At the workshop today my story was workshopped second out of the three. I was really nervous at first but starting off with what everyone liked about the story really helped with the anxiety over the whole workshopping process. After that I started to really enjoy hearing about what people didn’t like/understand, especially the fact that almost everyone thought it felt murder-y! One thing I found really interesting was that some of the people in class had assigned genders to the characters. I didn’t expect it because I used they/them/theirs throughout the whole story for both of my characters. I’m not sure if there is anything I could do to make it any more gender neutral than it already is. Although, it makes sense that some people would try to imagine the characters on the gender binary because majority of the stories we read nowadays do not have gender non-conforming characters. One thing I found difficult was for me to take notes on what people were saying. It was difficult for me because my brain processes information a little bit slower so I wasn’t able to write down everything that I wanted to. But, with the bullet points I was able to get down I know where I want to improve my story and possibly take it further.
Everyone seemed to like the parts where it got really emotional, so I want to expand further with that. I will probably add more emotional elements for both characters and try to explain more of the characters backgrounds in the coming drafts. I also really want to develop both characters a little more, especially Q because I feel like I barely have them talk about themselves. I love writing this story and I am very excited to continue on with more emotional moments to let the readers in on each character’s background! (Hopefully making Sunny look less murder-y).
