<p>the Iowa Young Writers Studio is a GREAT summer writing program. if anyone wants more info about it PM me…i attended as a rising senior last summer.<br>
all the instructors and counselors are graduates of the Iowa Writers Workshop, one of the most (if not THE most) prestigious writing programs in the country. so literally everyone you come into contact with is a great writer. the amount of writing you do while you’re there varies by class, but the set up of my fiction class was basically this:
in the morning-- go over a story that we read the night before, discussing one element of fiction and its role in the story (setting, point of view, etc.). our discussions were loose-- i was basically the only person to take notes (just because all the information felt so valuable), and there was no testing of any kind. the discussion basically went wherever we wanted it to. (but not in a lazy “let’s talk about some stupid TV show” kind of way.)
we then had an hour to an hour and a half for lunch.<br>
afternoons-- we workshopped stories. the night before, we each received 2 photocopied stories written by other people in our fiction class. we were to mark them up and write letters to the authors by the next afternoon. then, in class, we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of both stories. the author of the story was not allowed to talk during this part of the class. after we finished discussing the story’s strengths and weaknesses, the author was allowed to ask us questions (what was your impression of this character, what did you think of this, etc.). once the entire discussion was finished, we handed our marked up copies to the author, along with our letters to the author. i looked over all my edited stuff when i got back, and it was so valuable in revising. </p>
<p>so thats a basic overview of IYWS. it’s such a great program. please do let me know if you have any questions about it.</p>