Writing Drafts; Reading: Pop Culture

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Turn in your homework today.

Lab: (Until 8:00)

Using the prompt/short story from last class, flesh out your "scene" by doing one or more of the following:

  • Add a scene after the scene you wrote
  • Add details to the scene you wrote
  • Add dialogue to the scene you wrote
  • Add conflict to the scene you wrote
  • Add internal monologues or backstory to the scene you wrote
  • Add literary elements to the scene you wrote
  • Add a symbol, motif, or trope to the scene you wrote
  • Add a description of setting to the scene you wrote
  • Move your story ahead in time and continue...
  • Move your story back in time and continue...
  • Add a subplot that mirrors or develops or comments on the scene you wrote
  • Add a scene after the scene you added to the scene you wrote...
See where this draft takes you. Try to write 1-2 pages in the lab today.

If you get stuck or need a shift in activity, please continue to workshop or write drafts for your portfolio. See previous posts for details.

Period 2 (8:00)

Reading. We're backlogged on the reading/prompt writing. Let's read some short stories and discuss popular culture.

Post Modernism (the literary period you are in at the moment) is characterized by some of the following elements:

  • Often views nationalism, politics/government, religion, war, etc. as primitive
  • Loss of confidence in a corrupt Western world largely due to Capitalism & adherence to ancient traditions/beliefs about religion or the environment; The Western world is outdated and hidden behind faceless and uncaring bureaucracies
  • The West's claims of freedom and prosperity continue to be nothing more than empty promises; there is a cheap, jaded, cynical sense of public and private life
  • Truth and ethics (right & wrong) is for an individual to determine for herself
  • Nationalism and Capitalism build walls, create enemies, destroy natural resources, and create unbalanced, unjust societies of "have and have nots"
  • There is no truth, no pure, no absolute. No one has the authority to define meaning for others
Therefore:
  • Multicultural voices are important
  • There is no distinction between art and craft; good or bad; high or low culture
  • Fiction tends to be self-referential; a pastiche of style (uses all literary time periods to allude to)
  • The use of allusion (calling something to mind by reference...) infuses the writing
HOMEWORK: Complete any reading we didn't finish today in class. We'll be picking up a pop culture novel next class.

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