Autobiography

Autobiographical Excerpt: An excerpt from the autobiography book that you haven't written.

Simple Instructions: Write a story about something important that has happened in your life.

There are four "deliverables" for this assignment (see step 7)

Use the following sequence of steps and do all of them.

  1. Create a pre-writing document for an autobiographical excerpt. On the front of a sheet of paper, create a 3 column chart with headings called setting, story, and significance. Write out at least 4 possible ideas for your story. This should take at least 30 minutes. 1/14 and 1/15

  2. Next, choose the one idea that shows the most promise (about which you can write the most detail and insight). Turn the paper over and expand on that topic by writing down the many possible components that your could involve story. Remember, a good story should include : character, setting, action, climax, resolution (or whatever similar components work for you). 1/16 and 1/17

  3. Next, move on to creating an outline from the expansion section of your pre-writing document. This will probably include section titles and bullet points. 1/21 and 1/22

  4. Third, build a rough draft from your outline. Grammar and mechanics don't matter much at this point, but be sure to create a good flow and appropriate 'voice'. 1/23 and 1/24

  5. During class you'll be getting suggestions for "revisions", which are large structural changes; as well as "edits", which are the smaller mechanical changes. Those will be done on the printed copy. 1/27

  6. Next, incorporate those changes into your typed copy, make any other edits, add a title, and print the final copy. Turn in 1/28

  7. You'll turn it in the results of steps 1 and 2, as well as 3 and 5 each on separate sheets of paper.

  8. For extra credit, make an audio file of you reading your essay. Open GarageBand or Audacity (or similar application) and figure out how to make a new file, enable to internal microphone, record your voice, edit mistakes and/or combine pieces. You can even mix in background audio effects if you like. When done, export your file to an mp3 (or similar), name it "autobio_yourname" and turn it in via http://www.dropitto.me/chrisheumann (pw = heumann)

As far as length goes, I didn't give a length guideline, or at least not intentionally.

The whole essay should involve about 3 to 4 hours of total work time.

I am assuming that time investment should yield about 2 tight pages, but length will vary greatly from student to student.

Quantity isn't as important as quality.