Category: Session Follow-Up Posts

Session 18: Follow up Links and Discussion Board

Writers,

As you spend the next couple of days thinking about, revising, and maybe even “re-envisioning” your stories, remember the techniques we discussed in today’s class. You might outline your story, cut a paragraph, add character development, reconsider the ending, and or look more closely at language. A couple of the resources used in class are in this post: On Revising and Developing Your Fiction

  • If you need to review, the Fiction Assignment is posted here: Fiction Assignment This post includes page length requirements, formatting, and other information. Due dates:
  • Thursday, April 7 and Tuesday, April 12: in-class peer review. Bring a full draft to class of your story or stories. Printing them out for the workshop is preferred. (Remember you can print in the library or the computer labs.) If you bring your stories on a device, it should be bigger than a phone screen and you should be comfortable with other students handling it.  Reminder: This peer review workshop will be included as part of the fiction assignment grade in the course.
  • Thursday, April 14: the Fiction Assignment is due on Blackboard by the end of the day.

Session 18 Discussion Board: Title and First Line

As was discussed in class, here you are committing to your story or one of them if you are writing a series of flash fiction.

OpenLab discussion board instructions: write the title and first line of your submission for our class on Thursday. You can use the same first line you read in today’s class but remember to add the title of the story on the discussion board. Discussion board posts are due before 2 pm on Thursday, April 7. The OpenLab discussion board is on the course profile page and liked HERE.

Write on,
Prof.Sears

Email:jsears@citytech.cuny.edu
Stop by at my ZOOM Office hours, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4-5 pm: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82754062261

Session 16 Follow-Up Notes

Writers,

There is no discussion board for today’s class session, but hold onto stories you’ve begun as we will discuss the Fiction Assignment in class on Thursday. Also keep your notes on today’s discussion of flash fiction as two of the stories we read (“Miracles” and “Sticks”) will be on the quiz. A couple of the questions I asked today were directly from the quiz which will be conducted on Blackboard as it was last time.

Stories  considered today are in our online course files:

Also remember, if you are concerned about having enough material to start working on your fiction assignment, you can use these prompts to get a bit more work down: Writer’s Notebook Prompts for Fiction

Remember, the writer’s notebook prompts are not assignments; they are aids to keep you writing.

See you in class on Thursday,
Prof. Sears

Session 15 Follow Up Links: Dialogue and Discussion Board

Writers,
Great job for showing up and working on dialogue  on this gray and rainy day. We’ve made it half way through the semester! I’m posting links from today’s class and the link to the required Discussion Board, but want to start off with a couple of reminders:

  • Literary Arts Festival today (March 24, 4:30 pm). The link again if you need it is HERE. Attendance is encouraged, not required. We looked at Layli Long Soldier’s work in class
  • You have a Reading Quiz coming up. It will be on Blackboard as before. Here is the review post with the listed stories. I’ll post more information next week: ENG 1141 Fiction Readings: March and April 2022
  • For those who want to go further with fiction writing than our in-class prompts, here is the Writers’ Notebook Prompt sheet for writing fiction:

Today’s class links:

We discussed writing dialog and used materials from our OpenLab course resources: Ernest Hemingway’s  Hills Like White Elephants and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Tuesday Siesta. We discussed how writers shape dialogue on the page and deliver information about character, setting, and importantly, conflict through the voices and crafting of their characters.

We also brainstormed a short story driven by dialogue. Here are instructions for the Discussion Board, due anytime before our Tuesday class.

Session 15 Discussion Board: Exploring POV and Dialogue

For this discussion board, upload EITHER the dialogue you started with our free write in class on Thursday (March 24) or the exercises we did in class exploring Point of View on Tuesday, (March 22).  You should write enough for the reader to sense the conflict that is unfolding on the page.

The discussion board is here: here:https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/eng1141-sears-sp2022/forum/topic/session-15-discussion-board-exploring-dialogue-and-point-of-view/

Session 14 Follow-Up Links

Writers,

Thanks for writing and reading your work in our class today! We do not have a discussion board for this session, but do hold onto your work as you might develop it for a future discussion board or the upcoming Fiction Assignment. A few reminders of items mentioned in class:

Today we looked briefly at three short stories, all of which will be on our upcoming Fiction Quiz. These stories are:

Also remember:

  • Poetry Assignment revisions and late papers are due today on Blackboard.
  • the Literary Arts Festival event is this Thursday, March 24 at 4:30 pm
  • I have office hours on Zoom on Tues./Thurs. from 4-5 pm. Feel free to stop by and discuss writing or your work!  See the links on Blackboard.
  • And of course, email anytime: jsears@citytech.cuny.edu

ENG 1141: Session 13 Follow-Up Links and Discussion Board Instructions

Writers,

Today we have the first Discussion Board in fiction. This may seem challenging because fiction writing is new, but we all have to start somewhere. For this round, you have two options:

Option 1: Write two paragraphs of the story you started in class last Tuesday (a family story that gets told and retold) or Thursday (today) using  one of the provided plot-driven prompts.

OR

Option 2: Write a story outline, showing the beginning, middle and end of a story you might write.

      • For the beginning, you might list characters, setting details and what the main character wants. (You might think of this as the dramatic question being asked.)
      • For the middle, you might identify the main conflict that might prevent the main character from getting the desired goal.
      • For the end, identify which characters remain and are the focal point and the setting again.

The discussion board can be found on the profile page of this course or directly using this link: Discussion Board: Story Starters

Other Class Notes

  1. For those planning to do a poetry revision, instructions posted earlier are here: Poetry Assignment: Instructions for Revisions
  2. In our next class, we will continue thinking about fiction writing techniques and also discuss the short story: Your Only Job is to Ignore that Phone. Please note, this story will be on the Fiction Reading Quiz.
  3. Remember to mark the date for City Tech’s Literary Arts Festival next Thursday with Layli Long Soldier, next Thursday, March 24 at 4:30 pm

Session 12: Follow-Up Links

Here are links for our Session 12:

IMPORTANT: The Poetry Assignment is due by the end of today on Blackboard. That reminder is HERE.

 

Thursday, March 10 Follow-Up Post: Poetry Assignment and Workshop

Writers,

Nice work in today’s poetry workshop. It was gratifying to see you all share your work with each other. We’ll also have workshops in our fiction and memoir modules.

A couple of notes for items covered in class:

  • The link to the Poetry Assignment is here: Poetry Assignment. Remember to upload your poem to Blackboard in the “Major Assignments” folder by the end of the day on Tuesday, March 15. The folder will open on Sunday and you can submit any time until Tuesday. I will grade them all after the folder closes.
  • Reminder, as is stated in the Poetry Assignment guidelines, those who turn work in on time have one chance to revise their work.
  • If you need to access the discussion boards to find you previously posted poems, those are here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/eng1141-sears-sp2022/forum/
  • I’m grading poetry quizzes now and will have them done by tomorrow

Write on!
Email with questions: jsears@citytech.cuny.edu

Prof. Sears

 

 

Tuesday, March 8: Follow Up Links

Writers,

Below are important items covered in today’s class:

  1. The Poetry Quiz will open at noon on Wednesday, March 9, on Blackboard in the folder marked Quizzes and Surveys. You have 24 hours to complete it. The time limit once opened is 40 minutes. Make cure to review the post: Review of Poetic Forms and Poetic Terms.
  2. The Poetry Assignment is now live on Blackboard. Read the full assignment and bring your two poems for peer review to class on Thursday, March 10. The Poetry Assignment will be due for a grade on Blackboard on Tuesday, March 15. The assignment is here: Poetry Assignment
  3. If you did not do the abecedarian discussion board for attendance credit on March 3, it will remain open until the end of the day today. Read my instructions at the top of the board before you post. The Discussion board is here: Discussion Board: Abecedarian Poems

We covered a lot! Email, as always, with questions: jsears@citytech.cuny.edu

Session 7: Follow-Up Links writing the Pantoum

Today’s class discussion went over the poetic form called the Pantoum . The pantoum is a form that is four stanzas of four lines each, 16 lines in total.

The description and pattern for the pantoum is described in this post from our online textbook:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sears-eng-1141-course-readings-and-materials/2021/02/22/poetic-form-pantoum/

Examples of pantoums can be found in this post. In class today, we read “pantoum” by Marilyn Hacker and watched performance poet K McClendon read “Pantoum for What We Let Grow.” Both are in this post:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sears-eng-1141-course-readings-and-materials/2021/02/23/pantoum-examples/

Lastly, here is a post to use as a guide for our poetry quiz which will be next Thursday, March 3 in class:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/eng1141-d307-intro-to-creative-writing/2022/02/24/review-of-poetic-terms-and-forms-for-the-poetry-quiz/

Write on, all!

 

 

 

 

Two student sestina stanzas from last semester

As an additional follow up to Session 6 (see all follow-up links here), here are two student examples from last semester’s discussion board on the sestina. Remember you only have to do two, but you can write the full 36 lines of the sestina if you are inspired.

Example 1:

Words: bat, crime, people, mind, building, man

In the night he sees the BAT
a hero to some always stopping CRIME
his job, his calling save the PEOPLE
his only weapon, his MIND
watching atop of BUILDING
in reality he’s just a MAN

trying to be more than just a MAN
behind the walls of the BUILDING
he tries to stop the worst CRiME
some nights he can’t save the PEOPLE
those nights his greatest weapon is his greatest weakness, his MIND
in the end he’s just a BAT

Example 2:

Words: Dad, restaurant, food, fire, hands, home

Here is my dad,
working in his restaurant.
He will cook the food,
the wok on intense fire,
the drops of hot oil drop on his hands.
Late always he comes home.

Makes me wonder does he misses home?
I wonder because he is my dad.
I once saw his rough hands,
they were formed in his restaurant.
One cause, is the high fire.
Another, the heavy and amount of cook food.

Customers will order for food.
He hardly cook at home.
Does he ever hate this stove fire?
I am not blaming my dad.
I know he work hard in his restaurant.
I just want some rest to be on his hands.

And not just his hands.
A break from cooking food.
A break from his restaurant.
A break to be home.
A break for my dad.
A break from burning fire.

The discussion board is here: Session 6: Writing the Sestina

 

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