The document provides guidance on creating informative writing using a focused topic and taking an interesting angle. It emphasizes tightly focusing on a single topic and providing accurate, well-researched information. Writers should consider different perspectives on their subject, such as a static, dynamic, or relative view, and use engaging details. The document also discusses balancing compassion with rigor as a professor and maintaining appropriate relationships with students.

1. Informative Writing Using Focus and Form to Create a Fresh Approach

2. Key Features of Reports/Profiles Tightly focused topic Accurate, well-researched information Informative, but surprising thesis Various writing strategies Clear definitions Appropriate design Interesting or unusual Subject Necessary background Interesting angle Firsthand account Engaging details Narrative description or interview format

3. Focus is Key! Tightly focused topic Don’t choose a topic and just write ALL YOU KNOW about the topic—that’s not focus! Interesting or unusual subject (and that would be an F)

4. Take an Interesting Angle

5. “ Writing Home: High Street” specific, concrete, engaging details words with strong connotations

6. “ Georgia O’Keefe” Tightly focused Sense of context—”the men” Accompanying visual Didion’s daughter

7. Profiles Dominant impression Quotations—if a person Pictures—if a place Additional research Details that support the angle Make it have a POINT! What are you saying about the person or place?

8. Concept, New Drug, or a Food Detail Examples Use of various organizational patterns: defining classifying dividing comparing explaining a process analyzing causes or effects

9. Don’t forget format --Try a magazine article look (but don’t forsake content over style)

10. Ways to Generate Detail for Your Topic comes from field of physics Applied to writing: 1) static view 2) dynamic view 3) relative view

11. Static View of Your Subject like a snapshot view descriptions details frozen in time/space

12. Dynamic View change over time different seasons different times of day what happens in space of a certain time how something’s changed what happens—chronolog. order

13. Relative View Classified in a category Divided into parts Compared with like things Compared with unlike things (analogy) Things associated with it

14. Next class time: Generate pages of details, even a rough draft if possible on your topic Consider writing an essay on the topic that is due on Tuesday for the Common Hour, if you plan to enter contest.

15. The question again: Essay Question: The author of My Freshman Year claims that one of the most important things she discovered in her freshman year that made a difference from the professors was “compassion.” However, she also found that some of the best courses to take in college were “hard but not boring,” and “not easy but worth it.” How does a professor balance compassion with rigor in a course, reasonableness with challenges, and maintain appropriate, mentor-like relationships with students without babying or psychoanalyzing them at one extreme or remaining aloof from them at the other extreme? Your essay may contain advice for professors on how to be more rigorous while still being compassionate, it may address issues related to this delicate balance, like the problems with sites like RateMyProfessors, or may describe the kind of professor or course you hope to encounter (or have encountered) here at Edinboro University of PA. Do not mention actual professors’ names, but do use specific details from your own life and references from My Freshman Year in your essay.

16. Thanks for listening! On Monday, I will ask you a two-question quiz and, if you listened to this podcast, you will be able to answer the questions correctly.