“Hills like White Giraffes:” How to Give Positive Feedback in Fiction Workshops

Aimee LabrieAs writers, many of us find it beneficial to take workshops to inspire and shape our writing. I’ve been on both ends—the student and the instructor. In both cases, the hardest part of the fiction workshop for me is critiquing other people’s work. As a teacher, this is often particularly difficult because often, the other students will give my opinion more weight than the thoughts of their peers. 

First, I look for what’s working in a story. It doesn’t matter if it’s a story about an alien woman with X-ray eyes and a harelip. Or a nonfiction piece about a traumatic experience masked as fiction or a story rife with talking giraffes who want to over-throw the government. You still have to offer constructive suggestions, because at the other end waits a person brave enough to hand over a draft for you to critique, which is essentially the same as saying, “Tell me where I suck.” So, I find the good things in the story. And no matter where the writer is in his writing ability or experience, you can always find something to praise.

Here’s how it works for me:  I sit at the kitchen table with the story in front of me and search for positive feedback. Something more than, “Your font is really readable,” or “Your title, ‘Hills like White Giraffes,’ is very clever.” Because, as the instructor, part of my job is to be encouraging in ways that don’t make the student feel as though she should immediately go home and set fire to her laptop. This doesn’t mean that I should over-praise either; that can be just as damaging and misleading. But I know I must give the writer something to encourage her to do the hardest thing of all: to sit down in front of the blank page and try again.

Then, I go back to the beginning of the story to figure out how to offer the best suggestions for improvement in concrete ways.  I use a pencil or a black pen, never a red pen. No matter how strong your ego is as a writer, no one wants to get back a draft that looks like it’s been graded by a cranky schoolteacher; the equivalent of a “D-” on an English essay. Obscurity does not help the writer either; to suggest vaguely that she should develop her characters more. Instead, I strive for something specific like “What is Dolores’ job? What is her biggest, darkest secret? What does she want more than anything in the world?” I also make marginal notes (a check for a particularly good or vivid line; a question mark for something confusing), and then I write a page of end comments starting with the line “Things to Consider…” No mandates, just possibilities. It’s ultimately the writer’s story after all. She can do whatever she pleases. She can create a whole planet full of talking giraffes if that’s what she is drawn to.

And what about the student who is a really, really bad writer? She write pages of inane dialogue with adverb laden attributes, insists on the “ah-ha” surprise conclusion, types “the end” on the last page. Should I just pull her aside and say, “Listen, you might want to consider another artistic path. Collages, for instance?” No. No, I would never tell a writer to stop writing. If I believed people couldn’t improve their craft or if I thought that the ability to write well is given to a chosen few, then I should give up teaching. I believe that writers can improve—if they want to, if they work hard, if they consider suggestions for revision, and, above all, if they strive for the truth in their writing.  

About The Author

Aimee LaBrie received her MA in writing from DePaul University in 2000 and her MFA in fiction Penn State in 2003. Her collection of short stories, Wonderful Girl, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction in 2007 and was published by the University of North Texas Press.Other stories of hers have been published in Minnesota Review, Pleiades, Quarter After Eight, Iron Horse Literary Review, and numerous other literary journals. Her short story, "Ducklings" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Pleiades.