The Schedule

Date Reading What's Due Topic
5/1 Final paper due electronically & physically -- & Performance/party!

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The first page.

How do you get your reader committed to reading after the first page?

In the excerpt you've chosen for your "best first two pages" example, what about the first page gripped you? What questions did it raise in your mind that made you want to read on?

Look closely at word choice and tone of the piece. How did the language affect your reaction to the story?

6 comments:

elmaz said...

thanks emily,
hi everyone, i hope this catches on. i think it's a great idea. here is some information that you need:
a prose thesis should be 35-50 pages
A poetry thesis should be 25-35 pages
a combination thesis should be percentages of each discipline to make a complete one

that's all. also, meet you across the hall.

Emily said...

Good stuff for the sidebar

Saving gRACE said...

Meticulous word choice...

gets the reader every time. I have also recently been fixated on the idea of defamiliarization, and infusing the tool of redefining the familiar into my poetry. It captures the reader, at least, that is my hope.

-andrea selva

Emily said...

By redefining the familiar, do you mean capturing the reader with familiarities or unfamiliarities? Or turning normally familiar things into the unfamiliar (or vice versa)?

I'm always fascinated when I read an intro that introduces something to me commonplace and everday in a way I had not seen in before, such that what I thought I understood suddenly seems strange. It gets my attention.

sera said...

How many people are in the class? I want to make sure that I print the right number of the first two pages of my thesis for class.

Emily said...

20 people total (18 students, plus Elmaz and Emily)