In hopes of discovering how to respond to her students' work in a way that heads them toward meaningful revision, a creative writing teacher singles out several categories of student fiction she has trouble responding to and pinpoints common shortcomings of students' early drafts, the way students respond to comments regarding revisions, and genre writers' defensiveness. Teachers' comments and suggestions should be respectful to students, yet useful. For instance, students often become hung up in sentimentality and lack of characterization or detail and become defensive when asked to revise a story that "really did happen that way." Successful comments might encourage further "fleshing out" of some particular moments in the story. The choice of an unreliable main character, a flat predictable sentence style, passive voice, and lack of insight are problems often occurring in "way altered state stories" (involving substance abuse or insanity). Genre writers' early drafts sometimes have a lack of characterization and unrealistic settings or plots. When preachiness and predictable outcomes mar first drafts in "Brady Bunch" style fables, suggestions for revisions should focus on making stories open to various interpretations, without having a clear moral or point. (CR)