assignments ENGL298 Second Year Seminar: This Bridgewater Life
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LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com |
SPRING 2014 Office Hours
Monday: 3:30 to 4:30 Tuesday: 11:00 to 12:00 Friday: 1:00 to 2:00 and by appointment. |
SOURCES: BACKGROUND INFO & INTERVIEWS
The build up to selecting a story idea is intense, but it is at that point, really, that the work only just gets going. After you’ve picked your story to tell, you’ve got to gather the material to do the telling. This installment of your story notebook requires you begin the process of collecting information for your story. There are two parts to it. 1) collecting background information on your subject and 2) collecting interviews with relevant subjects.
PART I. BACKGROUND INFO
The first stage of this collection process concerns secondary sources: collect stuff that tells you about your story—about your site, your people, your problem, your theory—whatever it is that your story is about.
This is not the kind of research that you would do, probably, for a research paper, and, for that reason, we will spend one day in the library talking about the various ways you can collect information on your story. This research is, actually, probably more fun and less focused than the kind of research you’ve done in the past. It probably includes a lot more reference material than you are usually allowed to use. It involves looking at websites and newspapers and maybe even brochures and newsletters and maybe even archives. Your job is not to find a certain kind or piece of information. It is your job to collect as much info as you can. You’ll decide what you need later. Right now, it is all about collection.
PART II. INTERVIEWS
So far we’ve picked our stories, gathered some preliminary background information, and gotten a feel for what the main elements of what our stories need to be: some sort of main character who is encountering some sort of problem (be it tiny and funny or huge and life-changing), struggles with it, and, in some way, comes out on the other side of that problem a changed individual (maybe still struggling with the same problem, maybe getting that pie in the sky happy ending).
Here is where you'll start to develop what will become the scripts for your piece. I use the word scripts loosely because you might not read these exact pieces of writing—you might not even use them at all as you progress through your story. You might find out other things that you want to focus on. That’s all OK. Remember, this part of the assignment is about gathering information. We’ll figure out what we don’t need when we have a better sense of the stories we are telling. The next part of your project is to start to seriously gather interviews. I'm suggesting that you start to think about them as a script so you have something to work with going forward.
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS A GROUP. . .
1. For this project, you need to five sources of information for your project--five sources total, per group, not per individual. You are welcome to have more. Document those sources on the five library workshop worksheets I gave to you in that class. If you’ve lost them or need a new copy of them, you can download a pdf of it here.
2. A script of one minute of information you learned from your five sources about your story or the “fun facts to know and tell.” Using the information that you have collected from one or all of your five sources. Write a script for how that information might find its way into your story. This kind of information makes your final story feel “thick”—like you know what you are talking about. ONE MINUTE OF TALKING TIME =1/2 DOUBLE SPACED, TYPED PAGE OF TEXT. NOTE: You can split up your one minute into two thirty second spots—so a quarter of a page per idea.
3. A script of one minute of back story or the “wait, let me go back” in class writing. Related to the above, most of your stories require that you tell us stories that are related to your actual story but are sort of tangential to them. In a movie, it would be like a flashback. Write a one minute script for a flashback related to your story. ONE MINUTE OF TALKING TIME=1/2 DOUBLE SPACED, TYPED PAGE OF TEXT. NOTE: You can split up your one minute into two thirty second spots—so a quarter of a page per idea.
4. Interview notes from some portion of your process. You should include questions that you came up with to ask this person. You should include any notes you took during your interviews. You should talk about how your background research helped you (or didn’t help you) formulate your interview questions.
5. Show me approximately 10 minutes of taped interviews. Now, two things are true about these 10 minutes: 1) you may or may not use all or some of it in your final project, and 2) it will take a lot more than ten minutes of tape time to produce that much interview for me to listen to. You should expect to play at least a few minutes in class in order to get feedback from your classmates.
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS AN INDIVIDUAL. . .
1. A reflection on how your project is going as it relates to the background information and interviews. This should be about two pages, typed. You should talk about who you’ve interviewed already and who you still want to interview. You should tell me how the information you’ve gotten from both your research and your interviews is shaping the story, your big idea.
2. An outline of your ideas that you will bring to the group about your story-so-far: what is the shape of your story. Where will some bit of recording go? Where does something that you haven’t done yet need to go? What will your intro be? Your middle? Your conclusion? What dialogue will you use where? What Interview? What narration? I KNOW THAT THIS ISN’T THE FINAL VERSION. It’s just a rough idea of how your story is hanging together.
The build up to selecting a story idea is intense, but it is at that point, really, that the work only just gets going. After you’ve picked your story to tell, you’ve got to gather the material to do the telling. This installment of your story notebook requires you begin the process of collecting information for your story. There are two parts to it. 1) collecting background information on your subject and 2) collecting interviews with relevant subjects.
PART I. BACKGROUND INFO
The first stage of this collection process concerns secondary sources: collect stuff that tells you about your story—about your site, your people, your problem, your theory—whatever it is that your story is about.
This is not the kind of research that you would do, probably, for a research paper, and, for that reason, we will spend one day in the library talking about the various ways you can collect information on your story. This research is, actually, probably more fun and less focused than the kind of research you’ve done in the past. It probably includes a lot more reference material than you are usually allowed to use. It involves looking at websites and newspapers and maybe even brochures and newsletters and maybe even archives. Your job is not to find a certain kind or piece of information. It is your job to collect as much info as you can. You’ll decide what you need later. Right now, it is all about collection.
PART II. INTERVIEWS
So far we’ve picked our stories, gathered some preliminary background information, and gotten a feel for what the main elements of what our stories need to be: some sort of main character who is encountering some sort of problem (be it tiny and funny or huge and life-changing), struggles with it, and, in some way, comes out on the other side of that problem a changed individual (maybe still struggling with the same problem, maybe getting that pie in the sky happy ending).
Here is where you'll start to develop what will become the scripts for your piece. I use the word scripts loosely because you might not read these exact pieces of writing—you might not even use them at all as you progress through your story. You might find out other things that you want to focus on. That’s all OK. Remember, this part of the assignment is about gathering information. We’ll figure out what we don’t need when we have a better sense of the stories we are telling. The next part of your project is to start to seriously gather interviews. I'm suggesting that you start to think about them as a script so you have something to work with going forward.
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS A GROUP. . .
1. For this project, you need to five sources of information for your project--five sources total, per group, not per individual. You are welcome to have more. Document those sources on the five library workshop worksheets I gave to you in that class. If you’ve lost them or need a new copy of them, you can download a pdf of it here.
2. A script of one minute of information you learned from your five sources about your story or the “fun facts to know and tell.” Using the information that you have collected from one or all of your five sources. Write a script for how that information might find its way into your story. This kind of information makes your final story feel “thick”—like you know what you are talking about. ONE MINUTE OF TALKING TIME =1/2 DOUBLE SPACED, TYPED PAGE OF TEXT. NOTE: You can split up your one minute into two thirty second spots—so a quarter of a page per idea.
3. A script of one minute of back story or the “wait, let me go back” in class writing. Related to the above, most of your stories require that you tell us stories that are related to your actual story but are sort of tangential to them. In a movie, it would be like a flashback. Write a one minute script for a flashback related to your story. ONE MINUTE OF TALKING TIME=1/2 DOUBLE SPACED, TYPED PAGE OF TEXT. NOTE: You can split up your one minute into two thirty second spots—so a quarter of a page per idea.
4. Interview notes from some portion of your process. You should include questions that you came up with to ask this person. You should include any notes you took during your interviews. You should talk about how your background research helped you (or didn’t help you) formulate your interview questions.
5. Show me approximately 10 minutes of taped interviews. Now, two things are true about these 10 minutes: 1) you may or may not use all or some of it in your final project, and 2) it will take a lot more than ten minutes of tape time to produce that much interview for me to listen to. You should expect to play at least a few minutes in class in order to get feedback from your classmates.
WHAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AS AN INDIVIDUAL. . .
1. A reflection on how your project is going as it relates to the background information and interviews. This should be about two pages, typed. You should talk about who you’ve interviewed already and who you still want to interview. You should tell me how the information you’ve gotten from both your research and your interviews is shaping the story, your big idea.
2. An outline of your ideas that you will bring to the group about your story-so-far: what is the shape of your story. Where will some bit of recording go? Where does something that you haven’t done yet need to go? What will your intro be? Your middle? Your conclusion? What dialogue will you use where? What Interview? What narration? I KNOW THAT THIS ISN’T THE FINAL VERSION. It’s just a rough idea of how your story is hanging together.