Why Workshop Your Writing?

by Irene Cooper | May 2026

One of my go-to anecdotes when talking with writers about critical response to their work—aka, workshop—comes from the comedian and actor Bill Hader, who said that whenever someone’s told him a bit of writing wasn’t working, they were generally right; however, when they told him exactly how he ought to “fix” it, they were almost always wrong.

This story speaks to my beliefs and practices regarding feedback on several levels:

1.     At some point in the work, you will want/need to get other eyes on it, to get a sense of how someone other than yourself receives it

2.     Useful critical response is curious and responsive; it brings up questions

3.     Often, what appears to be a third act problem may in fact be a first or second act problem

4.     The confident writer has the tools and know-how to utilize critical response to re-envision and revise the work in ways that align with their goals

What Hader’s comment doesn’t address is the benefit of critical response for the one who gives it, which is my number one reason to participate in a critique group: workshopping other writers’ work makes you a better writer. Full stop.

When You’ve Taken the Writing as Far as You Can

The Forge will resume classes this spring after a mentorship period in which writers worked one-on-one with a Forge instructor to ready a sizable packet for submission to workshop, the last leg of our creative writing journey together. Over the last eight or so months we’ve studied and practiced our craft, from the smallest units of language and sound to broader elements of story structure and revision. We’ll spend a Saturday session reviewing The Forge’s philosophy of and approach to critique before diving into the work itself.

The moment prior to sharing your work with a group is a vulnerable moment, and it can feel scary. Horror stories abound about old-school Hunger Games-style showdowns that leave few writers standing with their dignity, let alone the will to revise. When I think about those hot-seat narratives, I think I understand that the writers in those rooms were not necessarily mean or evil—someone had convinced them that creative writing was a zero-sum game, and that every other writer was starving for a piece of a very limited pie.

At The Forge, workshop is a community enterprise. Because each writer is guided by their own unique imagination and intention for their art, it is the job of workshop to clear and to help build each individual path. To that end, we develop a common vocabulary and prioritize curiosity over judgement.

It’s Going to Be Great. For Real.

Workshop is experiential; there is no sure-fire way to ease the pre-game nerves, except to remind writers that the opportunity to sit with other artists who speak their language and are invested in their vision is nothing less than sublime. With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I’ll say it in a sonnet:

How do we workshop thee? Let us count the ways:

We workshop thee to know the depth and breadth and height

Your craft can reach, when you’re feeling out of sight

Of story’s ends and middles and ideal pace.

We workshop thee these Saturdays in May

To exercise the very skills that grant insight

Into what your heart and writer’s mind doth know is right.

We workshop thee with the passion put to use

In our old griefs, and with our artists’ faith.

We workshop thee with the joy we never lose

At vanquishing our writers’ block. We workshop thee not to death

But with spark and air enough to light the fuse

to forge your vision, and make of inspiration an infinite depth.

Workshop curious? Visit The Forge to learn more about our 10-month online creative writing program, and to apply for our next cohort. Classes begin September 2026.

Emotions, Sweet & Otherwise: ways to put feelings on the page

Photo: Guy Kawasaki

by Ellen Santasiero | April 2026

I’m watching this cop show.

Senior Detective Linden barely speaks, respects protocol, and shows little interest in food, while the new guy, the junior Holder, rattles on in ghetto-speak, cuts corners, and practices a form of vegetarianism that includes pork rinds.

By the time we learn most of this, though, we’ve already fallen for these characters. Why? Because the series’ writers make us feel emotionally connected to the characters from the get go.

In The Emotional Craft of Fiction, Donald Maass counsels writers to craft openings so they include an emotional hook (and at least a hint of an intriguing plot). Without an emotional hook, implies Maass, you’ve got nothing—or not as much as you could have. Some qualities or traits that make us initially like characters, writes Maass, are compassion, a commitment to justice, humanity, loyalty to family, and sacrifice. I would add fallibility, humor, an underdog status, and a struggle with inner conflict.

In the opening episode of Season One, here’s what hooked me on the character of Linden: Wearing ordinary jogging clothes and a messy ponytail, Linden comes upon a large dead animal on the beach, and stops and regards it with a soft expression. We then see her investigate a dark warehouse where her flashlight fails and she has to shake it to make it turn on again. Then we see her colleagues shower her with affection at a going-away party. What’s not to like?

In the next five minutes we see Holder schlepping a boom box, a mini basketball hoop, and other essential office supplies into Linden’s office. He accidentally knocks one of Linden’s file boxes off her desk. The lieutenant then enters and tells Linden to show Holder “how to work a scene.” Holder frowns at Linden, throws his arms out to his sides, and says, sotto voce, “I know how to work a scene.” He’s the underdog, and he’s funny. It’s hard not to root for him.

This is a great opening, but there are four seasons, each with thirteen episodes. What’s going to keep me watching this show from season to season besides a search for a killer? It’s the same thing that keeps readers interested over the course of a 350-page novel: the internal emotional journeys our characters take.

At the Forge, we call this “story,” as opposed to plot.

Linden’s series-long story revolves around her quest to find justice for neglected and lost kids, a vocation that might be noble in another character, but instead, in Linden, it is tragic: Linden’s obsession with such cases makes her, a single parent, neglect her own teenaged son at home. Indeed, one of the other characters shouts at her, “You care more about a dead girl than you do your own son!”

Though not as Shakespearean, Holder’s series-long struggle is compelling, too. He’s a recovering addict who, when he’s feeling low, seems just one in-breath away from “cristy” as he calls it, the drug he let stall his law enforcement career for a time. In other moments, he desperately wants to be what he calls “a good man” and do right by the family he’s betrayed in the past.

The detectives are broken inside, and we keep watching not only to find out whodunit, but to see whether these cops will prevail over their inner demons. We believe their struggles and we feel for them.

So how do we create this type of character in our fiction?

Maass counsels writers to figure out what matters urgently to their protagonist, and why. “Your protagonist doesn’t just care about this person, situation, or thing; he worries about it.”

If we show readers what our characters worry about, what matters to them internally, how they feel when they strive, struggle, fall, or succeed, readers will stick with our stories and novels.

Sure, the badly broken detective is a trope of the police procedural, but it’s one that non-genre (literary) writers can study and emulate if they want their readers to be hooked both from a plot perspective and an emotional one.

There is a lot more to say about creating emotion in fiction (and in nonfiction and poetry), and not enough space here to say it, but in the Forge, we have time to look closely at our students’ writing and help them create memorable characters and stories that readers can give a damn about.

Our Fall 2026 program begins in September! Apply at theforgewriting.com

Rewriting, Revising, & Editing

Mike Cooper - March 1, 2026

To some, these three words mean the same thing, but I like to look at them as different processes. If you look back a couple of months at The Forge blogs, you’ll see in a discussion of workshopping the idea that “Writing is rewriting.” I believe that’s true. I also believe that “Writing is revising” and “Writing is editing.”

To rewrite, put simply, is to write again. We have an idea—usually something fairly vague—like: Why don’t we live forever? or What if someone ate only M&Ms? or What would it be like to live under the sea? and we scribble away for a bit about that. We’ll come up with something, possibly go down some strange rabbit hole, maybe wander completely off topic, and possibly hit a wall. But while we’re doing it, we’re thinking and experimenting and learning and fabricating a world—or the idea of a world—and we’re taking all the things we know, and have ever known and experienced, and creating something new. We push ahead and come to the end and say, “That’s interesting, but it needs something.” And so we write it again. Start over. Maybe we keep some parts and definitely we add some new parts, and we get to the end again. Maybe it’s the same ending with a different middle, or maybe the ending is new. And we go again.

Revision means to “see again,” which comes from the French révision, which means “to see again.” I used to think that seemed pretty simple: “Take another look at it.” But recently someone made me see that differently. We have a “vision” for our work. In our vision, it is finished, significant, and says something important about the human condition, but what if  that vision changes? What if the significance changes? It will. Our visions always change. And what if that new vision holds deeper meaning, deeper truth? And so we revise.

Editing is a back formation of the word “editor” who is the person who creates the “edition” (from the French: édition) which, according to Merriam-Webster, is “the form or version in which a text is published.” To edit is to prepare for publication. To line edit is to go through line by line and make sure every sentence is how we want it to be. To copy edit is to make sure that the spelling, punctuation, and grammar are exactly the way we want them to be. And so we edit and send our work off into the world, pat ourselves on the back, make a sandwich, and put our feet up. Ta-da!

And then we get another idea.

And if you’re looking for ideas, or already have one and are looking for help with your writing (or rewriting—or revising—or editing), get in touch with us at The Forge: theforgewriting@gmail.com. Our next 10-month session starts this September.