For this third assignment, I want you to share your experience encountering a new character through written text. It might be useful to think briefly about how character impacts literary works you’ve already looked at, but I also want you to explore as least one written literary work that you’ve discovered through this course. Think of your post as an account of your journey exploring this literary work (or a summary of your findings). There is no requirement to have a single argument or claim. You are not required to find peer-reviewed sources to support or contextualize what you want to say. There is no requirement to be original. I want you to let your interests guide you and share your experiences, questions, and theories with your classmates.
So far, everything is the same as assignment #2 (except that I’m asking you to focus on written texts instead of games, films, or other media for this assignment). I also want to add a new component to this assignment. After you’ve described your experience of a specific character in a new work you’re reading, I want you to describe a character that you think is brilliantly crafted by an author. This can be any character you’ve ever encountered in written form. I also want this to be a written text, because after you look closely at what makes this character distinctive, I’m going to ask you to try to create a character using the techniques you’ve identified.
Step 1: Decide on at least one new written literary work you want to explore. I’ll be making recommendations, but please join me in seeking out new things to read.
Step 2: Decide on the brilliantly crafted character you want to consider.
Step 2: Decide what you want to encourage your current classmates to notice about these works and any others that you want to bring into the discussion. You might not fully work out what you think these literary works are doing and that is fine. You can present a series of questions that remain unanswered. You can write as much as you would like and you can include as many different types of media as you would like (embed film clips or songs, upload in-game screenshots or other visual art, etc.). Make sure that you include citations for information that you quote or paraphrase in your post (we will go over the use of hyperlinks for citations in class).
If you find it useful, you can use my post as a template for the structure of your post. I’m hoping to encourage you to do lots of different kinds of thinking with this assignment–not necessarily to organize it all into a beautiful cohesive whole. Putting things under predetermined headings can liberate you from decisions about the overall structure (and you’ll have a chance with the final project to revisit this post and revise it to add cohesion if you want).
Tip: You may find it useful to compose in a document outside of OpenLab (Microsoft Word, a Google Doc, or something else).
Step 3: Upload a featured image on a draft blog post.
Tip: Your featured image can represent the content of your post in a wide range of ways. The image can be a book cover, an image of a page, or fan art inspired by one of the works you’re writing about. If you include a play or film script, perhaps an image from the production or the movie poster. You might also want to create something new to use as your featured image.
Step 4: Gather information needed to describe your featured image and make sure the media file has accurate information in the “caption” and “alternative text” fields. We will work together in class to learn how to reproduce images on a website carefully, ensuring we provide proper attribution and make the image legible for all readers.
A complete post should have the following components:
- Title
- Featured Image (something you’ve created or something you’ve found)
- Complete media file details for featured image (“caption” and “alternative text”)
- Captions conveying attribution statements for all images in the post
- Actual post with source material clearly cited with hyperlinks (flyby hyperlinks and actual citations)
- A section with notes from Abbott’s chapter (or other theorists of character) on the aspects of character that you find most interesting
- A section on the new work you’re reading and your experience of a character in that work
- A section on the brilliantly crafted character from a written work (doesn’t have to be a new thing you’re reading)
- A section with your creation of a character modeled on the one you’ve selected
- A list of works cited at the bottom of your post formatted according to MLA guidelines (use Zbib or guidelines from WAC Clearinghouse)
- Attribution statement for featured image below the list of Works Cited (guidance on attribution statement creation is at the Creative Commons Wiki)
Reminders
- Assume that there will be spoilers—no need to alert readers to them.
- We’re not writing reviews, though people reading what we’re writing might decide to check something out that they might not have encountered otherwise.
- Include lots of images and videos (even when writing about a text). Do your best to break up the wall of text.
- Lots of direct quotation. If you’re saying that a text has a specific feature, make sure to give an example of that feature
- Write to a general audience—clarity is a priority!!
- Share your experience of the text! Give details
- Share your best sense of how the writer prompted that response in you. If you want to research how others have explained this, go for it. Do make sure to cite them.
