Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Essay: The Ethics of Workshopping (incomplete)

Word Count: 612
Form: Essay
State: Incomplete, First Draft, Tangential Scrap

The Nature of Workshop Comments

Comments in a prose writing workshop should be aimed at facilitating the completion of the work of a peer. It is important to remember that members of workshops are peers. The relationship of a commenter to an author is not that of a commercial editor determining what is and is not right for publication, but that of a reader to an author, helping the author make those decisions for himself.

The most effective comments are statements of reaction to a piece
-- not suggestions of meaning or how to achieve a different reaction, but what one's first, second, and third impressions of a piece were.

A comment like, "I hated Joe, he was a jerk to Sally," can be remarkably useful to an author.

Categories of Workshop Comments
Comments can be categorized as matters of fact, linguistics, or artistic preference.

1. Matters of fact involve the story's presentation of factual elements, such as where Sally was when she shot Joe, where she learned to shoot, and what kind of gun she used. Factual elements are concrete images, rather than intellectual abstractions, such the "metaphoric value" of Sally's shooting Joe.

2. Matters of linguistics involve the effectiveness and clarity of language in conveying the factual elements of the story.

3. Matters of artistic preference include everything else. They are the commenter's personal preference about the story's subject matter, tone, style, and unwritten intellectual meanings and implications such as metaphors.

The Ethics of Presenting Comments
Comments must be categorically identifiable when presented by the commenter to the author if the workshop is to be a productive experience.

It is common and quite unethical to present matters of artistic preference as matters of fact or linguistics. Matters of artistic preference cannot and should not be explained in objective terms such as the first two categories may be. It is a terrible flaw of human nature to look for a reason for everything, to rationalize and justify everything. We should be satisfied to say, "I like this," "I don't like this," without manufacturing some neat "because."

A common manifestation of this rationalization is in comments regarding the completeness of plot. Some commenters will insist a plot did not feel complete to them, because they simply "wanted to know more." But instead of saying that, they will phrase it as if it is a factual lapse, when it was actually it was a matter of artistic preference in determining the selection of important elements of the story. It is important to ask oneself if this lack of factual elaboration is a critical flaw or not, and it is the commenter's utmost ethical duty to present it as such.

Misrepresenting a comment on a matter of artistic preference as a matter of fact or linguistics is commonly done because we have a desire for what we say to carry weight, and our traditional tendency to more heavily value that which can be "justified" gives us enormous incentive to machinate false justifications

*At great risk of getting off on a tangent, to rid oneself of the necessity for artificial justifications will provide one with much spiritual enlightenment and satisfaction. Allowing oneself to be content with What Is is a marvelous concept. If one would like an illustration of the uselessness of justification, I personally recommend watching the financial cable news networks where at almost any hour one can witness two authorities in the world of finance give compelling, rational justifications for completely opposite predictions about the future behavior of some stock.

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