Due Session 12:
Marked-up essays and individual response letters. Email to instructor before class and writers after class discussion.
In the case of revisions, you are reviewing essays, which you have commented on in earlier versions. It’s natural to reflect on how much writers followed your previous advice. However, it’s also important to view these pieces on their own terms. Authors sometimes take essays in new and unexpected directions as they revise. Although a second revision is not a course requirement, writers may choose to revise their pieces again (e.g., for possible publication, for writing competitions). So it is important to provide formative assessments that gives advice on improvement, rather than summative assessments that assume that the current essays are currently in final form.
Review each essay and type a letter of one to one and a half pages (double-spaced) to each writer. Also make marginal comments on the essays.
Some questions to consider in your letters:
- What are the strengths of this new version?
- How well has the writer employed the tools of creative nonfiction: time, setting, character, dialogue, interior monologue?
- What aspects of the essay are problematic or still need development? What questions do you have as a reader? What else do you want to know?
- Read the introduction (1–3 paragraphs) and conclusion (1–2 paragraphs) together. How well do you see the movement of thought in the essay embodied in the similarities and differences between the intro and conclusion?
- Comment on the title.
- How “final” does this piece feel to you as a reader?
- Other comments or suggestions?
