Portfolios; Two Magna Carters; Gilgamesh Project

Notes/comments about your portfolios.

• Write every day. Don't wait. 
• Set your own deadlines. After 3 years of doing this for you, you should not rely on your teachers to force you to write. Writing should come naturally like bleeding. If it's not, you are in the wrong program and can wonder why this happened to you in the first place. Seriously, plan ahead. Your next portfolio will be in January. Winter is coming.
• A simple suggestion (requirement) about writing deadlines--every day you have my class, you MUST write 1-2 pages. The days you don't have my class, you should write 1-2 more. There are 25 class periods as an average per marking period. If you wrote 1 page per class period with me you'd have 25 pages to turn in for your portfolio. Doesn't sound that bad now, does it?
• Another tip: Start writing when you get to class (even before 7:30) if you need to. Otherwise, most of you have one or more advisement periods in which you could find the time to write. Otherwise, it's good-ol' homework when you get home or back from your profitable job. 
• When writing: Show don't tell--we need to remove abstraction and generalization for the specific
• When writing: Imagery. Appeal to the 5 senses. Use those poetic and narrative devices we've taught you. 
• When planning or writing or reading: Research. 
• Essays: reflect...write structure as you would a story or play. This includes establishing your setting, your characters (describe them!), and plot. Usually, there is an epiphany or reflection on meaning by the end of the essay.
• Get inside the heads of your narrators/speakers. Play around with some psychology. Add stream of consciousness, for example.  
• If you have more than 2 commas, use a period (probably). Learn more about how to use commas correctly here. 
• Dammit! Learn what an interjection is. There's either a comma after it or an exclamation point. Learn what a sentence is and what you can put in a sentence here. 
• Titles of major works are italicized. Learn about why here. 
• Title your drafts. Include MLA formatted headings, please!
• Workshop. Actually help each other by asking questions of each other's work: 
• Fiction: plot, setting, tone, POV, characters, dialogue, grammar/punctuation, narrative, style, genre, tropes, diction, theme, etc.
• Poetry: poetic devices, diction, imagery, structure, meaning, theme, scene, setting, tone, POV, character/persona, style, grammar/punctuation, form, etc.
• Scripts & non-fiction: see above. 
• Writing exercise: The two Magna Cartas: "This, I believe..." [a manifesto]
• What, to you, makes a good story (poem, essay, or play, etc.)? Your list can include anything. From space aliens to ribald historical sex scenes or slash fiction with Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas falling in love; from multiple perspective to very, very short stories (fewer than 100 words); from first-person narration to stories set in urban locations, from feisty teenagers out to change the world, to cliffhanger endings; from happy endings to angry diatribes. What are some of the things that you like to read in a story?
• Then write about what, to you, makes for a boring, frustrating, or uninteresting reading experience in a story (poem, play, etc.); Maybe stories with cowboys, using slang or excessive metaphors, people just looking or walking...everywhere without doing anything page after page, characters who do not make decisions, long flowery sentences with many, many adjectives, teenage sex scenes, conservative or liberal politics, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas, happy endings, sad endings, endings, etc.

Continue to work on your Gilgamesh project. Finish your Gilgamesh project by next class. Use your time with your partner to figure out what you're doing. Then do it. Your project will be presented to the class.

Gilgamesh Task:

Work with your chapter partner* to write and draw a comic book or sketch a mind-map or concept map of Gilgamesh's journey for that chapter. Be prepared to summarize key events in the chapter with the class and to apply Joseph Campbell and Jungian archetypes to your reading as a way to "unlock" the chapter's mysteries and structure. You may use any of the following programs to help you:

• Storyboard Creator
• Toondoo (comic book creator)
• My Story Book
• Storybird
• Storyjumper
• Padlet
• Prezi
• Printable comic book templates
• Other* (If you know of a different program to use to present your Gilgamesh summary, feel free to use it instead....)

HOMEWORK: Get that Gilgamesh project done. Get your field trip form completed. Our coffeehouse is Thursday, 7:00. Extra credit if you go and read (or host).