English 130 Reading Fiction

"My Generation" Essay

Technicalities:
     * One inch margins
     * 12 point Times New Roman Font
     * Double spaced
     * Upper right hand corner includes in this order: your name, name of assignment, English 130, Dr. Steven Thomas, date
     * Title in bold, centered above first paragraph -- absolutely NO separate title pages

Length:
     * 1-2 pages
     * This means "significantly more than one page but less than two pages"
     * It does NOT mean "almost one page" or "almost four pages"

Prompt:
     * Imagine that you are going to write a short story or novel about your generation. What is unique about your generation? What issues does it face? Does it appear to face them honestly? How would you explain your generation to your parents’ or grandparents’ generation? To a Martian?
     * In this essay, I don’t want you to write a story. What I want you to do is explain what you would write about, why, and what approach you would take. In other words, how do you think you would tell the story if you were to write it?

Expectations:
     * Proper essay form -- e.g., introductory paragraph, body paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details, etc.
     * A justification for why you've chosen the issue, topic, or whatever
     * A sense that there are different ways to go about writing the same story, not just one way (tragedy, comedy, satire, parody, confessional narrative, heroic story, fantasy, mystery, etc.)

Helpful Hints, Ideas, and Questions to Thing About:
     * A lot of fiction picks up ideas from the newspapers
     * Consider how the texts we have read have "represented" the issues confronting a generation. Were they fair?
     * How should the story begin? How should information be revealed to the reader? Gradually? All at once?
     * Who are the different characters, and why have you chosen them?
     * Who is telling the story? You? One of the characters? Two of the characters? And why do you think this is the best way to tell it?
     * Should the story just focus on one individual's experience, or should it deliberately compare and contrast characters of different generations?
     * Should the story allude to other similar stories?