6.4 – Establishing a Tentative Structure for Your Essay Freewriting to Gather Yo

6.4 – Establishing a Tentative Structure for Your Essay
Freewriting to Gather Your Material for Essay 1
Congrats on getting MLA formatting right, choosing a tentative topic, and recognizing your tentative thesis. Now it’s time to start focusing on the working structure of your essay by digging into your thinking and imagining. An enduringly useful tool for the prewriting stage is freewriting.
Remember that a freewrite is a timed writing exercise in which you write without stopping about whatever pops into your head. Freewriting can help unleash our inner thoughts before our internalized censor tries to make limiting judgments that can block your writing process.
Today you can expect to immerse in a lot of freewriting, not for the purpose of posting to this assignment (Please do not upload your freewriting.) but to help you make progress in your writing process for Essay 1, including finding a basic structure or useful outline for your analysis of your chosen literary piece.
As you’re freewriting in response to the various prompts below, remember to practice the STOP technique as a way to reenergize as you work on your essay.
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Focused Freewriting
Now let’s take a deep breath and plunge into freewriting in response to the questions below. You will benefit from approaching this activity with enthusiasm, enjoyment in articulating your thoughts about the topic
For each of the questions below, set your timer for 5 minutes and then freewrite. (Do not skip freewriting for this discussion. Save your drafting for after you’ve generated enough material to work with.) For this prewriting exercise, focus your attention on the single task of just writing whatever comes to mind in response to the question you’re working on. This freewriting exercise should take a total of 30-45 minutes.
Who is the poem about? Choose as many descriptives words as you can to paint a vivid picture of the poem’s speaker.
Where does the poem’s story take place? In painting that setting, try to tap into sensory details (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch) to recreate the places where things happen in the poem. Choose sensory details as appropriate.
When did the story in the poem happen?
What are crucial moments in the poem’s story? Another way to go about it is to list the sequence of events, as they seem to happen in the poem.
What personal associations or memories come up for you in response to the poem? Recreate your memory as though you were creating a vivid scene in a movie, including dialogue.
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Bonus Exercise in Flow
Lynda Barry’s “Writing the Unthinkable” video is a bonus and not required, but those of you who like to draw may find creative inspiration from trying this meditative, artistic approach to writing. Essay 1 is a kind of hybrid essay, requiring practice of academic and creative writing skills.
Personally, I write best when I become personally invested in a writing project. So I like to start my essay journey by taking this kind of creative, meditative route. Below are photos of my attempt to start “Writing the Unthinkable.” I felt more relaxed and comfortable at the thought of working on a personally related essay after I did these fun, easy, flowing exercises.
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Lynda Barry guides you through her extraordinary “Writing the Unthinkable” exercise:~ ~ ~
Writing Task
After you’ve completed freewriting and gathering enough ideas for your tentative essay, provide a paragraph (6-10 sentences) from your draft, making sure it’s coherent enough that other people can read and understand what you wrote. An alternative writing task is to write 6-10 sentences describing the topic for your essay and some of the arguments or statements about your topic that you plan to develop.
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