The final portfolio

The final portfolio is comprised of three parts:1. A Statement of Aesthetics: think of this as a critical introduction that evaluates your semester’s work holistically. The intent of this assignment is to synthesize the experience in class and reflect upon the work submitted throughout the semester. This document should be will be submitted with your final portfolio and will serve to frame the creative work within a critical context. Though the content on this item is open, the one main item I will be looking for here is an explanation for how and why you revised your short the way you did for the final portfolio (500 words minimum)2. The first draft of your story and the final revised draft of your story. It is crucial in learning how to write to rewrite, to go back to a composition, rethinking and reworking it.

In addition cutting, moving things around, devising different ways to phrase something. Consequently uncovering an issue that was buried in confusing prose or white space. Rewriting allows you to improve what you started with. Although sometimes you have to take apart something that seemed to work initially but didn’t take into account the complications you now see. At the end of the semester, you will submit a portfolio of one revised submission from the semester. Please note that with each portfolio I will be looking not only for improvement in writing itself but also how the work was reimagined while keeping the workshop feedback in mind. We will be dedicating significant class time to workshopping creative work, so when your essay is being workshopped you should be taking notes and thinking about revision.

Further Description

As a general rule, I would recommend revising within a week or so of your workshop since it can be tricky to sift through so much feedback and navigate so many moving pieces months later. In addition, remember that you will have to consider your story and where you hope to see it go. You will not be able to accommodate everyone’s perspective, so the point is not to see that you’ve made every change suggested in workshop. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to let the author listen in on a group of readers dissecting their original work and filter through their feedback to determine what’s useful in revision. I am happy to meet with you in the revision process to discuss work before the final portfolio submission.

This final draft will be an expansion, a place where you can delve deeper into the original narrative. (2,000-4,000 words)3. Definitions: All semester long we will attempt to write our own definitions/ understandings of specific components of craft. I would like for you to write your own definitions—these need not be from Merriam Webster, but the way you define/ see these elements of a story. I will provide a list of words to define and you will select ten and write a short definition explaining how you understand this part of fiction. Some of these will be features of a piece of short prose (a scene or dialogue, for instance) whereas others will be topics we discussed that relate to storytelling.

Additional Guidelines

What is a scene? What isn’t a scene? For example. Then you will parse how one knows when it’s working well. What does “effective” dialog look like? What does it mean to have a successful ending to a short story? When do you know that your character is fully realized on the page? What exactly is the iceberg theory and why is it important? And you will explain how you approached this component of storytelling in your own work. You will write ten definitions, each definition should be a minimum of 200 words.

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