Week 8 Comments and Feedback

Feedback in is usually pretty great and thought provoking. If there isn't already an option for this, I think a good extra credit assignment would be to revise a story on the blog based on some of the comments. While I want to revise my stories on my own, my course load is so full this semester it's hard to want to spend time on anything that doesn't count towards the grade. I find comments where they give me alternate ideas are the most helpful, as well as comments where they ask questions on why a character did something.

I think the feedback I give is decent, sometimes more helpful than others based on the story I read. A story less than 500 words is hard to provide feedback on that isn't just asking for them to make a longer story and elaborate on parts. Longer stories are easier to comment on. I tend to focus my feedback on any part of the story that I have questions about or if a character was flat I ask the writer to broaden their backstory.

I don't feel like the blog comments are as connecting as they could be, I would rather reply directly to a comment than to start a new one on their blog - but the downside is they won't get my response as a notification.  I think that would really help the communication in this class if there were a way to get notified on comment responses to your comment instead of comments on a post.

I actually just changed my comment wall to create more of an interest in my story. As far as my introduction goes, I think it still sums me up well.  So far, I have only received one comment on my story and just based on that and Laura's email there are a lot of ways I can make my story better. If that's just based on two revision comments (well, one comment and an email) then I can't imagine how helpful it will be once I get more comments on my story.

I chose this image from the Feedback Cats because I often feel bad and get a little stressed whenever I see comments that are not negative, but aren't good - like when something I wrote was confusing, or all of the grammar mistakes I make. However, I know to remind myself this is more or less a stress free class that's just about creativity, and also - everyone makes grammar mistakes.