Paper 2 Draft 1 This paper will draw on all of the skills that you have been practicing in class and in Paper 1. Your goals are:
To develop a paper topic and question that you are genuinely interested in writing about, one that will sustain your interest in the paper.
To generate ideas about your question through attentive and creative close-reading, in which you do not know where you will end up.
To form a thought-provoking, surprising, and original argument about your question.
You should keep in mind all that we have been learning about writing mechanics – paragraph structure, argument structure, introductions, conclusions, etc. – since ideas become clearer and more nuanced as you develop them into a more clear and nuanced form. However, your focus in this draft should be on your close-reading, analysis, and argumentation: think of this as a more expansive version of all the work we did in Paper 1. In Paper 2 Draft 2, we will not only develop your ideas more fully, but spend more time on form in order to communicate your idea to your reader in the most effective way possible. Steps 1-3 due FRIDAY, MARCH 16 total time: 355 minutes, ~6 hours
Step 1: Developing Your Question (55 min)
The first thing to decide is if you will write on Rankine or Sebald.
If you are writing on Rankine, you will have already done this step (homework on Wednesday, February 21). Look back over your question – is this the question you want to explore in your paper? If so, move on to Step 2. If not, repeat the steps outlined below.
Whichever text you are writing on, spend 20 minutes reading back over all your notes from class, homework related to this material, and annotations in the book (20 minutes).
Now, do a fifteen-minute free-write addressing the following questions: (15 min)
What is interesting to you about this text?
What is one insight you have about this text?
What remains confusing to you about this text? What questions do you still have?
Your task now is to create a question to guide your preliminary exploration in the paper (this question will likely change over the course of writing). Read back over your free-write, underlining topics that stand out to you (5 min).
Craft a question based on the most interesting aspects of your free-write (15 min)
Your question should address a specific instance that also brings up a larger theme of the text.
Your question should not be easily answered with “yes” or “no”
Your question should be a question you are genuinely curious about and want to explore in your paper.
Begin your question with a specific moment in the text, as in my example:
On page 151, Rankine finally mentions the word “citizen”: “Yes, and this is how you are a citizen: Come on. Let it go. Move on.” This line brings me back to the very first discussion that we had about this book: whether the speaker is passive, or advocating passivity, the need to just “Move on.” Is that what the speaker is advocating by the end of the book? If not, what does she advocate instead? Is this book written as a way to let go and move on?
It is ok if your question is not yet this developed. At very least, however, your question must identify a topic that you want to explore in your paper. For instance:
On page x, and throughout the novel, Sebald peppers the text with factual inaccuracies. Why does he do this? Why does this text intentionally lie to the reader?
On page x, Sebald describes the Bosnian war. How does he understand history? Why is history important to this book?
Step 2: Generating Data (120 minutes)
Go through your book and find all the passages relevant to your question/topic. (30 min)
Type up all of these passages in a double-spaced word document. (30 min)
If you have 1,000 passages, and cannot possibly type them all up, either 1) ask yourself whether your question is too broad, and can be made more specific; 2) choose the passages most directly relevant to your topic.
You must have at least 5 passages.
Perform an extensive close-reading of at least 3 passages (60 min = 20 min/passage)
Looking at the questions on your close-reading handout (on bcourses and our course website), address the following categories for each passage: Speaker/Narrator, Imagery, Language, Line-breaks/Rhyme/Structure (for Rankine only), Context, and Chronology.
Step 3: Thinking Through Your Data (180 minutes)
Spend 180 minutes free-writing before you begin writing your draft. This step does not need to happen in one go – and in fact is usually better if you return to it on several different occasions. This is where the thinking happens! Use the following questions to prompt your thought:
Think about the passages individually:
What does each passage literally say?
What are the most important or interesting formal characteristics of each passage? Why?
How do the formal characteristics of the passage change/augment/explicate the literal meaning of the passage?
Think about the passages in conversation with each other:
Do the passages all suggest something similar about your topic or question? Do they suggest something different?
Can you “group” or relate the passages to each other? Are some of the passages suggesting a similar answer to your question, while others are suggesting something different?
Do formal features across the passages work in similar ways?
Think about the relation between the question and your passages:
What do these passages suggest in response to your question? Don’t give a single answer, but try to think through as many responses as possible.
As for Paper 1, our goal is to keep our ears open for ambiguous, confusing, and contradictory meaning. As you free write, keep these transitions in mind: “And yet,” “But,” “Even so,” “On one hand,” “On the other hand.” At the heart of a great argument is tension. Each time you make a claim, ask yourself: what evidence doesn’t fit into this claim?
***In order to be considered complete, you must turn in to me (stapled, with your draft on top) ON FRIDAY, MARCH 16:
Step 1’s annotated free-write and question
Step 2’s list of passages and close-readings
Step 3’s 180 minutes of writing
STEPS 4 + 5 DUE FRIDAY MARCH 23 total time: you decide!
Step 4: Write At this point in the paper writing process, I want to hand over the reins to youin order to determine what you need to work on. The only requirement is that you open a blank document, and you spend your committed additional minutes beginning to write a draft in order to produce something to workshop in class on Friday.
This paper should feel like a draft in every sense of the word: it does not need to be polished at all. It may not have a thesis or introduction yet. You do not need to think about paragraph or argument structure. The only requirement is that you spend at least your committed time working on your paper. Your draft should be developed enough in order to benefit from peer workshopping on Friday. It will be helpful to keep the following in mind as you work toward the final draft:
An introduction should introduce a tension or problem in the text.
The thesis should answer this problem in an argumentative and specific way. Remember that the strongest theses are those that exhibit tension within them - rather than just rejecting one point of view in favor of another, they show the push-pull between two ideas (our simplistic example: "Although exercise is good for you, too much exercise can harm you."). Keep an eye out for evidence that doesn't fit into your claim; rather than rejecting it, allow your thesis to evolve in order to incorporate it.
All claims that you make should be shored up in close-reading and evidence of the text. Each body paragraph should have at least one close reading. Writing body paragraphs is probably the best way that you could spend this time (since you will have a peer review - you can ask your peer if they follow along/find your ideas convincing).
A generative conclusion asks the question: why is the claim you’re making the main claim we need to know to understand the entire text?
Step 5: Reflect (20 mins)
Spend 20 minutes typing up 1-2 paragraphs for Friday's peer edit. Describe to your peer what you're struggling with the most in the writing process, and what kind of feedback you would like them to address.
***In order to be considered complete, you must turn in on Friday, March 23: