For instance, when writing about something you've read, support your ideas with specific references to the text. If you write that To Kill a Mockingbird is exciting, explain what you mean by "exciting" and give examples of what "excited" you.

If a reader feels uncertain about your meaning or your control of direction and speed, then he or she will feel kidnapped. Is that the feeling you want to instill in the reader? If not, take control!

What kind of driver will you be?

Should you need access to a good dictionary, try The American Heritage Dictionary, Webster's, or Oxford Dictionary (select the U.S. view). No other online dictionary is recommended.

• news stories are written about current events that matter
• the intended audience is local (for the Webb community, that means students, teachers, staff, parents, alums, Bell Buckle residents)
• paragraphs have one or two sentences
• the vocabulary is basic
• sentence structure is simple
• direct quotations are used
• the word "said" is used to ascribe the quotations to the people who said them
• online news article paragraphs are not indented, but print news articles are
• a person's full name is given the first time it's mentioned; then the last name only is used

News stories are always factual and objective. The reporter or writer does not include his or her impressions, opinions, or judgments. The reporter/writer, in other words, takes no stance toward the facts presented objectively. A news article does not advertise or editorialize. It simply reports.

Next, you need to conduct interviews to gather information and quotations that will help tell your story. Make an appointment with the person you want to interview, or interview him or her by email. Read up on your topic, if you can. Learn about  the people you're interviewing. For instance, don't waste someone's time by asking about matters not in his or her control or area of expertise or authority. Write out your questions in advance so you use your time well. When interviewing an individual, be prepared to follow up their comments with questions you might not have anticipated. Take notes during the interview, using abbreviations of your own to save time. Take down direct quotations whenever you can. You'll need them to make your article lively. If the person you interview says something especially memorable, that's a quotation you just might want to use. Make your questions specific. Don't ask, "How's admission this year?" Instead, ask, "I understand admissions has recruited more day boarders. How many were recruited and how?" As soon as you finish your interview, write up your notes.

Once you have the information you need, draft your news story quickly, remembering that the most important information comes first in an article. Rachel Bard's Newswriting Guide: A Handbook for Student Reporters, a terrific resource in the classroom, says that "The lead -- that is, the first dozen or so words -- carries 90 percent of the burden of the whole story. Since your first purpose is to get the reader interested and involved, you must tell at once what is most important, most newsworthy, most unusual. The lesser facts can follow." Indeed, many people read only the first couple of paragraphs of a news story before moving on to another one. Your lead needs to include the 5 W's (who, what, when, where, why) and the one H (how). You may not get all those in one paragraph, but you surely can include them in the first two.

Bard offers this advice:

"Lead 1
"'Yesterday the presidential selection committee met at the McCormick Conference Center, screened the 50 applicants for the position of college president to five finalists and announced that the final selection would be made within two weeks.' (An attempt to crowd all the facts in, without placing most important ones first.)

"Lead 2
"'The new president of Basin College will be named within two weeks, the presidential selection committee announced yesterday.' (Who is most important; put it first.)

"In deciding which fact to put first, remember that names make news, and readers want to know 'what happened.'

"Usually, therefore the who or the what will come first. Once in a while the when or where will be more important, and less frequently, the how or why" (21-22).

When his or her composition is workshoppped, the writer should focus on his/her composition. Look down; listen hard; make notes on the text. And remember: you aren't allowed to speak!

Readers must remember to speak to each other, not the writer. Discuss what works and doesn't work by focusing on the big things (content and organization, for instance). G(grammar)U(usage)M(echanics) issues are the writer's responsibility during editing and proofreading.

For helpful advice about revision, use your Writers Inc, a terrific resource. See especially "A Guide to Revising" on pages 53 through 72.

Due dates for letter-essays and vocabulary assignments indicate the last days on which these works may be submitted for credit. However, there is nothing to prevent the strategic, organized student from sending a letter-essay well in advance of the due date or from composing vocabulary entries well in advance of the due date. 

Similarly, since you've got a course calendar with room for your notes, use it. Plan ahead for your portfolio. Commit to completing work by your own determined deadlines to ensure that you present your best work on the portfolio due date. 

A professional attitude = a plan, commitment, and follow-through.

As the old saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." We're leading. We want you to drink.

Writers look forward to and plan their writing. Since you know you will write three lines at the beginning of every studio, plan what you might want to explore in words. Be on the lookout for topics. Think about topics. Plan your words. Create energy for the writing by thinking about the writing and by drafting the writing in your heart and head before class.

Where do ideas for three-line entries arise?

• fabulous realities (amazing things seen every day by an observer of living)
• frozen memories (those moments in time we remember like photographs)
• overheard conversations
• responses to reading
• TV/magazines/newspapers/radio and other media
• family members
• pets
• hobbies
• sports
• playing "I Spy" with the self
• something learned in the previous 24 hours
• comparisons and metaphors (for instance, my mind is like an espresso machine . . . )
• weather
• favorite place
• a piece of music
• a musical lyric
• something learned in a class

What characterizes an effective three-line entry?

• a single, focused topic (the smaller the better)
• images (the use of language to recreate an experience that appeals to one of the senses)
• concrete nouns that name things of the world
• active verbs
• dialogue

          Mosley Letter 4 to Walker
          or
          LE4 Mosley to walker

          Walker Reply to Mosley Letter 4
          or
          LE4 Mosley to Walker with Response

Make sense?

Plagiarism occurs when a writer uses another's ideas as if they were the writer's own. Sometimes, this means that the writer has copied word-for-word from a book on Internet source without quotation marks and without attribution (indication as to whose words these originally were). Sometimes, this means that a writer has paraphrased another text with attribution. Sometimes, this means a writer has used an image without attribution. Sometimes, this means a writer has used an original idea without attribution. Sometimes, this means a writer has used a single unusual word or concept without attribution. Sometimes, this means a writer has imitated the structure read in someone else's work without attribution.

Any use of another's idea, in other words, without attribution (proper credit) is plagiarism. Writers INC has useful information about plagiarism on pages 275 through 277.

At Webb, plagiarism violates all three aspects of the Honor code. It constitutes cheating (the student hasn't produced the work but has taken it from someone else); it constitutes lying (by submitting a composition, the student is leading people to believe that it's his or hers while knowing that it isn't); and it constitutes stealing (the student has taken something that isn't his or hers and done so without permission). Professional writers have lost their jobs and their careers by committing plagiarism. Students has been expelled from schools and colleges because of plagiarism. Please, don't do it! Remember that in this class, we're interested in your words and your ideas!

Click the link on the menu at left to "Writing as Process" (or this link) to a page with lots of helpful information, including another link to an explanation of Dr. Hood's writing process for one composition called "Fields of Vision."

As noted above, Writers INC has a wealth of useful information. Check out these chapters: "A Guide to Revising" (59-72), "Writing with Style" (111-120), "Writing Sentences" (85-98), and "Writing a Book Review" (239-244).

Each of these cartoons illustrates this common problem.

What's wrong with this picture?

How about this one?

It's doubtful that Gary Paulsen would be so well respected if he had written this:

This book would like to bring a farm’s smells to life, but books don’t have smells.

This book would like to bring the sounds of the farm to life, but books don’t have sounds.

This book would like to bring the light seen on a farm to life, but books don’t have light.

Books need readers to smell, hear, and see light.

Happily, he wrote this instead:

TUNING
(the foreword to The Winter Room by Gary Paulsen)

If books could be more, could show more, could own more, this book would have smells. . . .

It would have the smells of old farms; the sweet smell of new-mown hay as it falls off the oiled sickle blade when the horses pull the mower through the field, and the sour smell of manure steaming in a winter barn. It would have the sticky-slick smell of birth when the calves come and they suck for the first time on the rich, new milk; the dusty smell of winter hay dried and stored in the loft waiting to be dropped down to the cattle; the pungent fermented smell of the chopped corn silage when it is brought into the manger on the silage fork. This book would have the smell of new potatoes sliced and frying in light pepper on a woodstove burning dry pine, the damp smell of leather mittens steaming on the back of the stovetop, and the acrid smell of the slop bucket by the door when the lid is lifted and the potato peelings are dumped in -- but it can't.

Books can't have smells.

If books could be more and own more and give more, this book would have sound. . . .

It would have the high, keening sound of the six-foot bucksaws as the men pull them back and forth through the trees to cut pine for paper pulp; the grunting-gassy sounds of the work teams snorting and slapping as they hit the harness to jerk the stumps out of the ground. It would have the chewing sounds of cows in the barn working at their cuds on a long winter's night; the solid thunking sound of the ax coming down to split stovewood, and the piercing scream of the pigs when the knife cuts their throats and they know death is at hand -- but it can't.

Books can't have sound.

And finally if books could be more, give more, show more, this book would have light. . . .

Oh, it would have the soft gold light -- gold with bits of hay dust floating in it -- that slips through the crack in the barn wall; the light of the Coleman lantern hissing flat-white in the kitchen; the silver-gray light of a middle winter moon on snow, the new light of dawn at the eastern edge of the pasture behind the cows coming in to be milked on a summer morning -- but it can't.

Books can't have light.

If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers, who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can't be in books.

The book needs you.

Details are the lifeblood of writing. Use them! Before class tomorrow, please read the Writers INC section about details on pages 103 through 109.

The Mountain and the Sea (23 Oct.)
Writer and teacher Barry Lane, in his book After the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision, describes the process of writing through a vivid metaphor. He has written, "All writing begins in the sea of experience, with what we know. Our memories swim with disconnected but vivid sights and sounds and smells. When we write, we begin to climb the mountain and see the patterns beneath the water; we begin to make sense of our lives and revise what we write. But to make these abstract thoughts come to life, we need to return to the sea to gather all the details. As writers, we continually move back and forth between the sea and the mountain" (41).

The danger for the writer is that he or she might get stuck at the top of mountain or at the bottom of the sea. As Lane explains, "A writer bogged down in the sea fills pages with meaningless detail" (42), with the result that a reader is left to wonder yes . . . well . . . and . . . so . . . ? "[C]limbing the mountain is not without its own hazards. You could get stuck up there in the clouds of general and Godlike truth, writing thoughts" without details (43), an equally frustrating experience for the reader. Good writers move back and forth between the mountain and sea.

The Mountain of Perception is characterized by abstractions and ideas, whereas the Sea of Experience is characterized by sensory images and things.

Fiction and memoir reside mostly in the sea of experience. Through specific characters (or persons), settings, actions (arranged in a structure called "plot"), conflicts, dialogue, scenes, points of view, and language (including images), works of fiction suggest themes (or ideas residing atop the mountain of perception).

Essays tend to begin with ideas (the mountain of perception) and then demonstrate the value or importance or truth of those ideas through examples, data, statistics, quotations, interviews, and the like (the sea of experience).

Review Revisions (24 Oct.)
Final revisions of the book reviews are due tomorrow. Staple all drafts, notes, workshopped drafts, and revisions together, with the final version on top, working down to the oldest notes on the bottom. These must be submitted when you walk into the English classroom.

24 October 2007 02:30 PM