Peer Reviews, Challenging Realism Story

Logistics

Written peer reviews are to be completed BEFORE the work is discussed even though the due date on this assignment is at the end of our workshop round.

No need to submit anything to this assignment. I will be keeping track of the peer reviews written on your peers' stories. I will not be grading them--or even commenting on them, unless I see things in particular to praise or areas that could be improved.

Content

Comments in the Margins

Note moments you really liked or that confused you. Pose specific questions. I will expect to see at least one substantive comment per page. By “substantive,” I mean something more detailed than “I liked this” or “why?” See below for instructions regarding line edits and grammar.

End Comments

 must address the following:

• what do you think the story or essay means to focus on?
• what section or aspect of the piece is most successful in helping it achieve that intention? why?
• what one section or aspect of the piece should the author focus their final revision on? why?
• one affirmation (not an assessment of what is "good" or "bad" but something that got you excited, things it made you think about, things you loved).
• note how and how successfully the story challenges our expectations about realism

Line-edits

I am not against these, but it’s also important to remember that it’s not your job to revise the story or essay for the writer. I find line edits most useful when I’m trying to explain something about prose style. I might do line-edits and then explain in the margin why I made those changes. Sometimes taking the time to make a specific line edit will actually help you articulate that point you were going to make in the margin.

Grammar

Please do not “fix” each other’s grammatical “mistakes.” Instead, I’d like you to start with the assumption that things you read as “mistakes” are either typos or intentional choices. That doesn’t mean you need to agree with the choices or assume the author will notice the typos, but it should affect how you present feedback. Let’s say you notice a wide variety of issues and are pretty sure they’re typos. You might simply say that you noticed a lot of typos and hope the writer has time to address these in later drafts. If you think the “mistakes” are intentional choices, consider them in light of what you think the goals of the piece are, then ask yourself if you think they further those goals. If you are curious about this, you might ask a question in class along the lines of “How do you want the numerous sentence fragments [or whatever else you noticed] to contribute to the voice of this piece?” If you want to express an opinion in writing, you might phrase it this way: “I noticed that your piece includes many sentence fragments. For me, these helped the piece achieve to goal of XX because…/For me, these impeded my reading because…."