I. Discussion questions (Losh and Alexander Issue 1)

Consider the following questions for our class discussion today. (If we have time, I’ll ask you to do some writing in response to these prompts.)

• Think of your own rhetorical situations. What kind of identities do you choose – or need – to adopt? What can you change, and what can’t you change?
• How does the situation help determine the role you adopt or the identity you try on?
• Describe a “kairotic moment” you’ve experienced – a time when you’ve said/done the right thing at the right time as a member of a particular Discourse community. Why was that moment kairotic?

II. Revision exercise: “Hot spotting” for main ideas

We’re going to try some prompts to help you think about revision as something radical. Nancy Sommers, a researcher in composition and rhetoric, says that “[r]evising confuses the beginning and the end, the agent and the vehicle. It confuses, in order to find, the line of argument” (Sommers 384). I’d like us to keep that in mind this semester, and to see revision as a way of messing up or playing with your ideas on the page. As you write, try to think of how you can include this writing in your second draft. (Think of this as a head start on homework!)

1. Reread your first draft.
2. First, identify the main idea in your draft – find places where the point you are trying to make really comes through clearly.
   • The goal is for this to happen multiple times throughout your draft, with each instance clarifying the same main idea.
   • If you can only find one instance of your main idea coming through clearly, this is something for you to focus on in your second draft.
3. Next, mark (underline, highlight, star, etc.) places where you think your writing is working. This could be a sentence that expresses a thought-provoking idea, a strong or startling image, a central tension, or a place that could be explored in more detail. These places are the “hot spots” of your draft.
   • Copy and paste one of these hot spots onto the top of a clean page or new document (in your in-class writing folder). Then, put your full draft aside. 
4. Now write, using the hot spot as a new first sentence (or paragraph). Write for fifteen to twenty minutes, or as long as you need to develop your ideas. Don’t worry if you “lose” your original idea. You might be in the process of finding a better one.
5. Repeat the process as often as feels right. (Aim for doing this 3 times.)
6. Now put your draft back together.
   • You might want to just add the new writing into the piece or substitute it for something you can now delete.
   • You might even take out large sections of the original writing and reorganize the rest around your new writing.
7. Consider how your conception of the “whole” of this draft changes with the new material.

III. Exercise: Power of description (*if we have time*)

The following sentences show examples of “telling” statements. These statements straightforwardly tell the reader about a situation but they do not describe that scenario. In the example below, I’ve rewritten one of these statements to describe a situation to a reader without ever having that statement told to them. This type of descriptive writing will help ground your more abstract ideas for your reader. It also helps your reader understand your situation through the same sensations and feelings that you had while experiencing it. When you use descriptive writing in your Personal Narrative, you should choose your details carefully based upon the overall ideas in your piece; some details will lead your readers towards your point, while others will lead them away from it.

Pick one of the following sentences, and turn it into a descriptive moment. Make the situation plausible: think about the person narrating the moment (it could be you, it could be someone else), the other people that might be involved in the moment you’re describing, the setting of the moment, etc. (Basically: think of the rhetorical situation.) What actions might be important to the story? What images, smells, sounds, or textures might help your reader understand this scenario? What feelings are occurring that are important to the story’s point? Avoid clichés and exaggeration, and remember: don’t tell us, show us.

Example:

Telling Statement – I procrastinate when writing seminar papers.

“Showing” Paragraph –

As I pour my third cup of coffee since dinnertime, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the darkened kitchen window. I look closer. Yipes. I turn my blood-shot eyes away from an image of a knotted, frizzy ponytail and an unwashed, drawn face smudged with yesterday’s mascara, shuffling back to the dining room table. The living room clock’s ticking is echoing throughout the quiet house in these pre-dawn hours, and as I sit back down in front of my laptop, I listen for Dave’s soft snores. Ah, there they are. As he sleeps upstairs, I bask in the glow of Windows 10. The two cats yawn and stretch, peering at me as if questioning the ungodly hours I’ve kept for the third night in a row.  I settle back in, surrounded by towers of literary criticism about a book I was, at one time, enthusiastic about – but no more – and dread the moment the sun will appear. I read the course syllabus again. “Due date: 12/21.” I grimace, remembering a conversation in which a friend and I had laughed about how far away that date seemed in September or October. As I begin to furiously type once more, the date does not seem distant at all; in fact, it is staring at me from the bottom right-hand corner of my screen.

Your turn! Work with one of the following Telling Statements:

1. I love driving.
2. Caffeine is the only thing that gets me through the day.
3. I am a terrible cook.
4. The cafeteria food is really gross.
5. Working in retail sucks.
6. Thinking of the shore brings back good memories.
7. I hate scary movies.

Works Cited

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 33, no. 4, 1980, pp. 378-388. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/356588.