English 221: Intro to Creative Writing
Agenda:  April 3, 2008

• In-class Writing: Your personal essay, like King's, should be a retrospective narrative. In other words, it must (a) involve reflection and (b) it must tell a story. Choose one of the following prompts to expand the draft you're already working on or contemplating constantly.
  • What is the turning point of your narrative? How does this turning point involve a choice or decision which matters? Does the reader have a sense of the different alternatives you had when considering this choice? What were those alternatives? Make a list.
  • Is the turning point, in your draft, rendered in scene? If so, how can you expand this scene. Expand it now. If not, write the scene now.
  • Is it clear, through reflection, what this turning point means to you now? If so, how can you deepen this reflection? Is it clear to the reader that there is a difference between how you felt at the time and how you feel now?
  • In a narrative, all the steps of the rising action sequence prepare the reader for the turning point. What are the steps of your rising action sequence? Make a list. Now map these steps out on the inverted checkmark (Freytag's pyramid). Which steps are most clear and well rendered? Which need to be better rendered? Which steps should be rendered in scene? Which steps should be rendered in summary?

• Group Work: In groups of four, find the following in King's On Impact:
  • One example of a basic, orienting fact of the ground situation in the beginning of the story.
  • One example of a basic, orienting fact of the ground situation in the middle of the story.
  • One example of the retrospective voice commenting and interpreting in the middle of the story.
  • One example of the retrospective voice commenting and interpreting in the story's turning point
  • One example of scene (a moment-by-moment management of narrative time) in the first half of the story.
  • One example of scene in the turning point of the story.
  • One example of summary (a compression of narrative time) in the first half of the story
  • One example of summary in the denouement of the story
  • One example of direct dialogue; One example of summarized dialogue
  • One example of a concrete, significant detail which is alive to the senses
  • One example of self-implication: the author's willingness to be human, to make himself vulnerable
  • What is the essay's most important sentence?

FOR NEXT TIME: 4/8

Choose two of the following prompts above that you didn't choose for your freewrite in class today and use them to develop your draft. Come to class on Tuesday with your expanded, revised draft. Be prepared to discuss and write about how revising accordign to these prompts is changing your draft..