Parody, Satire, and Genre

Often, true mastery of genre is best seen in our ability to mimic the genre forms while breaking our expectations in terms of the message.

Unit 1

Of Related Interest: Music Videos - Parody Videos

The Oral Tradition: Writing Evolves from Speech

It's no accident that written alphabets are adapted to serve the needs of spoken speech.  As humans, our language first evolved as an oral tradition.  It's only been recently (in the past five to six thousand years or so - yes, recently) that language has come to be shared through visual media.

The Oral Tradition - Library Resources

Milner Library Resources

Research is a critical component of writing.  Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, or even poetry, you want your words to reflect reality - doing this effectively sometimes requires the kind of specialized knowledge best found through the library.

The Oral Tradition - Library Resources

Online Collaboration: Bridging Time and Geography

This Post is Under Construction.  To learn more about online resources, see Establishing Your Online Presence.

Setting Up Your Blog 

- Blogging Platforms - 

Using Social Media 

- Online Collaboration

Blog Platforms for Building Your Online Presence

As writers, we depend upon our audience to provide feedback and support for our work.  Fortunately for us, we live in the era of personalized mass communication.  Through blogs, social media, and e-mail, we are able to reach out to our readers in new and exciting ways.  Here are resources and tips to get you started.

Setting Up Your Blog 

- Blogging Platforms - 

Using Social Media 

- Online Collaboration

Your Online Presence: Blogging

One of the critical components of writing is sharing that writing with an audience.  For English 101, you'll be using online resources to share your work with other members of the class and audiences from beyond Illinois State.  The first part of this involves your "base of operations," so-to-speak: the blog.

Setting Up Your Blog 

- Blogging Platforms - 

Using Social Media 

- Online Collaboration

Shifting Grammar and Syntax to Meet Genre and Cultural Conventions

Today, we're going to examine the role of grammar, style, and syntax in understanding the conventions of genre.  This post complements Haley Stouffer's article "How i Lrnd 2 Txt: An Adventure in Genre."

<--Day 1

Fall 2011 Pre-Course Survey

Here's a quick survey to see where each of you are in your writing.  Please be sincere in your answers - in genre studies, there are no wrong answers.  Every writer is somewhere on the writing continuum - our goal is to help you progress both as a writer and a thinker.  Go to Form-->

ENG 101 Home
Day 1 - Composition as Critical Inquiry

English 101: Composition as Critical Inquiry

Today we'll go over the course syllabus and several the electronic resources we'll be using over the semester.

ENG 101 Home

Teaching Meter in Poetry

Now that you've seen what meter is, let's take a look at how we learn to use it.  This article is useful both for teachers of poetry and for those who would like more practice with hearing meter.

<--Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Meter: Meter in Poetry - Teaching Meter

Meter in Poetry

Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line of a poem.  In a stressed-syllabic language like English, meter is the way we identify and understand the overall rhythm of the piece. 

<--Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Meter: What Is Meter? - Teaching Meter

Metrical Poetry - Rhyme, Meter, and Rhythm

Our focus in poetry so far has been centered on themes, images, and figurative language.  This week, we turn our attention to the "rhythm" of a poems - the rhyme, meter, and structure of formalist (closed-form) poetry.

<--Week 11 - Week 12 - Metrical Poems
Meter - Rhyme (coming soon!) - Sonnets

Hopkins Review Essays - Winter 2011

Though the literary essay may not feel as "creative" as a story or a poem, it does provide some very useful tools to help us progress as creative writers.  For this semester, we'll be writing five-page essays to be turned in with the final portfolio on the last day of class.  For your essay, please choose either a story or poem(s) from the Winter 2011 Hopkins Review.

Literary Essays
Poetry Essays and Grading - Literary Terms - IFP II Essays
Winter 2011 Hopkins Review (Available Online On-Campus)

Participation Grades - The 100-Point Scale

Participation is a critical component of any creative writing course.  We learn from each other by sharing our thoughts on the readings and workshop pieces.

Course Grading - Participation

Mining Poetry from Emotions, Memory, and Sensation

What is the source of poetry?  How do we develop the carefully measured lines of poetry from the nebulous memories and emotions of our lives?  In these exercises, we look at what makes a poem "good," and then practice using these concepts in developing our own poetry.

<--Week 7 - Week 8 - Week 9--> 

Using Figurative Speech - Mining Poetry

Figures of Speech in Poetry

Figures of Speech are used to relate one term or concept using ideas or emotions which wouldn't naturally be used for the original term.

<--Week 7 - Week 8 - Week 9--> 
Using Figurative Speech - Mining Poetry

Structure and Nuance in Fiction: Long Story Workshops

A "short" story is typically less than 7,500 words (around 25 or fewer double-spaced pages.)  With out long story workshops, we pass well beyond flash fiction and the short-short story into fully-developed short stories and the early chapters of novels.

<--Week 6 - Week 7 - Week 8--> 
Long Story Workshops

Revision and Unity: Crafting Your Long Story

The idea of "unity" is rather nebulous in fiction.  It can refer to unity of time and place (as in all the events occur in the same scene), or to unity of theme (the story has a tightly-focused symbolism), or to unity of character (the protagonist is developed and consistent).  By examining the focus of your story, you can develop and sharpen the implied meaning of the work as a whole.

<--Week 5 - Week 6 - Week 7--> 
Unity - Dialogue

Dialogue Grammar and Syntax in Fiction

Dialogue is one of the most important aspects of fiction.  It reveals the true voices of the individual characters while also foreshadowing to much of the action.  But to use it correctly, you'll need to be familiar with how dialogue works as part of the sentence and in constructing paragraphs.

<--Week 5 - Week 6 - Week 7--> 
Unity - Dialogue

The Character Who Steals Your Life - Voice Sketch for Week 5

Here's a quick description of how to approach this weeks assignment.  Your focus in this work of fiction is capturing specific details with with you're intimately familiar, but then changing the perspective of the main character to reveal these details in a different light.

<--Week 4 - Week 5 - Week 6--> 
Voice Sketch