English 191 - WRITING WORKSHOP II - Zimbler

Your first out of class assignment will be a personal narrative
paragraph. You will choose to write about a time of your life that was
memorable and interesting and will make for an interesting read for
your readers.

You will first be freewriting extensively, in the form of a list,
about different possibilities for topics before you make a decision
about which of your experiences to describe. The list of possible
topics on page 115 of Foundations First is to be used as a guideline
for this assignment. You will be freewriting in class (and at home),
making lists to discover what life event will make the best assignment
topic. After you’ve made a list of at least twenty possible topics,
you will narrow it down by eliminating events which you do not
remember enough about, which are too personal to share, which do not
have enough interesting action to describe, etc.

After narrowing it down to two or three possibilities you should
spend some time freewriting about each one to determine which one you
have the most to say about and which one you’re most enthusiastic
about describing. Again, think about your audience and what will be
interesting and entertaining for them. Events which are most
interesting are those which have external actions that can be
described vividly.

Finally after you’ve made your choice you will begin formatting your
story into the form of a paragraph. Rely on chapter 6 of Foundations
First as your guide for paragraph structure as well topic sentences,
concluding statements, and transitional words.

We will be doing peer editing on Monday March 11 so be sure to bring
four copies of the rough draft to class.

Your final draft will be due on Friday March 15.

Free Writing:

The cause and effect was so weird. I remember being home alone, nothing unusual. Then I got a phone call and the freakiy voice said’ I’m watching you”. I checked all the windows and there were some shades open so I closed them all. Sharon had gone to dinner with that guy Tony, the casting director that she was trying to schmooze for a part. They were at medieval times or some ridiculous place like that in orange County. I called her and told her and I guess they immediately wrapped up their dinner and came home. I had been so scared in the meantime. I don’t remember what I was doing but I know I was scared. Then they got there and by this time TJ had come home too – my roommate at the time, besides my sister. They came in and Tony had never been there before. He saw Cleo, my Rottweiler and like an idiot pulled her by her collar right over to him. He was on the floor when he did this. She was the sweetest dog but you shouldn’t ever do this to a dog- esp. a Rottweiler! She bit him. On the nose. He started shrieking anc crying and it was just disturbing and awkward to hear him shriek this way. He was bleeding, crying and screaming at us all at once. Sharon had to take him to the hospital. When they were there, at one point he yelled to her’don’t touch my blood’. I guess she’d been  cleaning it for him. She panicked later when thinking about this as it seemed to incdicate that he had something wrong, possibly hiv. She didn’t’ know if hse should ask him so she didn’t. But she was worried for a while. Even though hiv can’t be spread that way, we were young and ignorant and so scared. The scenario became even more ridiculous when our friend Briggs admitted that he was the one who had made the prank call. His action caused a whole unforeseen chain of events which lead to a huge debacle and great scare for my sister (and me).

 Scratch outline:

Topic sentence: A small gesture, a prank phone call lead to something even scarier happening to my sister and me one day.

- received scary call

- called Sharon and told her to come home

- her and Tony rush home from medieval Times

-Tony grabs Cleo by the collar and gets bitten

-Sharon takes him to hospital, get frightened that she has caught something from him

-we find out that she is fine but that a crank call from our friend was what set the whole terrible chain of events in motion

Identify the simple subject by underlining once and the complete subject by underlining twice.

Reality shows are very popular with television viewers. Reality TV actually began in the 1960s. One early television reality show was called Candid Camera.

This show was on the air from 1960 to 1966. Hidden cameras recorded people in unusual situations. A man in a coffee shop once dunked his doughnut into

strangers’ coffee cups. the strangers’ reactions were shown on television. They did not know about the cameras. The host revealed the presence of Candid

Camera after a few minutes. many viewers learned something about psychology from this show. Candid Camera’s creator even won an award from the

American Psychological Association.