I’ve attended several workshops where the first page or pages of attendees’ work was read out loud by an editor or agent. Sometimes the editor or agent evaluates the work, other times we’ve focused on the reactions of the other attendees. Every method has been a teaching moment–for me.
I attended my first workshop like this years ago with ten other writers. The agent read the first few pages (as few as three and as many as fifteen) of each person’s work out loud.
As the agent read my manuscript out loud, I “got” to watch the reactions of the others in the room. Lucky me. I was able to see the exact point where they lost interest. Painful, but a good experience.
More recently I attended Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workshop. Maass read each person’s first line out loud, and the attendees raised their hands if they wanted to hear more. If there were a fair number of hands up, he read another. At the end of some first lines, there were no hands in the air. Again, painful for some, but a great learning tool. (By the way, Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook is great. Many of the exercises we did at the workshop are in the book.)
Then I saw this blog post on the Guide to Literary Agents and it reminded me of my experiences. As I read the blog entry, I felt for those whose work was quickly rejected, but I know they learned a lot from the experience–if they could get past the mortification.
I hope they did. There’s nothing like public humiliation to help you learn something.

