A Digital Education Portfolio
Style is craft, and this craft is the continual means by which we maintain our communication with the living and with the dead. Through our style we build a bridge between the two.
AUTHOR-INSPIRED EXERCISES
The portraits to the right link to different style exercises I have developed based on interviews the authors have given.
The author follows a title I have assigned, and are exercises I have used personally, or in my creative writing and composition courses.
STYLE-INSPIRED EXERCISES
Judging the Quick and the Dead—Author-Mentors
40 Minutes
(or longer); repeated throughout semesters/career
All of the authors in the section above ("Fiction Exercises") and dozens of others speak about how good writers are continually crafted through the discipline of wide, deep, and continuous reading. Distribute passages from various authors (names of authors and titles of works should be kept off these handouts); these may vary from 1 paragraph to a page or more (but no more than 2 pages). One author should be living, and one author should have died at least five years previous.
After each passage, make, at the least, a list of stylistic things you noticed (STYNs). Using “Track Changes” will make this easily and readily viewable on the screen. Included here is a sample document.
Accordion Sentences
Varies: 5 - 25 minutes; varies according to assignment
Take a random page from an essay you are currently revising. From this page, focus on the first complete paragraph on the page and cut 20% of that paragraph without changing the essential meaning of the paragraph (another exercise: write the essential meaning of the paragraph, each paragraph, in a separate document to track your success here). Trim this new paragraph by an additional 20%, again without changing the meaning. Duplicate this paragraph and add anywhere from 5-10% and compare each paragraph. Which does the best job conveying the essential purpose? Use that paragraph.
Commonplace Comparisons
40 Minutes
(or longer, and throughout semester)
In a commonplace notebook (course requirement), copy, on facing pages, by hand, two passages of roughly equal length from two different authors. This should be at the top of the page. After this is complete, write down Elements You Noticed (EYNs): sentence structure, participles, gerunds, vocabulary, etc. . . . After this, explore how the author moves from the first word to the last word of the passage. What makes the passage effective or ineffective? What is worthy of emulation? What would you not want to emulate? Repeat this exercise for the second author. On the bottom of these pages, then, a distinct line should be drawn so that a direct comparison can be made. How do the authors' purposes differ? Does this, or how does this, influence the choices made on the page (we must work from the belief that everything appearing on the page was chosen to appear on the page). Instructors may also choose to distribute selected passages for students to copy and use, in place of student-selected texts.