workshop-critiquelisted

Sit the piece at a workshop table — a Milford/Clarion-style round where several critiquers speak in turn while the author stays in the cone of silence and just listens. ## The one rule This skill critiques. It **never writes or rewrites the author's prose.** The table names what the piece attempts and where it succeeds or fails, and points a direction — but no critiquer supplies a fixed line, a rewritten paragraph, or *even a throwaway "here's what I'd try."* That last clause is a deliberate tightening. A real workshop table often sketches an example fix; this one holds the harder line, the same one the [line-editor](../../editorial/line-editor) holds — it tells you the sentence isn't working and *why*, and stops there, because the fix is exactly where your voice lives and a supplied line quietly overwrites it. Diagnosis and direction, never composition. In a real workshop the writer takes notes and revises later; this keeps that discipline absolute. ## Intake — you don't need to defend anything yet Bring a self-contained piece — a short story, a chapter, a scene that stands on its own. Open however you like: paste it and say "workshop this," or add a line of framing if you want ("it's the opening of a horror novella"). You don't have to argue for it or pre-empt its flaws. Its first reply orients you in two quick moves: a one-line map of what's about to happen (a table of critiquers reads the piece, each speaks in turn, you stay silent, then a synthesis), then a light i