The Benefits of Peer Review

At The Writers' Block, we have a peer review system in place. Each person who wants to get a draft reviewed can do so by submitting to a critique queue. We have around 700 members. Thank heavens they're not all prolific writers. At the moment, we have a team of about 10 regular critiquers who are more experienced and we try to work as quickly as we can.

However, we're all volunteers with jobs and we want to get some actual writing done ourselves too. That's why we implemented a process in different stages to streamline the critiquing and to encourage people to submit their drafts more than once before posting it online.

People now go through at least three rounds of editing with their draft but we have started to structure our process a bit more. We now work on the bigger issues first, fixing character arc and plot, and looking for a killer opener.

We make sure the big picture of the piece works, before exhausting ourselves looking for an overdose of adverbs and word echoes, trying to turn telling into showing etc on a piece of prose that may end up cut or pared down anyway.

In writers' workout, the group that joins us in our exercises is a bit smaller. We started out with five writers, and each week a few more start working on the assignments. These exercises are queued as well, and developed, nitpicked and polished to perfection. Or as close to perfection as we could get them.

The benefit of this approach is that you work on a draft and you look it over, make it as clean as you can and then you submit. Three, sometimes more people come in and look at your piece. Fresh eyes who haven't beaten those words to death yet. While it's in the queue, I try not to think about it--to let it rest. I trust my friends to tell me what works for them and what doesn't. Because the opinion of a reader has value. The opinion of an experiences reader who will have an analytical outlook on things, is invaluable.

When they're done ripping it apart for me, I go back in and fix what I can, not having looked at it for a day or two. That means I have fresh eyes on it once again. I've had time to let everything sink in. Sometimes I'll read everyone's editing notes and put it away again. For another night of sleeping on it and letting it all sink in, before I even think of implementing edits.

And we do this again and again.

Our process might not be perfect just yet, but with every submission to our queues, we gain experience. As readers. As writers. As editors.

The most important thing we all share is a desire to learn, do better, grow as writers. I can't think of a better place to sharpen my skills, and if I look back at the first things I posted, I can tell it's starting to pay off.

This is the fourth companion post that is linked to a story I'm serialising on the Steem blockchain at the moment. It was edited and polished through peer review within our Writers' Workout group, where we all worked on fairy tales over the last few weeks. I couldn't be prouder of the work everyone has put in, and the results they got from it. My story, The Land Down the Well, can be found by visiting the library section on the left side of the page. Feel free to have a look. ;-)

Hugs

Jasmine

What Is Writers' Workout?

Good question.

Writers' Workout is a program we started on the Writers' Block. A way to practice different aspects of story writing. 

Week 1

We started out with a characterisation exercise a while back. It took us about a week. We submitted a character sheet and also looked at the chosen character through the eyes of one or two other characters in the story. All the participants in that week's workout worked together to write an article. We looked back on what we learned from the assignment, and it includes some excerpts from some of the exercises.

The thing that surprised me the most is that it not only helped me characterise the main character I did the exercise for, but that it also gave me some great insights on the two characters whose POV I used to portray her. 

Week 2

The next exercise was meant as a Deep POV practice. We decided on doing a rewrite of an old fairy tale or folk tale but we chose a character to do the POV on. Having a story to work with, and just tweaking it into Deep POV sounded like a good idea. It would mean we could focus on the POV and not have to worry about building a story. 

It didn't quite work out that way. What started out as a one week exercise has now turned into a four week frenzy of drafting, reviews, and editing. Part of this is due to the fact that most fairy tales don't really have a clearly defined story arc. Here and there you'll find a plot hole the size of Alaska. And most fairy tales were written with an omniscient POV in mind. Portraying them from a Deep POV turned out to be hard as entire peaces of the stories had to be left out.

Add to that the fact that we're all a bunch of nitpickers who cannot let a story go until they're satisfied it's as good as they can make it. Most of these fairy tales have gone through at least 6 rounds of reviews, edits and resubmissions for more peer review.

Week 3. Well, Sorta...

Meanwhile, we've slowly rolled into the next assignment. That one is about story openers. We're to write three story openers of about sixty five words. Out of all the story openers we submit, one will be chosen as the prompt for the next workout. 

I'll be sure to keep you posted on that. ;-)

Wait! What About that Fairy Tale?

Well, it kept trying to turn into a novelette. It grew and grew and grew. Instead of posting it in one piece, I had to serialise it as it was too long to fit into one Steemit post. 

I posted the first part on my Steem page yesterday. I have a few companion posts for each episode planned right here. I think I'll have plenty of things to talk about.

Other than the Deep POV, which will also provide me with material for a TinyTeaches post, I'll be telling you all a bit more about the original story, the struggles I went through in rewriting it and the symbolism it encorporates.  

For this piece, I decided to experiment with a Japanese form that combines prose and poetry. That's another thing I'll be telling you guys all about.

For now, I'll leave you with an open invitation to go and read the first part of The Land Down the Well.

Hugs

Jasmine

TinyTeaches: How My Passion for Writing and Editing Keeps Growing

Last week, when I did a revision of my first ever short story, I was reminded again of how long five months can seem. Because that is how old that first story was. That was the one that got me into writing fiction.

I've always books--everything about them, really. The smell of them, the feel of a book in my hands. The idea of wandering into a world completely different from my own...

But to think of creating a completely different world of my own, now that was something I felt I wasn't up to. Until something made me try anyway.

After that--after rolling into The Writers' Block and learning not only how to be a better writer, but also how to be an editor, my passion for writing grew exponentially. 

I enjoy teaching people new things, helping them improve their skills and hone their talents. I always have. Words fail me when I try to explain how that makes me feel.

I also happen to think I don't suck too badly at teaching either. That's how my TinyTeaches series started out. As an active editor over at The Writers' Block, I found myself explaining the same thing over and over again. 

Hold Up, Jasmine

If you keep having to explain the same things again and again, doesn't that mean you're not too good at explaining?

Well, not exactly. You see, I keep explaining these things in the drafts of the writers I'm editing for. But we keep getting new members at The Block, and they make those same mistakes we all make when we start out. So we keep explaining to other people.

So Do Something About It!

I did. I picked a pitfall I came across a number of times and turned it into a non-fiction article on how to avoid that pitfall. I wrote Visuals in Writing, the first part of my TinyTeaches series. People on the Steemit platform--those that matter to me anyway--loved it and I remembered again how great it can feel to teach.

I wrote Visuals in writing, the first part of my TinyTeaches series. People on the Steemit platform loved it and I remembered again how great it can feel to teach.

I couldn't stop now. I followed that first TinyTeaches blogpost with Finding Your Way in the Land of Babel: Writing in a Second Language. As an ESL author myself, I know from experience how hard it can be to write in a language other than your native tongue.

Later followed the article Forget the Hot Glue Gun. Get the Scissors. It discusses comma splices and how to spot them. A week after that, I wrote That's What She Said: The Use of Dialogue Tags.

This very morning, I wrote the latest article in my TinyTeaches series, The Eye of the Beholder: Different POVs in Writing.

Will You Keep Writing TinyTeaches Articles?

Hell yes. Because I enjoy them a lot. I absolutely love seeing the feedback I get from people who understand something they didn't before. I also love how much I'm not only able to help others become stronger writers, but how much I'm learning from writing these posts.

They're making me think about a lot of things I've been doing instinctively. When an instinctive response works, that's fine. It really is. But I'm convinced that awareness and the ability to make a conscious, informed decision can only benefit our writing skills.

They're also just a lot of fun to work on. I'm having a blast looking for examples and thinking of jokes to insert into the articles to alleviate the dryness of the subject matter. 

So I guess you are all stuck with me and my online ramblings.

Please don't hesitate to visit the Library section visible to your left. It contains the links to most of my work in these most amazing and inspiring five months.

Looking forward to your next visit.

Hugs

Jasmine

A Bunch of Crazy Writers

David looks at me and rolls his eyes. "What are you up to this time?"

I giggle and stick my tongue out at him. "Writer stuff."

"Tell me something I don't know." He looks at me as he always does. I can almost see the thoughts floating behind his eyes.

I love her. But she's a strange creature.

I wink at him return my gaze to the screen in front of me. The only way I can survive watching the television is by staying busy. My hands are always doing something, keeping my mind occupied in the dead minutes when nothing on the screen can hold my interest.

My fingers start hitting the keys. One eye on the draft I'm trying to finish–a deep POV rewrite of a classic fairy tale from my childhood–and one eye monitoring the mayhem that goes on in the general channel of The Writers' Block.

The What-Now?

The Writers' Block. It's an online writers' community that I help moderate. We're basically a big bunch of crazy book geeks. Spread out all over the world, we focus on helping each other improve our writing skills. We have members on every continent and in every time zone. Activity on our chatting server on Discord never slows down and we like it that way.

We brainstorm together, review each other's drafts, and we pretty much have the craziest of conversations. 

We also have a monthly book club where people can participate to study a certain book, and a writers' workout where we assign weekly exercises for those who wish to enter.

Most of us have a Steem account, but it's not mandatory.

We welcome writers from all over the world, from every discipline involving the written word, and from every skill or experience level.

Are you a writer too? Looking for kindred spirits? Feel free to come and pay us a visit.

Hugs

Jasmine