I EDIT @ Iska Café: Editing Texts and Feedback from Fellow Writers

You’ve written your text. You’ve bled into the page and poured your heart into the words. The prose is wonderful, the drama is real, the verses are an emotional gut punch. Now what?

Welcome to I EDIT, a peer-review space where writers trade drafts, polish rough edges, and gently perform open-heart surgery on each other’s manuscripts.

How it works:
We will match texts and editors either in a direct swap (you edit your partner's text, they edit yours) or in a circular style in small groups. Either way, you will read one text and get feedback on your text from one editor!
You will not have to read out loud, and you will not get group feedback from everyone.

• 10:30 – 10:50: arrival, socializing and starting to match-up texts to editors
  Please ensure that you arrive shortly before 11, as it will be difficult to fit any late-comers into the editing pairs/groups. Thank you!
• 10:50 – 11:00: final match-up of texts, explanation of rules
• 11:00 – 11:45: silent reading, commenting and editing the swapped texts
• 11:45 – 12:30: mutual feedback, Q&A, and discussion between writer and editor
• 12:30 – 13:00: silent writing to implement the feedback into your text

(The last two blocks might change or flow into each other a bit, depending on the group.)

What to bring:
Please bring a text you need feedback on

• a non-academic text in English or German
• in a sharable form for your editor to read and annotate: printed out, or be ready to hand over your laptop/device
• with 1.000 to maximum 2.000 words in length
  You can bring multiple very short texts if they do not exceed this limit together. If you want feedback on a stand-alone scene from a larger work, a short context summary at the beginning makes sense.
• think ahead on any specific questions / topics you want feedback on: emotional impact, characterization, pacing, tone, does the beginning hook you?, etc.
• please check if your text needs content warnings, which we will consider when finding an editor.
  A content warning might sound like: “brief mention / description of explicit violence / sexual themes / self-harm / etc.”

Please bring a positive and respectful attitude:

• be prepared to give detailed and constructive feedback to a fellow writer on a text in English or German – and to receive the same
• everyone edits and everyone gets edited: this is not purely a writing event
• focus on substance over surface: leave typos and basic grammar to spell-checkers; use this chance to find out how your writing actually impacts a reader
• some rules and examples on what good feedback sounds like will be provided, please follow them