Recently, a friend of mine asked for advice on starting a workshop for writers. I quickly went back to my days in the MFA program, where the major part of the program was the weekly fiction workshop. The advice I gave my friend closely adhered to those things learned from the MFA program as I learned a great deal about myself as a writer and as a critic within our fiction workshops. For anyone that's interested in starting a writer's workshop, I hope this information proves useful. In my experience, there are three components that are necessary for a good writing workshop, and they are: 1- A great moderator 2- Appropriate size for the workshop 3- Rules for the workshop MODERATOR. A moderator has to be kind yet firm and have a great knowledge of storytelling. This is the person that the workshop participants are relying on to guide them as writers. It also doesn't hurt that the moderator has some publishing credits. Participants want to feel that they are learning from someo...