Week 8 Comments and Feedback

Image (3/19/17) from the Feedback Cats Page

I chose this image because I've learned that each time a person revises their story, it becomes harder to see problems because they are too familiar with their story and in what they want to convey. Because of this, external feedback is useful because it shows a person where they need to elaborate and clarify the story for fresh eyes.

The feedback I've been receiving has varied. The most helpful feedback I've received have been the ones with questions asking about plot holes or for extra details. It's useful for me to know what parts of my writing grabbed readers' attention and where I need to clarify my story. Other times, the feedback I've received has been very positive, where the reviewer doesn't see anything that needs to change. They describe ways my storytelling was good with broad descriptions. However, this is also not very helpful as I don't know what I did precisely that was good storytelling to them.

I feel that I've given good feedback to my classmates. When I liked a specific writing technique, I brought a particular sentence that was particularly enjoyable, and I tried to explain why I thought that sentence improved the writing. When I found something confusing or wanted to know more details, I asked questions, which I know was the most helpful feedback I received.

While looking through stories, I've noticed storytelling styles, such as a journal or letter format that I later used in one of my own stories. I also saw some alternate universe stories that I am interested in trying out for a future writing assignment.

While reading people's blogs, I do feel like I know more about the person behind the writing. When I looked back at my introduction, I thought it was too formal compared to what others did. However, the comments for my introduction show that they understood the part of myself I was trying to get across, so I am more comfortable with it.

Something that I've noticed more with writing experience is that it's harder to revise every time you go back to it. One reason for this is that as the author, you have all the background information in your head, so you don't realize when you need to clarify that information in a story. I've tried to help others with this problem by adding questions and bringing up specific quotes in my feedback.Through looking through my given feedback, I've seen improvement in a lot of improvement. One goal I have is to become specific with every feedback assignment, no matter the length.