This power point provides guidance for students on writing a multigenre essay. It includes instructions to: 1) Read a sample multigenre essay for components to consider like genres, personas, and cohesiveness. 2) Complete a writing activity by Don Murray where students write freely on notecards to generate ideas. 3) Analyze the first genre/paragraph as setting the tone and implying a central tension. 4) Practice dialogue writing with conflict and prompts. 5) Write a poem using genres like haiku, photograph poem, or poems for two voices.

1. EDLL 5341/EDLL 5344
Learning Module 12
Week of April 7, 2014

2. Overview
This power point is designed to serve as a reading guide of
sorts for chapters 5-8 in Blending Genre, Altering Style and
help you advance in writing your multigenre essay. To this
end, you should engage in the following activities as you
work through this power point:
 Read a Sample Multigenre Essay from Blending
Genre, Altering Style
 Engage in a Writing Activity Created by Don Murray
 Analyze Pivotal Components to the Multigenre Essay:
◦ The First Genre
◦ Dialogue Writing
◦ Different Genres of Poetry

3. Sample Multigenre Essay
 Read “Miriam‟s Song,” on pg. 113 in
Blending Genre, Altering Style.
 Components to consider in this
multigenre essay:
◦ Introductory Letter
◦ First Genre
◦ Types of Genres Included
◦ Personas (Voices) Included
◦ Sense of Cohesiveness Throughout the
Essay
◦ End Notes

4. Don Murray‟s “Most Effective
Writing Activity”
Please complete the following writing activity and
send me an email about what happened for you
as a writer through this process. For
instance, were you surprised by what you wrote?
Also, try to write on a small piece of paper if you
cannot locate a few three-by-five inch note cards.
 Take a three-by-five inch card and start writing.
 Write what you keep thinking about. Write what
you need to know; write what others need to
know.
 Put words down until they wiggle snake-like
towards a sentence.
 Write a sentence. Follow it.
 Take another card and keep writing.
(Murray, 2007, p. 181)

5. Don Murray‟s Example
“Whimpy . . .In my tent . . .Camp Morgan
. . . Kept near my cot . . .Whimpy Ellis
kept snakes in our tent, and all summer
long he did not know I was terrified of
snakes. It may have been training for
combat a few years later when, as a
paratrooper in World War II, I could turn
off my feelings, step over the dead or
dying, and move forward” (p. 181).

6. Analyze the Activity
 Did this help you generate ideas?
 Were you surprised, disturbed, or
intrigued by what you wrote about?
 Can you use this writing as a topic for
your multigenre essay?

7. The First Genre
Quote from Don Murray:
“The lead or first sentence of the essay . . .sets
the tone for all that follows. The beginning of the
essay should contain—or strongly imply—a
central tension (contradiction, irony, surprise, or
problem) that will be explored in the essay. The
lead is the promise to readers that they and the
writer will discover something during the reading
that will make them view the world differently
from the way they have in the past” (p. 39).
 Pause here in the power point and complete the
activities on page 40 in Blending Genre, Altering
Style

8. Dialogue Writing
“Effective dialog contains „an essential
element of conflict . . . .[T]ension and
drama are heightened when characters
are constantly (in one form or another)
saying no to each other‟” (p. 58).
 See an example on page 59.
 See the tips and prompts on page 64.
 Select a prompt to write over on page 64.

9. Genres of Poetry
Please look at examples of the following
genres of poetry writing in Blending
Genre, Altering Style:
 Haiku, pg. 97
 Photograph Poem, pg. 101
 Prose Poetry, pg. 103
 Poems for Two Voices, pg. 104
Select one of these genres and write a
poem about your topic.