Preface of the Writing Portfolio

Each of the essays and charrettes included below were written as part of the curriculum of a Writing 101 freshman seminar at Davidson College entitled Building Stories. We explored techniques and tools essential to  good academic writing under the concept of how writers construct their essays. Two clarifications/definitions may be necessary to understand and navigate this portfolio:

Charrettes: the creative projects we did to inspire the writing process concerning each of the works we read. See them in chronological order: (1), (2), and (3)!
Story Audit: the blog-style summary written at the close of the course to reflect on my progress throughout the process of writing.

Next, an explanation of the goals of each of the essays may help you understand why I have written each of these essays:
Essay 1: To find your voice in conversation with others, cut clutter in order to get to the essence of the matter, and tell a verbally and visually compelling story about an important text.
Essay 2: To frame an intellectual conversation; to enter the conversation by asserting a complex, original claim or “crux”; and to support your claim with relevant evidence (quotations or frames) and incisive analysis (explanation of what in the passage or frame supports your point).
Essay 3: To identify a question or problem raised by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that is of great interest to you; to search for sources that can help you address that question; to frame the question for an audience outside your own head; to assert a core idea, hypothesis, or “crux”; and to support your idea with evidence and analysis from the novel and other sources you’ve consulted.
Essay 4: To design an essay that incorporates media to enrich your argument and sustain your audience’s attention; to choose a topic or question of great interest to you; to connect your academic research to real world problems; to communicate your insight to a specific, real world audience. In short, your goal is to use media creatively to foster online reading of a complex argument.

Please Enjoy this Portfolio of my in-depth writing progress!

“Preface”. Photograph. McMunn, Richard. “How To Write A Foreword And Preface.” RICHARD MCMUNN – THE UK’S LEADING BOOK WRITING & PUBLISHING COACH. Richard McMunn. 3 Dec. 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.