Writing Process of Bio's |
Drafts:The whole process of writing four pages worth, 2 about our interviewee's story and two of analysis, took about a month and spanned more than a dozen drafts. We first wrote out a draft of the biographical part of our piece going directly off of our interview notes. We then did several peer critiques in order to make everything seem less direct and more flavorful and emotional as a story. Afterwards, we then began researching the decade our interviewee "came of age" in order to compile facts a figures to come up with an analysis of how the events that occurred during that time possibly correlated with out interviewee's story. We then went through the same process of peer critiques in order to make sure there weren't any traces of I, me, or mine in it as this was purely observation and comparison. After we had completed both parts, we then merged them together into one piece. This was difficult to some degree because the tone of the emotional third person story telling, was to a fair degree misstated with the more direct analysis part. Thus, began yet another round of peer critique in order to make sure the two blend together properly.
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Decade Groups:By this point, we had gotten into groups of people who's interviewees came of age during the same decade. The main goal of this was to form a group that would kickstart the development of a chapter in the book we were creating that represented their decade. Groups put their heads together and compiled lists of things and events that they thought highlighted their decade and that should be included in a summary of it. Decade groups then came up with different drafts of an introduction for their decade. Once a version and been decide and edited for kinks such as grammar and peculation the groups then sent it off to the person managing their chapter so that they could place it into a document that would later be looked over by the formatters. The document version of the book can be found by pressing a button on the American Dream Project page.
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Personal Narratives:
The personal narratives first started out as each student writing a page or two explain what they thought about the American Dream in a somewhat direct manner. There was one or two peer critiques, however, we eventually got involved more with the biographies and did not come back to the personal narratives until the bio's had been nearly completed. This time around, student were given the choice of writing out their views in a format similar to what we had originally done, or they could be more abstract and write a poem or spoken of some sort. In addition, there was a large amount of students who thought adding more visuals in out book would be more pleasing to the read. As such, the option for student to the photos of, or draw a visual representation (with and artist statement) of their personal narrative was implemented. There were some standing requirements however. Students had to explain how they felt about/their views about the American Dream before and after the project, and weather or not the project had any effect on their views and how it had influenced them as people. These personal narratives along with their respective visuals, are in the second part of out American Dream 2.0 book. There is button that takes you to my personal narrative on the American Dream Project Page.