The Shape of Your Story

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Shape of StoriesKurt Vonnegut’s explanation of the “shape of stories” is incredibly accurate: “man falls down a hole,” “boy meets girl,” and “girl loses mother.” Those “shapes” appear in every genre, in every time period. Yet writers find a way to make the stories seem new.

Your task for this week is to decide on the shape of your story. Although you don’t need to give anything away in your journal entry, explain why you chose the shape that you did. What type of story are you writing, or are planning to write? How might you make it seem new? Make sure to rewatch the Vonnegut video first.

Project Pitches

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This week you will not be writing a blog post. Instead, work together to pitch your project. I suggest using Google Docs to work together. You need to define the purpose of the campaign, the
audience you’re attempting to reach, and the media you’ll be using, as well as each group
member’s role.

Characters

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Characters, as we’ve discussed in class, can be round or flat, major or minor. Each play an important role in building your story. How a writer reveals characters–characterization–is crucial. Characterization done well, avoids telling the reader about who the characters are. Instead, it shows them through actions, dialogue, and narration.

For this week’s journal entry, choose one character from your favorite short story, novel, film, or television show and answer the following questions to the best of your knowledge from the text. Not all questions will apply to all characters. Then, write a brief (2-3 paragraphs) analysis of how the author reveals that character.

Character name:

Age:

Occupation:

Family members and/or significant others:

Personality traits:

Character history (where is he/she from?):

Highest level of education:

Physical traits:

Biggest motivator:

Biggest fear:

Things he/she likes:

Things he/she dislikes:

Behind the Brand(ing)

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As we saw, arguments in new media are both liberating and challenging. Finding the right combination of modes is tricky. How do you know which image(s) to choose? Where should the words go? If you build a website, you have control over layout. If you write a blog, you can choose a theme. But what do you do when you can’t change the layout? How do you make an argument, then?

For your post this week, choose an Instagram account of a company. How do they make their argument? What do they do to entice followers (or just someone checking out their account) to buy their products or use their services? You can choose any company you want, just use a critical eye.

Give Us Your Notes

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As you saw this week, a lot goes in to a rhetorical analysis of new media. You have to look at the rhetorical situation–including the five parts of delivery–and the modes of communication. You don’t, however, need to address everything in a short paper. Instead, choose a few things that really stand out to you. If we analyzed the Chapman website, for example, we might talk about how the audience and purpose inform linguistic, visual, and spatial modes. The audience, in this case, is really prospective students and their parents. The purpose is to get them to become current students. We’ve already discussed how each of the modes argues that Chapman is a great school with lots of possibilities: “Anything Imaginable.”

For your post this week, write about a summary about each part of the rhetorical situation and each mode of communication. It can be similar to what I wrote above. Then, write a paragraph or so about which parts of the rhetorical situation and which modes of communication you think are important in your point of view.

Don’t forget to jump into the Slack channel to discuss two classmates’ posts.

(Not So) Free Verse

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Free verse is a popular poetic form especially, it seems, for students. It may be because “form” seems dated. Form suggests Shakespeare’s sonnets or Keats’ odes. But free verse is a form. In fact, it’s a form that’s over a century old.

Perhaps the reason that students prefer free verse is because it seems less intimidating than having to count syllables or worry about rhyme. Free verse, though, is not the same as “anything goes.” T.S. Eliot famously declared, “no verse is free for the man [or woman] who wants to do a good job.” William Carlos Williams similarly stated, “being an art form, verse cannot be free in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principles.” So what do we mean, then, by free verse?

Free verse means that there are no set rules to follow. It doesn’t have follow a particular rhyme scheme or syllable count. Rather, the poet and the poem establish the “rules.” The poet must figure out what form works for a particular poem. Line length, stanza count, and punctuation all help decide the musicality of a poem. If we don’t think about these things, we aren’t writing poetry. We’re writing lineated prose.

Most students choose free verse for their workshop poems. Discuss you “guiding principles” for your first poem. Were there any? Was it “anything goes”? How might you revise knowing now that free verse is not entirely free? If you wrote a formal poem, what did you notice about others’ free verse poems? How might you write one of your own?

I Survived My First Workshop

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…and all I got was this discussion question!

balloons

Congratulations on making it through your first workshop. Sharing your writing with other writers is daunting. At their best, though, workshops are an incredibly rewarding experience. I’m proud of all of you for embracing the challenge.

For some of you, this was also your first poem. You’ve discovered what the seasoned poets already know–writing poetry is difficult. So, for this week’s journal, I’d like you all to reflect on how you did it. What was your writing process? What surprised you? How did you know when it was “finished”? What did you learn from your workshop experience that you can use to write your next poem?

Literacy Narrative Reflection

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Write a brief reflection on you writing experience for the narrative. Did you think about the different rhetorical elements we discussed in class? If so, which ones. If not, how did you approach writing your narrative? How did you incorporate the elements of narrative? What is your clear point? What are your best descriptive details? How did you make sure that your reader can picture the setting? Did you maintain a consistent point of view? How did you know?

Lastly, what part of your narrative do you think you’d continue to work on, if you had more time, and what part of your narrative are you most proud of?

On Form

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Although formal poetry was overshadowed by free verse for most of the 20th century, there’s been a revival of form in the last few decades. Formal poetry can be challenging for any poet. You’re given a set of rules, instead of creating them yourself. New formalists don’t always adhere to the strict rules of the past, though. A sonnet, for example, may not look exactly Shakespearean or Petrarchan. Still, it will have elements that make it a sonnet.

We’ve read and discussed a variety of forms. For your journal this week, please go to The Academy of American Poets website. Click on “forms” in the “poem index” menu. Choose one form, click on the “read more” button to learn about the form. Then, choose one example of a poem in that form to read.

poets.org form

poets.org screenshot

When you’re finished, write a journal entry that discusses which forms most interest you? Do you like reading formal poetry or do you prefer free verse? Did researching a form make you see formal poetry differently? How? Why? What form might you try writing this semester? Feel free to expand on these questions!

Feel free to choose any form. I’d recommend choosing either one you’re not familiar with or one of the forms from either Wednesday’s or today’s class reading.

Tell Me a Story

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Narratives are an important genre in writing because they help us understand our experiences. They tell a story. Therefore, it’s important for you to be able to write a well-crafted narrative. In Everyone’s an Author, Andrea Lunsford et al. provide some elements to include when drafting a narrative: a clearly defined event; a clearly described setting; vivid, descriptive details; a consistent point-of-view; and a clear point.

For this week’s post, rewatch Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk. Discuss how she includes these elements in her narrative. Then, look over your draft and peer review notes. Does your narrative include them? How can you use them to make your experience come to life on the page?