Workshop worked!

I've never felt more comfortable in a workshop setting ever in my career as a student! I loved the small groups because I felt safe and less intimidated. My group was very helpful in every aspect of the workshop: they provided plenty of constructive criticism and also added compliments to keep my spirits up. It was so cool how we all talked about each other's stories and characters as if they were completely real and had occured. We took everything so seriously but still managed to have fun and get the job done.
Getting inside people's heads through reading their work is a great way to get to know one another as well. Viewing a character in a story can give insight into the writer's mind. Also, while watching the characters handle certain situations, I got a sense of the type of person the writer was. While this is a fiction class, many of us couldn't help but put a little bit of ourselves in our characters. After all, we are drawing from real life experiences to make our writing as real as we possibly can!
I feel like getting to know one another as people and as writers will not only bring the class closer together but also make us more comfortable as we continue to workshop. The more comfortable the setting, the more likely we are to be honest with each other and bring out the best in each other's work.