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Write-a-Proposal

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years ago

Here we are, Spring Break! Time to plot a time-line that will take our 'zine work to the streets. I'm glad the panic-quotient is down, though. Many of us are still trying to "stay open" about the contours of a final project. However, we can segment and evaluate our progress by proposing a work plan that builds on a sequence of writing tasks, each one focusing on a particular set of rhetorical and research strategies:

 

Narrative

Definition

Using analogy and mission statements to find audience

Evaluation

Causal Argumentation

analog rehearsal and layout/design: printing, cutting, and translating your writing to 'zine formats.

 

Try the following heuristic as a way of envisioning and enacting a process appropriate to your group's vision. If this template isn't helpful, by all means try another framework. Just propose that framework, with a timeline, and then we'll synchronize each group's timeline, so as to maximize feedback.

 

1. Idea/ Purpose : What is the topic of your argument or composition? What is your purpose in writing about it?

 

2. Form : Think about the media and research methods you will mix in the wiki-version of your 'zine: film clips and sounds from the world wide web and beyond? Of course. Text documents, interviews, field research....be creative with this one, use the wiki's flexibility for all it's worth. Your final wiki-version of your project should combine various forms.

 

3. Idiom and Audience : At the same time, always always always consider your audience. How will you make appeals for their attention? Will you deal with your subject as a scientist might? Like an artist? Like an athlete? Like a witch or a wizard? Each multimedia project will be different, because each will be tuned to a different scenario.

 

4. Rhetorical process : How will you, as a group, divide the tasks? How will you plan your time? Include a timeline in your proposal. How will you align the pieces of the project? How do you anticipate that you will parse the process and divide the work? Consider peer writing beyond your group's efforts: how will you include "other voices" in your 'zine (VIP!)? You can break down the process many different ways, and each project will surely end up diverging from the provisional memo produced for this deadline. Still, consider what you'll need to do in any case: fielding, purchasing supplies, performing purposive experiments with transitions and arrangement strategies via argumentative technique (definition, evaluation, cause, analogy, idiom translation, prolepsis, prolepsis, and more prolepsis), deployment of technical editing skills (grammar, syntax, drawing/drafting, audio or video work).

 

5. Exportable versions: 'zine!

 

Remember, it's early. As we continue to tune or compositional experiments to particular communities, we should expect our projects to diverge from the proposed paths sketched in our memos. This memo is really just another exercise in "prolepsis," ye olde art of anticipation.

 

When writing your  proposals for final projects, try not to panic. Or, rather, welcome the panic and consult the wiki, so you can convert that panic energy into a rhetorical process. Remember the secret of sequencing. Don't think of a project as a "big paper," rather, imagine a chain of little papers that you describe in your proposal memo. These efforts, along with artful selection of outside materials, will add up to 'zine. Get stigmergic on our course wiki, remix and rework. -ShareRiff

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