MLA Standards for IWAs

Please observe these MLA Standards when formatting your Independent Writing Assignment essays:

• Type your paper on a computer and print it out on standard, white 8.5 x 11-inch paper.


• Double-space the text of your paper, and use Times New Roman (Garamond if you're "fancy"). The font size should be 12 pt.


• Leave only one space after periods or other punctuation marks.


• Set the margins of your document to 1 inch on all sides.


• Indent the first line of paragraphs one half-inch from the left margin. MLA recommends that you use the Tab key as opposed to pushing the Space Bar five times. Do not skip a line (i.e., leave a blank line) between paragraphs.

Story Intro

This week we are writing the introduction to our 6-Weeks' short story project. Please model your intro on Wetherell's "The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant."

There was a summer in my life when the only creature that seemed lovelier to me than a largemouth bass was Sheila Mant. I was fourteen. The Mants had rented the cottage next to ours on the river; with their parties, their frantic games of softball, their constant comings and goings, they appeared to me denizens of a brilliant existence. “Too noisy by half,” my mother quickly decided, but I would have given anything to be invited to one of their parties, and when my parents went to bed I would sneak through the woods to their hedge and stare enchanted at the candlelit swirl of white dresses and bright, paisley skirts.

Sheila was the middle daughter—at seventeen, all but out of reach. She would spend her days sunbathing on a float my Uncle Sierbert had moored in their cove, and before July was over I had learned all her moods. If she lay flat on the diving board with her hand trailing idly in the water, she was pensive, not to be disturbed. On her side, her head propped up by her arm, she was observant, considering those around her with a look that seemed queenly and severe. Sitting up, arms tucked around her long, suntanned legs, she was approachable, but barely, and it was only in those glorious moments when she stretched herself prior to entering the water that her various suitors found the courage to come near.

You need to turn in two paragraphs of exposition, not counting dialogue (you are welcome to write dialogue paragraphs, but they don't count toward the two paragraphs of exposition).

Remember, the story details you will need are:

• Time
• Location
• Antagonist
• Friend for Narrator
• What the Narrator wants
• A secret reason the Narrator can't just take what s/he wants (to provide internal conflict)

Due Friday, Sept. 10.

Independent Writing Assignment #1

Both "Musée des Beaux Arts" and "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" were written as a response to Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. While the poets’ inspiration was the same, their use of the subject matter in their writing is different. In a well-constructed essay contrast the uses of rhetorical strategies and poetic elements employed by Auden and Williams. Consider poetic form, focus, and mood/tone through diction.

You may use your class notes and Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor as a starting point for your analytical essay, but your writing must be your own.