As I said in class, I've quickly "clicked through" your precis brainstorming - and I will give each of you some short, written feedback by email by Monday. This weekend is a little hectic - right after class I drove to the airport and am now in Detroit - so I won't have time to sit down with your individual writing until Sunday when I return. Here is some general feedback (pretty much what I said in class) so you I don't keep you in suspense.
Each of you did something a little different, and some of you are still working on how to post materials to the Portfolio. That's OK! If you made a good faith effort to explore the assignment, we are working together, and I will give you some feedback on how you are doing in terms of using the invention/brainstorming process I was suggesting. As I said in class, what I outlined was a fairly standard form for brainstorming. In class, we did something along the lines of your assignment together.
Brainstorming for precis:First we went back and made a random list of things we noticed about the story - not just plot but also the structure (we noticed that the story had two sections and that the stories of the two sections had similar dramtic arcs with a realization at the end); language (we noticed that most of the emphatic language was at the end of each of the two sections, and we noticed that the language portrayed E. as reflective in the first section and as active - and frozen in inaction! - in the second); point of view (actually we didn't say much about this - but now that I think of it = she is more "aware" /in her head = and more in her body/feelings in the second section), and so on.
Then we did some talking about what we might use as a focus - so that we knew what points in the story we would refer to as we summed it up. We did most of this process through a kind of conversation (and me talking out loud). When you are doing your brainstormning process - it is good to talk to a group/a partner - and it is also good to write.
After we had a focus - we kind of bailed on the exercise => but what would have come next is to list the parts of the story you would summarize (so that your point about what the story is about will make sense) and then to do some thinking about organization (make an outline, a list, tree diagram).
Once you have your brainstorming done, that does not mean the content and structure of your paper is locked in stone. What it does is put out a possibility so you can "see" what your paper will look like/ how it will work. That way, you can "revise" (make your organization & content stronger) more easily.
Writing process. We didn't spend much time on the writing process chapter you read for homework. I am hoping it was fairly straightforward for you. I didn't give you much time for questions. If there were parts that were confusing, or that you would like to spend time on, let me know, and I will plan some in-class writing to work on whatever you are interested in as we work through the different genres.
Brainstorming for the Writing about Short Stories assignment
We spent the rest of class working on brainstorming a paper on "Eveline" that would meet the requirement of the Writing about Short Stories assignment where you are supposed to write about "realization" (posted under Assignments on the right). "Eveline" presents an interesting problem for this assignment - because her "realization" is complicated => she seems both to know and not know what she has realized. And there is lots of material in this story to support a wide range of thesis statements abot what the story shows with respect to realization. So have some fun with this.
This assignment is a little more complicated that the precis assignment - since you actually need to both set up what you will say (which is what the precis does) AND develop the argument the precis proposes.
Below are the steps I would suggest.
1) do some writing to dig into the reading ensure you have rich a understanding of the many things that are going on in this story;
2) do some freewriting, listing, talking, clustering, association to find a focus;
3) choose your focus - write it out a couple of times (you don't have to get the language exactly right, but make sure you open up the ideas)
4) identify the points you will make to support your focus (this could be some listing, more freewriting or talking) & go back to the text and pull out the evidence you will use to support your focus
5) check back with the assignment sheet to make sure you cover all you are supposed to do & do some more brainstorming if necessary;
6) map out the order of your points.
As I talked with you in class - you seemed to be coming up with great ideas! As we said, the important thing is to hold back on "deciding" what you will write about until you have done some extensive digging around in the story. That way you will come up with an idea that you are really excited about writing about.
Good class today!
For next week:
Write: Finish the brainstorming for a paper on "Eveline".
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