What techniques of development and elements of craft were used in the short story?

Assignment: Workshop

Sometimes when you are too close to a project, it is difficult to see its flaws. Pairing your own revisions with feedback from a peer can help with this. As you prepare to write the final version of your story, feedback can help you focus on ways to improve your story that you may not have previously seen. It will also help you produce a final version of your story that is polished and ready for submission to a publisher. For this week’s Assignment, you will be doing a peer review of a colleague’s story, while your colleague reviews yours, providing you with constructive feedback you can incorporate into your Final Project.

Questions about this assignment? Post them in the Contact the Instructor area on the left navigation bar. That way, everyone in the class will see, and benefit from, the Instructor’s response.

To prepare for this Assignment:

• Review the Final Project Introduction and Overview document in the Learning Resources.
• Review the assigned portion of Chapter 12 in Shaping the Story.
• Review the second draft of your partner’s short story found in DocSharing. Review the story at the paragraph (big picture) level first and then narrow it down to the sentence level.
• Consider the questions you will ask as you prepare to write a critique of your partner’s short story. How effective is your partner’s use of creative writing elements in his or her short story?

The assignment:

• Write a 1- to 2-page critique. Be sure to include answers to the following questions:
  • What techniques of development and elements of craft were used in the short story?
  • “Does your point of view help [the story] or hurt [the story]?” (Shaping the Story, p. 185)
  • “Do the story’s characters feel real?” (Shaping the Story, p. 186)
  • “How is the story paced?” (Shaping the Story, p. 187)
  • Is the ending of the story logical? Why or why not?
  • “When you reach the story’s end, can you say what it was ‘about’?” (Shaping the Story, p. 188)

Formatting Expectations:

• Indent the first sentence of each paragraph. Block paragraphs are not acceptable for this assignment.
• Your final document should:
  • Be in a 10- or 12-point font, such as Times New Roman or Verdana.
  • Be double-spaced throughout.
  • Have 1-inch margins for top, bottom, left, and right.

By Day 7

Submit your Assignment. In order to receive full credit, all assignments are due on time. Should you encounter an unanticipated and uncontrollable life event that may prevent you from meeting an assignment deadline, contact the Instructor immediately to request an extension. Your Instructor’s contact information is in the Contact the Instructor area on the left navigation bar. For a full description of the late policy, please refer to the “Policies on Late Assignments” section of your Syllabus.

Submission and Grading Information

To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following:

• Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK4Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” as the name.
• Click the Assignment Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment.
• Click the Week 4 Assignment link. You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area.
• Next, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer button. Find the document you saved as “WK4Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” and click Open.
• If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database.
• Click on the Submit button to complete your submission.