Essay 1: A Remembered Event: Planning/Invention
Assignment: Write an essay about an important or significant event in your life by focusing on one memorable day. Your purpose is to recall and then use specific examples that recreate this memory and show why it is so important to you. Avoid generalizations and conclusions about the event. Do not summarize. Avoid “telling” the reader what happened. Your purpose is to “show” them the events of that day. What you don’t want to do, for example, is something like this: “I had a lot of fun—the event changed my life.” Be sure to focus on some main idea, point, or discovery. What did you learn about yourself that day? About life? About other people (human nature)? Your place in the world? A remembering essay should clearly answer the question “So what?” or “What’s the Point?” This assignment is designed for you to remember experiences so that you can understand yourself and your world. The point is not to write fiction, but to practice drawing on your memories and to write vividly enough about them so that you and others can discover and learn.
Using narration (storytelling) and description as you primary patterns of development, write an essay of 800 4 FULL pages up to 6 FULL pages, double-spaced defining one of the following words or phrases: wisdom, freedom, loss, misery, loneliness, desperation, greed, lust, prejudice, the high price of success or failure, the blues (musical or otherwise), or saying goodbye. Make use of figurative language and expressions. Define this term through the use of vivid word pictures using similes, metaphors, and analogies in relating your story.
Complete ALL of the following:
a.
Brainstorming (5 minutes). With one of the above words or phrases in mind (wisdom, freedom, loss, misery, loneliness, desperation, greed, lust, prejudice, the high price of success or failure, the blues, or saying goodbye), brainstorm (quickly list) all memories, thoughts, and ideas that come to mind that are remotely connected to your subject: words, phrases, images, or complete thoughts. You are merely making a "grocery list" here. Do not use complete sentences.
Brainstorming (5 minutes). With one of the above words or phrases in mind (wisdom, freedom, loss, misery, loneliness, desperation, greed, lust, prejudice, the high price of success or failure, the blues, or saying goodbye), brainstorm (quickly list) all memories, thoughts, and ideas that come to mind that are remotely connected to your subject: words, phrases, images, or complete thoughts. You are merely making a "grocery list" here. Do not use complete sentences. b.Clustering (5 minutes). Visually analyze your subject. This is a visual scheme for brainstorming about your subject that should aid you in seeing relationships among your topics and subtopics, and give you a rough idea about an order or shape you may wish to favor for your essay. Begin with one topic you wish to explore further from your brainstorming list. Write it in the center of a piece of paper. By free association, create a “spider web” by listing and linking all ideas that come to mind by connecting each idea to the next by drawing lines between them.
Clustering (5 minutes). Visually analyze your subject. This is a visual scheme for brainstorming about your subject that should aid you in seeing relationships among your topics and subtopics, and give you a rough idea about an order or shape you may wish to favor for your essay. Begin with one topic you wish to explore further from your brainstorming list. Write it in the center of a piece of paper. By free association, create a “spider web” by listing and linking all ideas that come to mind by connecting each idea to the next by drawing lines between them.c.Looping (24 minutes). Looping is a method of controlled freewriting that generates ideas and provides focus and direction. Begin with a subject you wish to explore further from your clustering exercise. Freewrite about your subject for eight minutes. Then, pause, reread what you have written so far, and underline the most interesting or important idea in what you’ve written so far. Then, using that sentence or idea as a starting point, write for 8 minutes more. Repeat this cycle, or “loop,” one more time. Each loop should add ideas and details from some new angle or viewpoint, but overall you will be focusing on the most important ideas that you discover.
Looping (24 minutes). Looping is a method of controlled freewriting that generates ideas and provides focus and direction. Begin with a subject you wish to explore further from your clustering exercise. Freewrite about your subject for eight minutes. Then, pause, reread what you have written so far, and underline the most interesting or important idea in what you’ve written so far. Then, using that sentence or idea as a starting point, write for 8 minutes more. Repeat this cycle, or “loop,” one more time. Each loop should add ideas and details from some new angle or viewpoint, but overall you will be focusing on the most important ideas that you discover.