Writing Intervention!

What you need to remember:

Establish a clear analytical focus

Do not summarize

Find your authentic, confident, natural – but business – voice

Considering your reader’s response – constantly

Support your claim

Analysis vs. Summary vs. Exposition of a movie:

Why I like it

How the director made it so scary

What the director’s message was

The film’s impact on culture

Analysis vs. Summary of your senior project:

What you plan on doing.

Why you are doing it.

How you will accomplish each objective.

How the experience helped you to grow.

Analysis of my car:

Observations of its speed.

What makes it go so fast.

What the heck should you be doing?

1. Attack the prompt. Reduce it to D E and fill in the blanks as per what the prompt gives you. Now you have a focus. There will be 0.0 divergence from this focus type.

2. Have something to say. Focus on what you do know is occurring in the text. You have an arsenal even from what we have covered thus far. This will provide focus and complexity.

3. Create a clear, direct thesis that provides as much specificity as you can about the effect. Flowery, obscure, and nebulous language does not help but only muddies things for you and your reader.

4. The “effect” in the thesis should focus on a significance

a consequence

a reason / rationale

E.g.,

explore an idea and why it is significant (to the human condition, to a character, etc.)

identify the reasons for a change to a character

justify a character’s relationship as the consequence of his attitude

5. Mentally check to be sure that you are prepared to explore HOW the author creates an effect via devices. (You don’t necessarily have to include this in the thesis, but this will be what your body does.)

6. Let’s save what I want in the Intro for later. Until then, experiment with ways of getting the reader to your thesis. Find your voice.

Body paragraphs

7. You need the recipe. Use the double chunks. They work. Experiment with fluidity and rhythm but don’t change the recipe’s basic ingredients. At least for now. After you master the recipe, only then should you start breaking rules.

8. TS: simple, direct wording explaining HOW the author fulfills the purpose that you defined in your thesis. This is probably a device. “He uses D to develop E.”

9. Seriously consider how you lead in to a CD. This provides fluidity. No “orphan quotes.”

10. Cite the CD parenthetically at the first grammatical pause.

11. CM: Do not sacrifice clarity to sound complex and learned. Clarity trumps all.

12. CM focuses on the CIA of a CD and explains how it proves the TS and the thesis. Think “this shows” but don’t write it. Imagine that I don’t understand the connection you are trying to make between the TS, the quote, and the thesis. Explain it.

13. Consider you audience BUT do not make any assumptions in your CM. That’s where you want to explore, explain, etc. explicitly.

14. Re: titles...