10.4: Potential Course Design

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chapter 10.3: potential course design

Week	Read	Create
1	Intro & Chapter Zero	Activities & Exercises?
2	Chapter 1: Intro	Activities & Exercises?
3	Chapter 2: Review of Elements	Activities & Exercises?
4	Chapter 3: Poetry	Activities & Exercises & Practice
5	Chapter 4: Flash Fiction	Activities & Exercises & Practice
6	Chapter 5: Fiction	Activities & Exercises & Practice
7	Chapter 6: Drama	Activities & Exercises & Practice
8	Chapter 7: Nonfiction	Activities & Exercises & Practice
9	Chapter 8: Experimental	Activities & Exercises & Practice
10	Chapter 9: Final Chapter
11	Chapter 9: Final Chapter
12	Plan Final Project	Plan and Outline and Draft and Write
13	Final Project	Write
14	Final Project	Write
15	Final Project	Write
16	Final Project	Write
F	Wrap Up	Submit and Redo Anything

the final project planning document:

You might spend some bits of the semester working on a final project. This planning document will give you the tools you need to guide your work.

End Product

Place a checkmark next to the option you’d like to complete. You can change your mind at any point, but that does put more stress on yourself, so keep that in mind.

__Option 1: One Novella, 17,500 to 39,999 words long

__Option 2: One Mini-Novella (5,000-10,000 words) + one item from Option 3

__Option 3: Choose three items to create from the list below:

Textbook tweak
Portfolio
All 30 reading responses (Chapter 10.2)
2 projects from each category in Chapter 10.1
TBA

__Option 4: 10-15 flash fiction stories within any of the Final Chapter specialties

__Option 5: 5-10 mediums-sized stories within any of the Final Chapter specialties

__Option 6: Propose something radical to Sybil and get it okayed by Week 13

Brief Proposed Timeline

Fill out this proposed timeline outlining your plans for this final project:

____<date>____ - Phase 1 of Writing Process (Brainstorming & Outline) completed; I will ____________________________________________________.
____<date>____ - Phase 2 of Writing Process (Draft and Revision) completed. I will ____________________________________________________.
____<date>____ - Phases 3 and 4 (Proofreading/Editing/Submission) completed. I will ___________________________________________________.

Please consider using a tutor or Grammarly/Hemingway App or a nerdy classmate.

Peer Review/workshop

On ____<date>____, you will share a draft of your work [online]. My draft will include ____________________________________________. I will offer WWW/TAG feedback to my peers. And, of course, I will chat with Sybil via email or over the phone/Zoom if I want to chat and get additional feedback at any point.

Sharing Your Work

You should consider publishing your work to the web or in a future edition of this book. The audience for your work shouldn't just be Sybil or the members of our class, but rather the public, your friends, and your family.

I Promise

I promise to trust myself, my classmates, and to do as best I can on this project. I am capable, creative, and willing to engage with the material necessary to complete this project. Initial here: ___________________

textbook tweak:

Goal: Imagine a textbook written by students and for students! What if we threw out any textbook for this class! What could the textbook look like with total student control? Create a chapter for that sort of textbook that doesn’t exist yet.

Create a video, slide presentation, or infographic (or choose another medium) in which you create a student-friendly chapter for an imaginary textbook. At a minimum, the project will include:

A new chapter.
An accompanied visual aid.
Facts.

STEPS:

Step 1: Brainstorm what you either think is missing from the current textbook for this class and compose that chapter OR ask yourself what current chapter needs to be completely tweaked and revise that one heavily.

Feel free to be silly or cuss or use stories to talk about the genre.

Step 2: Compose the chapter with at least one visual aid (chart, meme, picture) that is openly licensed (possible sites to check out: Unsplash, Shutterstock, Getty Images, Pexels, Freepik, etc.).

Step 3: Double-check all facts and information you use. Cite information that doesn’t come from your head (and/or use footnotes).

Step 4: Submit a final draft before the deadline and self-assess your project.

More brainstorming...

Should there be histories in each chapter of each genre?
Should there be a chapter on note-taking?
Are ALL the genres and strategies for creative writing covered? What about MYSTERY?

portfolio:

You will create a portfolio with the following pieces:

The Beginning:

Cover Letter to Reader of what to expect in the portfolio.
- Write a letter to the reader of your portfolio in which you provide a constructive analysis of your progress since the beginning of the semester. This reflective letter should address the following questions at some point:
  - In what area(s) have you progressed the most this semester?
  - Which piece of work this semester means the most to you & why?
  - Which piece of work challenged you the most & why?
  - How would you characterize your experiences as a reader this semester, both of professional pieces and student writing? Have you improved as a reader & critic?
  - What more would you have liked to accomplish in this class?
  - What did you revise in the two projects that were completed earlier in the semester?
  - Do you feel your Final Grade will reflect your effort and ability in this class?
Table of Contents.
- Label each piece with the date of last revision, genre, title, strength(s) of piece, and weakness(es) of the piece.

Body:

Low-Fat Fiction!
- Take one of your already completed flash fiction or fiction or nonfiction stories and shorten it by half. Please put the original and revised version in the portfolio.
Fiction on Steroids!
- Take one of your already completed flash fiction or fiction or nonfiction stories and develop it to three times its original length. Please put the original and revised version in the portfolio.
Jazzing Up the Juice!
- Choose one of your already “completed” projects and sort through the language and words you used. Switch up 30% of the words with whatever odd, wild, and surprising words that come to mind. With the help of a thesaurus, revise the words (any or all of the main nouns, verbs, and adjectives) to make it new and more vivid or imaginative. You might arbitrarily choose a single page from a thesaurus and force yourself to use words only from that page, even if they make little, at times, logical sense. You could switch “happy” words with “sad” ones and vice versa. Please put the original and new piece in the portfolio.
Create Something New! Go back and choose any genre/topic you loved and create a new story/poem just for this portfolio.

One extra thing that you feel completes the picture of your development this year as a creative writer.

\(^{133}\)Most Intro to Creative Writing courses simply end with a portfolio, but some might not for various reasons (giving students more choice or maybe the teacher wants to attempt NaNoWriMo with the students, etc.), so that’s why a portfolio project is listed here, but it’s not alone as a final project.