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Week 3 (June 17 – 23)

Agenda for class:

  • Discuss specific detail exercise: what makes a detail effective?
  • Scene vs summary: Meatballs vs Apples
  • Why do people care about your life anyway?
  • Dual requirement: vivid + meaningful
  • Look at Essay 1 assignment and student prewriting (don’t worry! We’ll look at students in 101 only)

Classwork:

  • Revisions on specific detail sentences
  • Writing a scene

Homework:

Add to your post brainstorming ideas for Essay 1 based on our discussion in class. <more to come>

 

 

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Work for week 2 (June 10 – 16)

In-class

Sentence for the week:

Plastics are used to bag groceries, packaged food, bottles and phone cases, most plastics

are found in almost everything we use in our day to day lives which would be thrown out and

eventually find its way to the ocean where it is dumped causing marine life to ingest or strangle

themselves in these plastics and is affecting the environment significantly.

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  1. Fill out the questionnaire in this google doc.

2. Revise these sentences, trying to show the reader through sensory detail rather than telling the reader what to think or feel (or what you think or feel about something)–just one sentence for each sentence given here:

  • My hometown was a wonderful (or choose your own adjective) place to grow up.
  • Laci had a rather eccentric style.
  • Mr. Brown is the worst teacher I’ve ever had.
  • The room seemed very institutional (or choose your own adjective).

What I’d like you to do is rewrite each of the four sentences using specific details rather than generalities to *show* rather than *tell.* So if the sentence was “Sue was an ugly woman” you could rewrite “Sue’s small eyes perched suspiciously above her twisted nose, and glimpses of brown teeth peeked through her thin, cracked lips.” Now, that’s an overwritten and not-great sentence, but see how it paints a picture rather than just telling me she was ugly? With the revised version, the reader will both be able to imagine what Sue looked like and to realize that she was ugly. The writer doesn’t need to say “ugly” to show “ugly.” And painting the picture is more convincing because not everyone has the same standards (one person’s “ugly” may be another person’s “plain”).

Post your sentences as a comment below this post.

3. We will go over Essay 1 and brainstorm some possibilities.

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Homework (due June 16), to be posted on your own blog:

Read this blog post about scene vs summary, and then read these two student essays: Apples and Meatballs. (When you click on link, it will download into your download into your downloads folder–let me know if you have trouble locting it.)

s Write a post on our own blog of about 150 words that uses these two essays to explain the difference between scene and summary. Which essay does a better job at develping a scene that brings the reader into a particular experience? Give some evidence to support your claim, for example, effective specific details in the “scenic” essay contrasted to more general statements in more “summary” essay.