Welcome to the Nauvoo Workshop for LDS Writers forum. This forum is for writers 18 years of age and older. In order to participate, you need to register. The registration link is also near the top of the forum page under the words Nauvoo Workshop for LDS Writers.

First, please be aware that our concern for author's rights means that this workshop is not for stories about someone else's characters or settings; no WEST WING stories, no ALVIN MAKER stories, no GONE WITH THE WIND stories, and so on. These, and others like them, are copyrighted and such stories are only published under very special circumstances. We'd like you to be able to see your own stories published; professionally, if possible.

Second, there are several discussion areas in the Nauvoo Workshop for LDS Writers forum.

The first area is for more information about how the forum works and it elaborates on some of the information given here.

The second area is for you to introduce yourself and tell other participants about your writing, past, present, and future.

In Open Discussions on Writing, you can discuss all kinds of questions on writing. Feel free to join in any current discussion, to resurrect any old discussion, or to start a new discussion on writing.

In the Nauvoo Workshop for LDS Writers Writing Class you will find a few assignments that may help you get a story started and maybe even finish it. You will need to ask the website to show you all of the topics in order to find the assignments because they were posted months ago. You are welcome to ask questions about the assignments there as well.

In Fragments and Feedback, you can post the first 13 lines (manuscript format, 12-point courier font) of your work and ask for people to volunteer to read all of it--which you send to them in email--and give you feedback, or you can just ask for feedback on those 13 lines.

The discussion of the 13 lines must be polite and it must deal with what is posted. No psychoanalysis of the author, no comments on how you would do it.

The purpose of feedback is to help the author turn the manuscript into the most efficient and effective vehicle for conveying the story to the reader. In order to do that, the other writers must understand what the author is trying to accomplish in the manuscript--so authors need to include that information with their 13 lines.

Your second goal in giving feedback is to let the author know whether the 13 lines did or did not succeed in making you want to read more of the story. Say where it was unclear, where it was slow moving, and so on. Feel free to share with the author any questions you had as you were reading the 13 lines.

Your next goal in commenting is to provide suggestions on how the 13 lines may better accomplish what the author intends for it. This is what "constructive criticism" means, at least in this workshop. You do not advise an author to get rid of something without offering an alternative that the author can use.

And all through the discussion, you must be polite.

The author may ask for clarification of another writer's comments, but any explanations, justifications, elaborations, and so on should be taken care of in rewrites. You can't explain things that aren't in the text to an editor, so you should get out of the habit of explaining them anywhere else.

If, after all feedback has been offered, the author would like to ask for more specific suggestions, or if the author feels that the intent of the story was misunderstood and would like help in making that clearer, the author may ask for further discussion along the lines of "brainstorming" with the other writers.

Even though this "brainstorming" will be less formal, it should still be polite.

If the author would like feedback on more than just the posted 13 lines, that information should also appear in the post with the 13 lines.

Those participants who would like to read more of the story and comment on it, using the above guidelines, are welcome to volunteer.

The author may email more of the story (up to and including the whole text, if the participants agree) to any volunteer the author chooses.

We set the limit at 13 lines for two reasons:

First of all, the first page of a manuscript should only have about 13 lines on it, since that first page should begin in the middle of the paper. It is not unusual for an acquiring editor to read only the first page (13 lines) of a submission before deciding whether to reject the submission or keep reading. We submit that 13 lines is enough for a potential reader to determine whether or not they want to read more.

Second, Nauvoo Workshop for LDS Writers forum is not a publisher, and we do not want you to risk using up your electronic rights to a story by posting any more than the first 13 lines on our website. Most professional editors are not interested in purchasing work that has been published online, and we want you to have every chance to be professionally published if that is your goal.

In the Discussing Published Hooks area, you can post the first 13 lines of a published story for discussion of what worked and what didn't work. If you're not sure how much is 13 lines, type the story into your word processor in manuscript format, and cut it off at the end of 13 lines.

There are other discussion areas: Nauvoo LDS Writers in Print--where you can let people know about publication of your work; Markets for Our Writing--where you can post information about markets; Ways to Critique--where you can find guidelines on critiquing (again, you need to ask the website to show you all topics in order to find the guidelines).

There is an area for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and links to topics on the Nauvoo forum where subjects have been discussed before, as well as space for links to places on the Internet that may be of use to writers.

Please contact Kathleen Dalton Woodbury if you have any questions or concerns by selecting "Nauvoo Workshop for LDS Writers" from our contact form.

We want to make this a great workshop and we're looking forward to having you become a part of it.

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