The Many Things You Could Write About in Your Portfolio This Quarter

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Writing challenge: Use Campbell's theories and Jungian archetypes in a story of your own. You can combine this with intertextuality, mythology, stream of consciousness, or any other idea we have covered so far in this course. If you create anything (a draft or more) put it in your writing portfolio!

Writing challenge: Question(s) to consider: What's up with our fascination with strong men like Hercules? What role does gender play in our culture regarding "strength"? Write about any of the following contemporary articles:
Story idea: retell Herakles' story about trying to gain immortality--what might that mean for a man (or a woman) in today's culture? How do we hope to obtain fame that lasts beyond our lives? Why should we?

Complete and develop your written analysis of Pinnochio. 

Rewrite the myth of Cupid & Psyche (Cupid & Eros)

Check out this link. Choose a Greek myth of your liking and retell it in a modern style (see Dead Father's Club for examples/ideas); For example, after reading about the Myth of Sisyphus, you could tell the myth from the POV of a student who, no matter what she does, cannot pass her class--or cannot join the cheerleading squad, etc.

Take your Namesake baseline fiction draft and do one of the following:
  • Skip a line (white space) to transition to the 3rd person perspective of a second character. This character should have been mentioned or referenced in the first draft.
    • The character should be a different character from the 3rd person over-the-shoulder narrator in the first draft.
    • The character's story could run parallel to the story told in the first draft (i.e., the story can take place at the same time in a different place, scene, or be the other side of the first character's story
  • Advance time by at least a year (or more). Use white space to transition into this new year or setting. Continue the story, thinking about the consequences of time. You are allowed to flashback to earlier times too. You may advance the story by a year or more, more than once, if you wish.
Or...
  1. Complete your cultural poem draft. 
  2. Write about your name (or your namesake), or the events of your birth, or an important memory or event from your early childhood. 
  3. Write about how you are a "copy" of one of your parents or grandparents or siblings or relatives.
  4. Write about your nickname and the story of how you got it. 
  5. Use your long sentence in one of your drafts or start a new story based on it. Punctuate your long sentence with a very short sentence or fragment. 
  6. Play around with sentence structure in your story drafts.
Develop and revise your How It Feels To Be Me essay draft.

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