Tuesdays/Thursdays
(The) Writer's Mind: Daily Schedule for Unit 1,
The Complaint Narrative (weeks 1-4)
Week 1
Tuesday, Jan 19
Read the syllabus, including the course purpose and policies, the daily schedule. Familiarize yourself with all the links on the course website, including the assignments, activities, and resources. Take note of The Writer's Notebook and Provocations. In class you will begin to write something I call an Inventory of Concerns, which some of you may finish. If not, you will need to finish it after class. |
Except when noted otherwise, when readings are listed for a given day (in bold), that means to show up at class having printed, read, and notated them. Access to most electronic texts will be through Dropbox.
You will need to provide summaries of and thoughtful responses to required academic readings in the Writer's Notebook. Be ready to discuss and even write about these readings in class. |
Thursday Jan 21
Bring a copy of your Inventory of Concerns to share with others in the class.
Print, read, and notate: "Iron Hans." We will learn some basics of narrative from this fairy tale.
Read Tell It Slant, Chapter 1.
Recommended: Read Schopenhauer's "On Education."
Begin writing the Complaint Narrative, which is a variation of exercise 2 from the exercises at the end of chapter 1 from Tell It Slant.
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Notebook Exercise: write out a scene of an an encounter with a non-living object.
Do the same for an encounter with a plant, and then an animal (non-human). Reflect on the network of relationships that constitute the object, plant, and animal. What roles do they play beyond themselves? Notebook exercise (to begin to do in class): write out a list of persistent complaints concerning writing and everyday social life. Distinguish and write out the particular benefits and drawbacks of at least three distinct persistent complaints.
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Week 2
Tuesday, Jan 26
I will expect you to have printed, read, and notated McKee's "Structure and Meaning" from the book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Harper Collins, 1997. 110-131.
Be ready to discuss notes of the event you will be narrating for the complaint narrative.
Share your first draft of this assignment with your group and me by Wednesday afternoon to be workshopped in class on Thursday.
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Thursday, Jan 28
Workshop first draft of the Complaint Narrative.
Read Tell It Slant, Chapter 2. Use the distinctions concerning creative nonfiction to talk about what works and does not work in your writing.
For instance, setting, writing in-scene versus exposition, character description, dialogue, etc. This is in addition to the distinctions McKee has provided us (i.e., the structured conflict (written in-scene) between controlling and counter ideas that triggers a sequence of aesthetic emotions in the audience). Read through the provocations activity. I will assign the first round of provocations today. Those assigned to provoke the class will post their provocations on the Aletheia-1 Blog by the following Tuesday.
Introduction to the additive and subordinating styles.
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Notebook exercise: during the workshop of your first draft of your complaint narrative, you were to assist each other in seeing how the characters structure the narrative by enacting opposing values struggling for dominance. What are the values at play? Write them out as a controlling idea versus a counter idea. To what degree is the narrative didactic? How will revising the narrative from first person to third person allow for a more dialectic struggle to emerge?
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Week 3
Tuesday, Feb 2
Print, read, and notate Gallop's "The Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters."
To prepare for workshopping the second draft: read Williams' Lessons 1, 3, and 4. Use your notebook work to reflect on the insights Williams provides concerning your specific writing practices.
To help amplify this set of distinctions for reading and talking about our writing, read my lecture notes about controlling value. You need not print these notes. We will be working with this method throughout the entire semester.
Share your second full draft of the Complaint Narrative with your group no later than Wednesday afternoon. Follow the requirements for workshopping.
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Notebook exercise: What does it mean to be ethical? Narrate an early event in your life, as far back as you can remember, when you discovered what it means to be ethical regarding other people: that is, write about a time when you discovered that you actually harmed someone--intentionally or unintentionally.
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Thursday, Feb 4
Workshop second full draft of the Complaint Narrative.
Assign second round of provocations to be submitted by the next Tuesday's class.
Prepare to write the third draft of the Complaint Narrative, which you will share with your group no later than Sunday afternoon. Introduce the "figural" register through Copy and Compose:
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Notebook work for weeks 3 and 4 includes reflecting and writing responses to the following questions (use the three drafts of the Complaint Narrative to discuss the following):
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Week 4
Thursday, Feb 11
Assign third round of provocations to be posted by Tuesday. Begin creating plans for the observation assignment. You may refer to Tell It Slant, Chapter 11 as a resource for approaching how to carry out and then write this assignment. Plan to send out your "bare-bones" draft (at least 3 pages) to your group and me no later than Monday afternoon to workshop on Tuesday. Follow the requirements for workshopping, and use the topics for workshopping narrative to provide written commentary for each workshop member.
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Write out at least two different plans for your observation so that if one fails, you can carry out the other. Share this as a reply to a blog post.
Also, use your notebook to takes notes during and/or after the observation. |