We’ve had some great successes with our workshops, and now it’s time to think about expanding them to longer works. What we’re proposing is to start a club for writers and beta readers where novels and novellas would receive the same kind of critical appraisal and peer review as we’ve done for short stories.
Writers would post their work on Google docs, divided up into manageable chunks of about four thousand words. (The exact amount will depend on chapter structure.) These will be linked to a master document similar to this one. Then all the current projects will be linked to a main page as we do with our other workshops. The chapters can be released all at once or serially, depending on what ultimately works best for the participants. They would stay up for a few months, depending on the amount of activity, before being retired. This is a work-in-progress, so there will be some fine-tuning as we go along.
The workshop would be for any work over 7,500 words, but out of necessity we would have to impose some boundaries. All works must be complete and self-edited to the best of your abilities. This is not a forum to work out ideas or experiment. Readers will not be able to give you their best efforts if they are distracted by sloppy spelling errors and common grammar mistakes. Likewise, it is unfair to ask others to invest their time if you have not. Submissions would have to be wholly original stories, or fan fiction with unique attributes (e.g. original plot, alternate universe with magic, etc.)
Also, we realize that this is a lot of work, and not everyone is a writer, so we’ll be opening up this workshop (and all future workshops) to those who just want to read and comment. This does not mean that it will be public, however. All participants must still register to get access to the page.
Because of the investment of time and energy that this would require, however, we’d like to get your feedback before going ahead. Please take a moment to vote in this poll. If you have any questions, you can leave a message in the comments section, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for your help.
This is the home of the Foil & Phaser writers workshop, a spin-off community website for fans of the Sword & Laser book club and podcast who want to develop their writing skills.
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