze up from the table and slowly let it rise to meet hers.
Suddenly, the mailman a few steps behind her, and
the dog walker near your outdoor table slowly fade to nothing.
The stop signs blithely melt into spinning dallos, and each step she takes rings
a single bell sounding an angelic melody that drifts over the asphalt and
coats a turbulent Brooklyn block in a glowing white shimmer.
It is like seeing the sun for the first time.
I Isley brothers whose at lady plays in your head as the espresso in the wooden
table in the tusken red canvas barrier marking the restaurant's plotted sidewalk,
all sync into a infinite sea of useless memories of a time before she existed.
And that is all I'm reading.
>> Thank you.
Veronica.
>> I especially like the portion that Sam just read.
I had read this part before, it's nice if you'll read it.
I think the first time that I had seen it, I was concerned by the different types
of nouns that are the subject headings but now there was a little confusion.
I wish it was more standardized, because some are times of the day,
some are places, some are people's names, and that was confusing.
But I thought that it jumped around in time in a way that was really interesting
and it didn't confuse me.
I felt like we knew we started at the end, and then we got the back story, and
I felt that was handled really well.
And I liked the characters.
>> I agree.
I thought the sections and
like the breaking up of the story was like very well done.
Although I did not like the section headings because I felt
disoriented by them.
And in terms of the characters, I thought
maybe a little more description could be had about Martha other than her looks.
I think it would help to know who she is, and
what are her personality traits so that I can understand
the deception and the cheating a little bit more.
And I also, alongside that, I would like to see Bo
a little bit more in love with her in the earlier times,
there's just descriptions of like how she looks and
she's beautiful but, I feel like he's not invested in her,
especially because they haven't talked in several weeks,
up until the cheating incident.
So it seems like well, then why did he get so upset if they're not even talking?
But yes, I did love, I love the story I love the idea of
a travel channel chef setting fire to a house.
And in terms of the line level, there was a lot of punctuation errors in terms of
hyphens and hyphens are not commas nor are they dashes.
Dialog punctuation, adverb, semicolons, and comma placing and direct address.
And that's it, that's all I got.
>> Yeah I really liked this story, I really like the things about,
with what you said about them being not completely believable as a couple,
I think it was a little hard for me at times to like really.
It just seemed like a story about cheating and not about a relationship, and so
that's, it was hard for me to just let that slide, and not like.
Yeah, just more motivation for her to have cheated and everything.
And I think the beginning is really great because
there's just a really nice sense of irony.
And Sam is very clearly mocking that radio or
that TV station, an area like that.
And then put them on its switch into array on page three
about halfway down would be deaths.
It's like at the same line.
He's like, he messes up on air and then he cuts his thumbs.
And it just seems like to go downhill so quickly.
And I would've liked more tension leading up to that or to have been more subtle.
And, yeah, also, I agree with the section names
because if there's a section called Marsha,
I'm assuming that it's written from her perspective.
So I had to go back and when it said ghost stood up and stepped onto the sidewalk,
I realized that it wasn't from her perspective so that was confusing.
>> I also liked this story.
I thought that there were a lot of level things that were really nice
like the white knuckle, the nice lacquer handle, I really love that as a verb.
And then the way that a lot of things are described like the turbulent
Brooklyn block.
Like the individual tiles beckoning over here use us for
the postcard and then like, do other buildings feel left out?
At least multiple buildings are equally disconnected.
I felt that the sense of place was like.
I like the descriptions on that, but I really like the kind of interaction
between the superficial that you get especially in the beginning with the sense
of irony there and I thought that both seemed very disaffected a lot of the time.
And I thought that part of that is his disillusionment with this kind of
superficial life and
this necessity of creating a gloss over everything that he does for the camera.
And I saw that in some respect with Marsha, because I think they do have
a relationship but I don't really see the depth in.
And I think that could be intentional but I do think for
me to really believe that Bo would get to the point of setting something on fire,
I need to see a little bit more passion for him and not just in that one moment.
because in that one moment that's just, that's a crush,
that's someone you just want to sleep with or something.
But, I think that for him to really get that invested,
I need to see a little bit more intensity earlier on.
>> [COUGH] So, two scenes or two of the sections that for
me work were the opening one, morning and Bo abroad and
I think Bo abroad because we get a bit of insight into Bo's character,
his anxieties about the specifics of his job having to travel.
And then the opening scene because it was easy to follow and
vividly narrated and also I appreciate that, there was a lot about food,
because I think that in characters, we often look for
individuating characteristics for lack of a better word.
That make, we want Bo to be Bo, but Bo's also a chef so
I think it's good to have these more specifying characteristics as well.
So I think if you're going to have a chef, you need to talk about food for
us to be convinced that he is a chef.
And I think that is, I think it's good that you did that.
And then, I think the relationship between Marsha and
Bo's lacking and that's why I was detached from the second half,
and in the ending, it didn't really matter to me.
Because I didn't quite understand their, we never saw their relationship, right?
I don't think we need to see them meet, but
I think we need to see them in love and then we need to see
their relationship not working for this to be impactful.
>> A lot of the things I wanted to get to have been touched on a lot already,
but the section titles for example, even more generally,
they're not really consistent in what they are.
You have a time of day, then you have a person, then you have a number of places.
And then the last one that.
I think there are points where you need to slow down,
where you didn't the part where the beginning part
where he cuts his hand and it talks about the affair on air.
It's already been said that that should be slowed down.
But in addition to that, if you decide to keep the ending how it is, I think,
the point of him actually setting the building on fire needs to be slowed down,
and I wasn't entirely clear on where they were, where he was at first,
whether it was his apartment I think it was or George's.
And I think there was an issue of plausibility for
some things, it's already been talked about but
the flatness of Marsh's character makes it hard to believe
that he's going to come to this mental unraveling that he did towards the end.
I think that conclusion, I would more likely draw is that or
the logical conclusion I would come to is that this
should be more a story of this guy who is a celebrity
chef because a great interesting story point to come from.
But I feel like it's more bout his unraveling than it is about this affair.
You could put more emphasis on the affair disputing the last
straw rather than how much it seems to take up here.
And because we get a little bit of alcoholism,
we get a little bit of him being disillusioned with his job.
But then, all this drama takes place in relationship, his relationship with Marsha
and you it's been said you haven't developed that relationship.
Yeah, and what Jeffrey said about subtlety,
I think there are points where you give a little too much.
For example, I think the foreshadowing was too
strong when George said, I'll look after her and
after he also mention that your wife is beautiful,
you could've been more subtle in places like that.
Yeah that's it.
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