For Essays #1 and #2, choose a generative exercise and expand it into a larger essay: no less than eight pages (double spaced), and no more than twelve pages. Use the published readings as models for structure, characterization, scene and summary, and other craft features.
Good luck! I encourage you to collaborate often outside of class with your peers: bounce ideas off one another, share drafts, make editing suggestions, offer encouragement. The best workshops always extend beyond the classroom. And please feel free to come in and see me about your drafts during office hours.
Grading Criteria for Essays:
1. Essay drafts must be complete. Endings are difficult, but they are absolutely necessary. Find a way to finish your piece before you turn it in.
2. Essay drafts should be proofread carefully. Basic proofreading mistakes jolt the reader out of the dream you are creating.
3. The essay’s persona is focused.
4. The essay’s subject is focused.
5. The essay supplies the reader with the basic, orienting facts they need.
6. Tension and conflict are developed. The essay has a protagonist (the narrator or someone the narrator is telling a story about) who wants something, and there are obstacles to what they want, and those obstacles are formidable.
7. The essay balances scene and summary for dramatic effect.
8. Details are concrete and significant and alive to the senses.
9. The writer pays heightened attention to language: to diction, to sentence variety.
10. The writer takes some risks at the levels of craft: structure, characterization, dialogue, setting and atmosphere, imagery, etc.. Push yourself to do things that you haven’t done in the past. I don't expect the essay to excel at all craft features, or even many craft features. But I do expect you to pay close attention to at least two of these craft features.