Today we held had two different workshop classes. The first was Diana Norma Szokolyai’s workshop “What’s at Stake?” This workshop asked the writers to look at what is at stake in a piece of writing. This involves asking what a character wants, what they’re willing to do to get what they want, and what challenges they face. Doing this allows the writer to show the reader the central driving force of the piece. After that, we held our second writing workshop of the retreat. Following the Liz Lerman method from our last writing workshop, the participants critiqued a few new pieces of writing. The pieces critiqued showed a variety of writing styles, from poems about chickens to stories about people living in New York City. That evening, the participants gathered for a screening of David Shields’ movie I Think You’re Totally Wrong, an adaptation of a book he wrote with Caleb Powell. Directed by former student James Franco, the film starts as an adaptation of the novel before spinning off into its own unique form. The film was followed by a Q&A with Shields, where the participants were able to ask him questions about the film, from questions about his performance in the film to asking about the production.