How many writers does it take to repair a short story? The premise of a creative writing workshop is that a whole roomful of authors, each offering feedback and collaborating to smooth out the kinks in a narrative, can accomplish that repair together. This method yields three clear advantages: First, the writer gains insight into how to strengthen the specific piece. Second, the group as a whole sharpens its abilities as readers and editors, building a technical lexicon that will prove useful in future projects. And third, the writer departs the session feeling encouraged, energized, and motivated to keep writing.
A productive workshop day hits all three marks. Yet inevitably, those noble objectives can clash with one another. Consider this vignette from an MFA-level workshop: a participant submitted a short story told in the second person. At the outset, the writer announced that, while generally open to input, he did not want critique targeting the chosen point of view. The second-person narration worked for him, and he had no intention of altering it.
An uneasy hush settled in the room after his declaration. If the aim of the workshop was to refine the story in question, some discussion of the narration would be essential. Trying to fix the piece without addressing this unusual perspective would be akin to, as a mentor once described it, “changing the sheets while the house burns down.” If the goal was to educate the class and expand their editorial toolkit, a frank conversation about the narrative voice would also be necessary. If, however, the objective of the workshop was to support and uplift the writer, the path forward seemed obvious: the group should respect the author’s request and confine feedback to other, secondary aspects of the story.
The best way to handle such dilemmas depends on what you believe a workshop is truly intended to do.
*
Nate Dern is a graduate of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, where he earned an MFA in Fiction. He pursued MFA programs with the aim of assembling a polished collection of short stories for placement in literary magazines and eventual book publication. Yet the time spent in workshop did not always appear to advance that objective. “If there happens to be someone in your group with good taste, and perhaps some publication experience, you might encounter guidance that nudges the piece in that direction,” Dern observed. “On other occasions, I left workshop more puzzled than I started.”
When I was an MFA student, I really wanted to know whether my stories had publication potential, and what I needed to do to close the gap.
He recounted a memorable session in which the story under discussion was plagued by a conspicuous craft issue: “We spent the first fifteen minutes speaking in abstract generalities, because no one wanted to confront the obvious number-one concern on everyone’s mind.” This approach honored the aim of supporting the writer, but it was unlikely to give the author a true sense of the story’s strengths and weaknesses, nor to teach the class how to address the craft problem at hand.
If the instructor truly believed that the collective goal was to elevate the story, they might have steered the discussion toward the problematic craft issue and offered revision ideas. Instead, the teacher allowed the students to steer the conversation—and by doing so handed the class ownership of what the workshop was really for.
Rebecca Makkai, who teaches in several graduate writing programs, advocates this approach. “I usually let students decide, in most circumstances, how they want to be workshopped,” she explained. “That lets the group say, This is new; we’re just sharing ideas and support. Versus: This is nearing a final draft; let’s chase every tiny flaw.” Makkai provides students with a menu of workshop options, from which they can pick activities aligned with their preferred experience: “the author asks the group a question,” or “participants discuss what’s functioning well,” or “participants request permission to offer suggestions.”
Most of Makkai’s students follow her recommended “default model” that features a dialogue about the story’s strong and weak points. Yet some students set stricter boundaries. “It’s rare,” she noted, “but occasionally they request something I wouldn’t recommend for them. Honestly, it’s usually someone who doesn’t want to hear an honest response anyway. They’ll say: I just want to pose five questions—and those five questions aren’t necessarily helpful. Or they’ll say: I only want to hear what others are curious about. They’re protecting themselves from something. But they’re allowed to do that. I won’t force people to hear things they aren’t ready to hear yet. When they’re ready to hear the other stuff, they’ll ask for it.”
Makkai isn’t alone in shifting the control of workshop to the writer. Many fiction instructors I spoke with have abandoned the traditional “cone of silence” model, where the writer remains quiet until the end of the discussion. Instead, they invite the author to initiate the dialogue, presenting their piece within its broader context: how many drafts the story has undergone, which parts most require work, and which categories of feedback the writer does not want to receive. This arrangement enables students to tailor the learning experience to their needs—and if they wish to avoid criticism of their work, they can.
One driving reason behind this shift—from passive listener to active participant—is the historical flaw of the “cone of silence” approach: it can be brutal. Every professor I spoke with had a horror story about a workshop in which their own writing was ripped apart while they could only sit and listen. Susan Choi, who teaches at Johns Hopkins’ Writing Seminars, shared an anecdote about a classmate who brutalized her work. “My professor just sat there, listening the way I was supposed to,” Choi recalled. “After workshop, the professor invited me into their office and handed me a cigarette, as if I had just been ruined. You can hardly believe it—the detail is almost ridiculous—but it happened.”
These uninhibited workshops left a lasting impression on a generation of writers, who have since become teachers and pushed back against the cone-of-silence method. Yet when I spoke to current students, none cited viciousness as a problem in workshop. Shanley Jane Kearney, an MFA candidate at Columbia, told me she appreciates the cone of silence. “That’s one of my favorite features of workshop,” she confessed. “It trains you to pause and refrain. When your book hits the market and someone reads it, you’re not broadcasting your intended meaning on every line. You have to hear how readers misinterpret your writing—just as a reader would.”
Kearney argued that workshop can be a uniquely supportive space because everyone must read each story thoroughly. “If someone in your workshop is confused by something, that’s an even bigger red flag, since they’re focusing far more intently on the work,” she noted. “They may have reread the piece two or three times and still not grasp it. If I present a piece and the class struggles to reach the conclusion but eventually does, they still struggled. My reader will struggle even more. If it was unclear in workshop, it truly was unclear.”
Kearney’s point rests on anticipating a future reader who will encounter the story in print without the author’s guidance. If the aim of workshop is to revise for that future audience, the writer’s presence in the discussion is unnecessary, even detrimental. But if the goal of workshop is to help the author refine the piece toward their own envisioned version—independent of publication or acclaim—then the writer’s involvement makes perfect sense.
Thus, the debate around the cone of silence reveals a deeper question: is workshop about chasing publication, or about refining craft for its own sake?
Nearly every professor I spoke with argued that publication should not be the central concern of workshop. Susan Choi described publication as the “implicit long-term objective” of her graduate workshops, and thus it rarely enters the dialogue. Lorrie Moore, teaching in Vanderbilt’s MFA program, said publication is “seldom” the focal point of a workshop discussion. Rebecca Makkai observed, “Many students are not ready to publish yet. If publication dominates discussions, you’ll need to tell them that at some point, and that’s not helpful. It’s better to say: The story is what it is; let’s make it stronger.” Anelise Chen of Columbia’s MFA program likened a revised piece to “a tender shoot just breaking through. The worst thing you can do is stomp on it. Sometimes harsh realities are necessary—but life will supply them.”
The logic here is straightforward: because graduates will inevitably face harsh feedback after college, MFA workshops should not be the sole source of bad news. Yet as a student, I personally wanted to know whether my stories could be published and what I needed to do to bridge any gaps. I enrolled in a graduate program to receive candid critique in a controlled setting where I could absorb and learn from it. If I had believed my mentors were shielding me from recognizing my own shortcomings, so that I would only confront them after graduation, I would have felt frustrated.
The lack of shared agreement among students and faculty about the ultimate aim of workshop can breed conversations that feel scattered and inconclusive. Some participants focus on praise; others on critique. Some writers see themselves as listeners; others as providers of context. And all instructors want to support their students, yet they disagree on how best to do so.
In the case of MFA programs, which are explicitly designed to prepare students for professional writing careers, a clearer sense of purpose is essential.
Robert Boswell has spent four decades teaching writing workshops and characterizes his method as “old school.” He leads a discussion about the intentions behind a story and how effectively those intentions are realized, inviting the writer to speak only at the close of the session. “In my view, the writer’s job in workshop is to listen and take notes,” Boswell stated. “I agree that students should have more autonomy in many university settings, but in workshop the principle is: here is my story; I have pushed it as far as I can; tell me what you observe.”
Boswell acknowledged that some students would rather hear praise than criticism. Yet he argued that praise is not always what students need. “It’s college,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to coddling students. There’s a distinction between harsh feedback and honest feedback. If everyone is aligned with the story, feedback isn’t harsh.”
Being on the side of the story means treating the piece as a separate entity from its author and recognizing that the story’s needs may diverge from the writer’s needs. When those needs diverge—when a writer seeks praise but the story requires a complete overhaul—the story’s needs should take precedence. After all, the writer is often the least likely person to know what their story truly needs.
*
In the workshop devoted to the second-person narrative, the participants focused on the setting, the characters, and the plot, deliberately avoiding discussion of the second-person form, despite private doubts about the story’s viability in its current state.
“People want to be respectful,” Dern explained, “so no one in workshop will say plainly, ‘I found this dull,’ or, ‘If this appeared in a journal, I’d stop reading after the first page.’ Sometimes I think that leads to everyone skirting around the issue, avoiding the obvious challenge in the room.”
Who benefits from this flexible approach to workshop? Not the students, who graduate into a professional world without a clear sense of their readiness to publish. Not the instructors, who must tailor their feedback to match the students’ willingness to hear it. The clearest beneficiaries are the MFA programs themselves, which can continue to enroll students with a wide spectrum of goals. Whether learners crave rigorous craft refinement or unwavering encouragement, they tend to funnel into MFA programs, where they may or may not receive the candid feedback needed to improve.
I do not claim that every workshop should be of a single kind—neither always prioritizing the story’s needs over the writer’s needs nor always privileging the class’s learning over the writer’s learning. But for MFA programs, which train students to enter the professional literary world, a more explicit purpose is necessary. If a workshop fails to teach students how to handle criticism, how can we expect them to flourish as professional writers? And if a two-year MFA can produce graduates who have never encountered an honest assessment of their work, what purpose do those degrees truly serve?
