I like to write concisely, in a way that usually involves judgments that sometimes only I can make. Knowing when writing like this works and when it doesn’t is the most important part of peer feedback to me.
Category: Issue 3
Being told what others thought I did well was really helpful during the process as it helped me see more of areas that solicited a reaction from the audience and helped me take that information and apply it to other areas that I thought could also benefit from it. Knowing where an audience wanted more details was also beneficial, as it helped me see places where I thought an audience was intrigued by or where more information was needed to help make an impact.
The feedback helped me see my work from the perspective of readers and see where some word choices might be less clear or where excessive wordiness might detract from the piece.
Someone thought it might be better to know a little background information about the characters, so I tried to mention the types of missions the girls usually go on. People also asked what type of relationship they had (platonic/familial/romantic) but I decided to keep it vague on purpose.
Categories
Pieta and Bob
My introduction I completely rewrote in order to more blatantly hint at the death of Bob. I also included more thorough descriptions of Lazlo and Bob in comparison.
I had a lot of positive feedback for my piece with most of the suggestions falling into the category of how to lightly tinker with the piece to bring out the best poem. I think the more general comments that I got helped me know how my poem would generally be received.
I was told it was tight and the rhythm flowed well. There was one stanza where my syllables were inconsistent, and a few places where there was confusion on word choice such as “ones” for money and beginning the poem during a job search not in the scene most discussed. I was told that there was a lot said in a short amount of time and that my puns were effective.
Concision and organization were big in this piece. I knew what idea I wanted to share and the tone I wanted to use, but Angie really helped me with the overall structure and how to cut down in order to make the biggest impact.
I worked with Angie a lot on structure and punctuation. I had never written poetry before so we also worked on genre conventions and general style.
We focused a lot on voice and perspective in the piece. Since it is me talking to myself, we discussed how to make that more clear. I also wanted to play with imagery and physical description which was tough for me but very fun.