Instructions
1) Prepare no less than 500 words for peer review. Your draft should be coherent enough and polished enough that you do not waste your reviewer’s time. Your draft should also be developed enough that we can see the general direction in which you are headed. We should have some sense of the perspective you wish to provide us on your topic.
2) Incorporate at least 3 citations into your draft. Again, your sources and citations should be developed enough that your reviewer will be able to assess their effectiveness.
3) Once submitted, you will wait until September 26th for the second part of the assignment. From there, please look over and leave feedback to your peers. Feedback must be constructive and submitted by September 28th, at midnight.
For the final draft:
This assignment asks you to write an essay describing a person, object, or event from your life using only facts, which we define as empirically verifiable statements. The objective of this essay is to present an unusual perspective on your subject while ensuring that your paper remains completely free of any evaluative language.
Your final draft should be 1000 words in length not including your citations.
Most of your essay will consist of details that you know or can recall from memory. Those details count as facts so long as we could verify them had we been present at the event, or could see the person or object that you are describing. For example, you could say: My father was born the day after the 1970s World’s Fair opened in Osaka, Japan. His dad, my grandfather, was out of town for work and did not make it to the hospital in time for his birth.
Even though you will be writing about something or someone from your own life, you can still incorporate research. For instance, if you are describing someone who does a certain type of work, you could cite research on that occupation or you could quote from other people’s narratives about that job. If you are describing a person who is or was a paramedic, for example, you could quote Nicolas Cage’s character Frank in Bring Out the Dead who says, “Saving someone’s life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world.”
By citing research and quoting other narratives, you can provide different perspectives on a subject while refraining from evaluating and editorializing yourself. Remember, a quote is a fact because all you are claiming is that someone else said it.
You will need to incorporate six different sources into your essay.
After you choose a topic, begin to compile facts that allow you to show your subject from an unusual perspective. By “unusual” I mean different from how most people would think about a certain kind of person, or a certain kind of object or event. Your essay should NOT be a report. You are not writing an encyclopedia entry. You are making an argument by presenting an artful, carefully crafted perspective. If you think this is impossible consider that journalists do it all the time.
Though you are being artful, you want in every case to use only empirically verifiable statements. At no point should you state your opinions or use evaluative language unless you are attributing it to someone else. Your essay should only contain carefully collected and composed empirical statements that you have strategically organized.
Other instructions
1) Your opening paragraph must introduce the subject of your essay with a vivid, detailed description. Be careful the words you choose. You can tell us that a birthday cake was red, but you can’t say that the cake was “deep red” or “bright red.”
2) After your introductory paragraph, write a two sentence preview of your essay that explains what you will tell us about. If done well, your introduction and preview should get our attention, but remember: all statements must be empirically verifiable.
3) The body of your paper should deliver on the promises made in your preview. For instance, if you promise in your introduction that your essay will discuss a death that occurred at Disney World while you were visiting one summer, then your essay should tell us about that event. Do not tell us instead about Disney World in general or why your best friend couldn’t go on the trip at the last minute unless you can make it seem relevant to the story. (Maybe you didn’t go on a particular ride that you would have gone one had your friend been there.)
To make the body of your essay interesting, you want to think about how you present information. Where should you place each sentence? Can you put two sentences together that suggest a relationship between two things that you cannot otherwise claim (because we can’t verify it)?
When do you introduce certain details? Which details do you leave out? The body of your essay should be a combination of different kinds of statements. Some of the details will be particular to the story. Some of it will be information from the sources you cite. Keep in mind that you will be unable to write statements like: Most people think of Disney World as a happy place. You can’t write that because there is no way to verify if most people think Disney World is a happy place.
Give some thought to how you compose each sentence. It is better to be detailed than vague. It is good to have a combination of specific and general information. Consider how best to get your reader to see the topic from a certain angle. It is a matter of selection, arrangement, and presentation.
4) Your essay should feature a conclusion that briefly summarizes the essay. Without stating your opinion or making an argument, end the paper in such a way that underscores the unusual aspects of the information you have relayed. You will need to figure out how to show us this rather than tell us.
5) Remember to cite at least six sources in your essay.
These references should be well organized and should fit in with the rest of the essay. Be sure to apply Carol Saller’s tips for quoting. Any outside information or data you include in your essay should be referenced. Include a complete works cited page formatted according to either APA or MLA style (whichever you prefer).
6) Your final draft should be 1000 words in length not including your citations.
