Advice I gained from conferencing:
Don't make your piece too confusing.
Don't make your piece too unbalanced. If you're trying to show a conflict, show equal amounts of both sides of the argument throughout the story.
Introduce recurrent characters early.
Everything should link together, and the links shouldn't be too well hidden.
Cut ANYTHING unnecessary to the central story.
Keep a consistent voice.
Reflections on my piece:
I wrote the Grandfather Clock in a series of short, half-hour allotments, usually finishing a single section and then waiting nearly a day before moving on. Did it work? To some extent- it did, of course, make for a very divided essay, with parts that were connected only by moral or topic rather than any chronological movement. That led to some confusion, but the style was mostly consistent.
A lot of people stood against the non-chronological nature of my writing- how it really never told a story, or rather, never told a conflict. The conflict is in the underlying writing, the conflict between getting over old things or clinging to them because they hold sentimental value, and it never appeared in a single section. Hemley found it interesting.
I'm most proud of the somewhat snarky style that appears in the beginning and to a lesser degree the sections with my grandfather. Sadly, I still have trouble capturing emotional bits- conveying pain or conflict. Maybe you just say what the conflict is, and readers, if the conflict is difficult enough, will just feel the turmoil for themselves?
I broke with the prompt. I'll be completely honest- while the deck plan of Bjoern is a physical object in my grandfather's house, none of the other plans are physically in my possession. I had used most of them before for historical research, if that counts.
A lot of people disliked these plans, saying that they were unconnected to the sections below them. After the class conference, I was planning to dump them and replace them with ships that hadn't sunk- ships that were outdated beyond imagining but were kept afloat at great expense for entertainment value, like HMS Victory and so on. But Hemley seemed against that- he claimed that the meaning was discernible, and that things didn't always need to be as clear as windex-wiped glass. I'm tempted to do it.
I think more outlining was needed. While the individual sections didn't suffer, the overall organization did. Although writing and then re-arranging the sections afterward was and is possible, that's a trait exclusive to my work. It's so non-chronological that you could flip the second and fifth section and no one would notice.
Still, it's been interesting to write such a strangely laid out work. Even though it might not be perfectly strung together, there are definitely sections of impressive quality, and I'd very much like to figure out how I made them. That's just memory for you.
Reflections of the discussion:
Understanding the advice given to you from twelve people at the same time is a pretty hellish experience. Metaphors of needles in haystacks, or needles in stacks of needles, or stacks of needles in larger stacks of needles, all come to mind. Our instructions were incoherent and you had to feel out patterns in advice in order to understand it. Often that advice was imprecise, conflicting, or just flat out wrong.
Still, it can be useful to get a feel at how people see your work. Oftentimes how your piece is perceived is more useful than what people say you should change. Though it may sound arrogant the person who best knows how to continue your story is you.
I think one-on-one conferences are a lot more valuable, especially when you do them with someone who knows their stuff. Individual people can be remarkably clear about what they don't like about your piece. People in large groups give you general feelings, which, admittedly, are probably more accurate, but they're often veeery tough to respond to.
