Writing 101: Class Snapshot
Course Title: Introduction to Writing Studies
Professor: Dr. Matt King
Learn more here: mattrking.com/courses/w101
This course, offered in the Fall semester, is the introductory course for Professional and Creative Writing majors, as well as a good skills-building course for students of any major. The earliest part of the course focuses on the idea of orientation discussed by Robert Frost and Kenneth Burke, and how that shapes us as young writers (or old writers too). We then moved into reading and analyzing literary, professional, and rhetorical texts.
In the latter half of the course, we wrote our own works. We focused on peer reviews and workshopping much of what we wrote for the class, which is more helpful than it sounded at the beginning. We had time to write during some classes and pair off to give informal feedback to each other throughout the writing process. After the first drafts were due, we would write short feedback letters to the person we were assigned and have a class discussion-based workshop. Afterwards, we would revise the draft and hand it in for a final submission. For certain assignments, like the poem, flash fiction, and remediation projects, Dr. King holds individual conferences in lieu of class meetings to discuss each person’s works more in depth and to give feedback before the final submission.
We also looked at professional publication websites and analyzed them for a variety of aspects--how the color scheme/organization appeals to the audience, what type of content is discussed, what type of audience the content is aimed towards and why, etc. Based off this information, we could write a story pitch for the publication we analyzed or for another site. We went over how to write creative and effective story pitches, and how to properly address them to an editor/publisher.
The final project we focused on and workshopped in smaller groups was the remediation project. This involved taking your poem or flash fiction from earlier in the semester (or another piece of writing you’ve done) and adding an AV (audio/video) component, as well as creating an interactive story through the website Twine. For the AV remediation, most students made a video or slideshow with music and subtitles or a voice recording of their work. For the interactive story, we built our stories to move or progress through clicking on key words. The stories branch in different directions or have side-notes, and it can be as simple or as complicated as you want.
Throughout the course and assignments, we were expected to create and update our own WordPress site, which became the final electronic portfolio project. We had a few classes that focused on the process and creativity involved in creating our own online site, and met with Dr. King in a conference about how the site was developing as we did through the course.
While a lot of work is involved, it’s a relatively laid-back course overall. We could take our time with workshops and projects, and were given a reasonable amount of time to get everything done.
