Post your favorite, original 6 word memoirs (as inspired by I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets and Not Quite What I Was Planning).  Don’t forget that you don’t want to post anything you are embarrassed by - your first name and last initial will be visible to everyone who visits the site.  You do not need to respond to anyone else’s post, but you are welcomed to if you’d like.  The due date is 11:59 Sunday night (9/26).

Dear Effective Writing Students,

If you are reading this, you are well on your way to being productive, successful member of the internet version of the class. This site will be used for a variety purposes: homework, notes, out of class assignments. Essentially, you should plan on being a regular visitor to this site.

Click on the link for a copy o f the Choice Strong Writing Rubric

The following links are for the handouts associated with your first major writing assignment: Telling Someone Else’s Story.  Any questions you may have can be asked in school, emailed to me, or posted here on the blog.

Telling Someone Else’s Story Assignment Sheet

Telling Someone Else’s Story Rubric

Nonfiction Writing Initial Information Sheet

Post your favorite, original 6 word memoirs (as inspired by I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets and Not Quite What I Was Planning).  Don’t forget that you don’t want to post anything you are embarrassed by - your first name and last initial will be visible to everyone who visits the site.  You do not need to respond to anyone else’s post, but you are welcomed to if you’d like.  The due date is 11:59 Sunday night (2/21).

Read the paragraph below, an excerpt from an essay Mark Twain wrote about James Fenimore Cooper’s writing style (Fenimore Cooper is the author of The Last of  the Mohicans), and consider the questions that follow.  It is extremely important that you actually try to answer the questions from yourself because if you don’t, you’ll find the writing exercise more difficult.  The passage has a lot to teach you about how to create a tone in your writing (an essential skill in developing your writing voice).   Your submission/post is due by the end of the day (11:59) on Sunday, 11/29.  No need to comment on anyone else’s this time.

“But that is Cooper’s way; frequently he will explain and justify little things that do not need it and then make up for this by as frequently failing to explain important ones that do need it.  For instance he allowed that astute and cautious person, Deerslayer-Hawkeye, to throw his rifle heedlessly down and leave it lying on the ground where some hostile Indians would presently be sure to find it – a rifle prized by that person above all things else in the earth – and the reader gets no word of explanation of that strange act.  There was a reason, but it wouldn’t bear exposure.  Cooper meant to get a fine dramatic effect out of the finding of the rifle by the Indians, and he accomplished this at the happy time; but all the same, Hawkeye could have hidden the rifle in a quarter of a minute where the Indians could not have foudn it.  Cooper couldn’t think of any way to explain why Hawkeye didn’t do that, so he just shirked the difficulty and did not explain at all.”

- Mark Twain, “Cooper’s Prose Style,” Letters from the Earth

1. What is Twain’s tone in this passage?  What is central to the tone of this passage: the attitude toward the speaker, the subject, or the reader?

2. How does Twain create the tone?

Your Task:

Write a paragraph about a book you have recently read or a movie you have recently seen.  Create a critical, disparaging tone through your choice of details.  Use Twain’s paragraph as a model.

Similar to the Diction Exercise from last week, this exercise is very similar to the one we’ve did in classon Monday.  Like last week, you don’t need to post an answer to the questions I’ve included, but I would like you to think about them in connection to the passage before posting your sentence.  Unlike the past couple blog posts, this time I would like you to comment on someone else’s post.  Your comment on a classmate’s post should focus on the effect achieved by his/her choices regading of the sentence, which sentence structure seems to work best and why.

“He slowly ventured into the pond.  The bottom was deep, soft clay, he sank in, and the water clasped dead cold round his legs.”

- D.H. Lawrence, “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter”

What effect does sentence length have on this passage?  Examine the second sentence.  How does the structure of the sentence reinforce the meaning?

Your Task:

Write a sentence in which you make an inanimate object active by using an active verb.  Remember that your verb is not just an action verb (like talk or flow).  The verb must make your inanimate object into an actor, a doer.  Also, write your sentence(s) as compound, complex, and compound-complex to see the difference each structure has on the meaning.

The following exercise is very similar to those we’ve been doing in class.  There is no need to post an answer to the questions I’ve included; however, I would like to think about them before posting your response to the activity.  Again this week… you do not need to respond to a classmate’s post.

“Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool.  His mind broke the surface and fell back several times.”      

 - John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

What is the subject of the verb broke?  What does this tell you about Doc’s ability to control his thinking at this point in the story?

To what does surface refer?  Remember that good writers often strive for complexity rather than simplicity.

Your Task:

List three active verbs that could be used to complete the sentence below.   Consider the verb’s connotation.

He ____________ into the crowded auditorium.

Post your favorite, original 6 word memoirs (as inspired by I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets and Not Quite What I Was Planning).  Don’t forget that you don’t want to post anything you are embarrassed by - your first name and last initial will be visible to everyone who visits the site.  You do not need to respond to anyone else’s post, but you are welcomed to if you’d like.  The due date is 11:59 Sunday night.