Ex­er­cise 1: Con­ven­tions of Nar­ra­tive and Be­lief
(Dig­i­tal Sto­ry­telling Project warm-up)

• due Fri­day 29-January; post on your Word­Press (or in D2L)
• 10 points
• 500 words (min­i­mum; 700 max)

» In­struc­tions & Ob­jec­tives:

Prac­tice ap­ply­ing crit­i­cal per­spec­tive, rec­og­niz­ing nar­ra­tive con­ven­tions: dis­cuss one non­fic­tion story (ei­ther al­ready read/heard/watched or a new se­lec­tion).
Use 3 key terms / con­cepts to dis­cuss thought­fully and pur­pose­fully, avoid­ing sum­mary (es­pe­cially story de­scrip­tion): iden­tify the cat­e­gory, us­ing a spe­cific ex­am­ple to il­lus­trate, and the ef­fect or sig­nif­i­cance.

Pro­tip: use cat­e­gories from “De­signs of Mean­ing” plus terms/concepts from “Life’s Sto­ries” or New Dig­i­tal Sto­ry­telling.

Be­sides this ef­fi­cient and spe­cific dis­cus­sion, also iden­tify one be­lief ex­pressed by the story. Briefly note if this is stated ex­plic­itly (when? ex­tent?) or con­veyed in­di­rectly (if so, how?).
→ No need to an­a­lyze, re­fute, en­gage the be­lief it­self; rather, just iden­tify what it is and how it is communicated—especially if it is subtle/suggested and you have in­ferred (by what clues/indicators?).

Fi­nally, be sure to con­clude with a view to­ward Project 1: name one idea for po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tion in com­pos­ing your dig­i­tal nar­ra­tive. Even if spec­u­lat­ing, try con­sid­er­ing the “take­way” of what you’ve learned from your analy­sis of the story (and sto­ry­telling par­tic­u­larly), as a ben­e­fit for prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion (com­pos­ing); or, in­sight about the con­ven­tions of nar­ra­tive — how it works, and/or the re­la­tion with con­vey­ing be­lief (stat­ing, il­lus­trat­ing, re­count­ing), as a par­tic­u­lar form of knowl­edge and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
→ This con­clu­sion can be brief (~2 sen­tences), pro­gress­ing from your analy­sis dis­cus­sion (with­out re­peat­ing) and look­ing to­ward the project. 

---

As­sess­ment Cri­te­ria (from syl­labus):
Posted to per­sonal blog (or D2L), these infor­mal com­po­si­tions illus­trate atten­tive read­ing of as­signed mate­ri­als, progress to­ward project, and engage­ment with class top­ics rel­a­tive to sched­ule.
Credit is as­signed for (1) sub­mit­ting on-time, with re­quired length and me­dia (if as­signed);
(2) demon­strat­ing atten­tion to class top­ics, con­tent knowl­edge, and crit­i­cal think­ing, par­tic­u­larly by describ­ing in­sights and con­nec­tions;
(3) pro­vid­ing thought­ful and rel­e­vant re­sponses to prompts, through spe­cial­ized dis­course;
(4) with spe­cific exam­ples from per­sonal knowl­edge and/or respec­tive read­ings,
(5) while extend­ing rhetor­i­cal knowl­edge and mas­tery of writ­ing con­ven­tions, prac­tic­ing effi­cient prose (i.e. min­i­miz­ing /avoiding sum­mary, rep­e­ti­tion, digres­sion, and unnec­es­sary dis­cus­sion).

---