Today’s Plan:
- 2024 Riff
- Some old stuff on writing a paper
2024: Riffing About Writing a Paper
I’m going to free-write a bit here. I’m going to free-write about how much I hate having to develop and present this material every year. I am going to explain why I struggle to assemble and deliver a standard lecture about writing a paper, which I usually title “Academic Writing Crash Course.”
Let me start off with one of my foundational principles:
- Writing cannot be taught.
I accept no counter argument. Cicero once said that the greatest impediment to those who want to learn is those who want to teach. Those who want to teach are driven to reduce something complex into a seemingly simple set of rules. The contemporary education industry, built on pre-fabricated curriculums and standardized tests, is a capitalist manifestation of this pedagogical desire.
But writing is not a mechanical, transferable skill (in the sense that I can transfer my ability to write to you, but I do believe learning how to write in one context can transfer, partially, to other contexts). Sure, there are some rules I can teach you, but those rules are arbitrary and likely alien unless you already know them. Wait, did you just say you can only learn how to write *after* you know how to write? Yes. Yes I did. Because writing is a matter of praxis–a combination of authentic aim and embodied practice. Authentic, in that you have to really care and want to do it. Embodied in that you actually have to struggle through it. All writing is struggle. Well, it is a struggle if it matters. If it attempts to bring something new into your world. I only really learned how to explicate the rules of writing when working as a high school English teacher, where I was ordered to prepare students for high stakes writing exams.
I can write about postmodern ethical theory and make it look easy because I’ve read a lot of postmodern ethical theory. Writing about that theory has provided me with a lot of experience taking complex things and pinning them down into frustrating, exacting, slippery, words. My relationship with words is always complicated, but I think of them as trickster fairies who like to tease and play games and sometimes reward us with a gift that feels so perfect we wonder from where it came. It came from the fairies.
Revision: Should I delete this paragraph? I’m not sure what it is doing. I’ll leave it here for now, because I like the last two sentences.
Trust me, my feelings of command about writing about theory was not always this way. I spent two years agonizing over every word. I’m learning queer theory this semester and I can only write (think) about queer theory by putting it in conversation with postmodern ethical theory or rhetorical theory or actor-network theory or something else I have mastered. Chances are, you haven’t mastered anything yet and if you have you still probably feel like you haven’t. It is really common to feel anxious about writing and I even feel a bit anxious writing this and if you are one of those people that don’t feel anxious then good for you. I can only wonder at what that must feel like.
Switching gears. Writing cannot be taught. Learning to write is like learning to play the guitar. Watching someone else play the guitar really doesn’t help you play the guitar–at least at first. You have to learn how to place your fingers, develop calluses, coordinate your hands. You have to learn cord progressions and scales. Then, maybe, you can watch Mike Dawes and pick up a trick or two. I watch Mike Dawes and am filled with equal parts awe and envy. Such it often is with writing–to see someone else who makes it look so easy and thus to grow uneasy with our own talents. Struggle *and* anxiety then.
Some of you already know how to write. I’ve read your writing. It is insightful and beautiful. But your writing might not be disciplined (by academic expectations–you know notes and how to place your fingers but you haven’t learned the progressions and scales yet). You might feel that your writing isn’t what you, or someone else, wants it to be. Some of you are terrified to submit your writing, let alone share it with the class. Some of you might never have written something longer than 5 pages. The idea of writing a seven-page paper about a video game seems impossible. Trust me, by the time I am done with you seven-pages will feel like an impossibility–it is simply too few pages to say anything close to all the things you want to say. What I want from your writing is for it to want to say something, to see evidence of thought, of engagement, of wonder, of anger.
To return: it is impossible to teach someone how to write. But it isn’t impossible to learn how to write. Learning how to write requires time, suffering, accomplishment, self-reflection, and more time. Lots more time. I once wrote that we, those charged by the university to “teach” students how to write, should not think of ourselves as master chefs training apprentices. I’ve had that teacher, the one who thinks they are Gordon Ramsey and teaches with a religious fervor and gave me a “B” on a paper in graduate school because I dared to actually split an infinitive twice in a paper. Did I not know the rules? He called me into office hours to question my aptitude for graduate study because I dared to actually split an infinitive. Fuck that guy. I’m still not over it. Obviously.
No, I am no master chef and you are not apprentices. I am an architect, and this classroom is a kitchen (that’s one of my favorite lines I’ve written and last night a colleague mentioned how she shares it with her class and it always feels great when someone tells you that you wrote something that matters). When I was a professor at South Florida they brought Robert Pinsky, the former poet laureate, in to do a lecture for our MFA program. He spoke at length about the sound and rhythms of poetry. It was awesome. During the Q&A, a student asked him how he approaches reading poetry and his answer was one of my favorite lines ever: “a poet has to learn to read like a good chef eats.” What a metaphor. Let me unpack it a bit: you have to learn to eat so that you not only enjoy the product but so that you taste the process–so you are thinking about the flavors, ingredients, and, most importantly, techniques that bring the dish together. We have to speculate towards aims and desires.
So, today, I’ll try to “teach” you how to write the only way I really know how, by reading some past papers and thinking about what they do well. Identifying what I want them to do better. I will try to “teach” you about thesis statements, topic sentences, and contextual transitions as if they are scales or instructions for braising. Not all reading is the same: and, when practicing writing, you have to be aware of what you want to write. Learning to cook a cheeseburger is not the same thing as learning to barbecue or poach salmon or make chili. Let’s not even talk about baking which require precise timing and exact measurement. Baking might be closer to the idea of what many people want writing to be (just follow the rules!) until you actually try to bake something and learn that precision alone does not a great cake make. Point: you have to read the kind of writing that you want to produce. You have to have read about it and thought about how it is organized. It helps to have a sense of structure, a trace outline in your head. I can try and give you that today.
But before I try to do all those impossible things, or to teach a few fundamentals of academic writing, I want to lay out what is possible: to see writing in this class as an opportunity to say something to the class in a voice that is nothing more than the voice you want it to be. Be comfortable. To write in a way that feels natural. To not try to “invent the university” and write like a scholar or a student. But to write as someone trying to figure out what they might say about something: something interesting, important, significant, annoying. REVEAL something, if only to yourself.
/riff
Stock Lecture on the Foundational Elements of Academic Writing
For those that want a much longer and more detailed set of instructions for writing an academic paper, see this academic writing crash course. If you have not completed ENG 123 and/or want to write more about video games, then I teach that class every other fall–it will next be offered in fall of 2025.
Rather than just walk through the lecture this semester, I want to spend some time with the evaluation rubric in Canvas. We’ll look at a few papers and the lecture above.
First rubric criteria:
The paper must identify what it thinks the theme/argument/purpose of the game is (speculating on the designer’s intentions).
This is a content question–can you build a theory of what this game is trying to accomplish? Can you identify the rhetorical purpose for this game? Of course, this is more complicated with some games than others. When talking with y’all, I’ve framed this as: what change in idea, behavior, or perception does this game aim to enact in our real world?
You might Google to see if the designer has talked about this–but, of course, we cannot always trust artists to be honest about the purpose of their art. We can Google to see other writers and fan theories, cite those, and argue for which one we think is best. BUT, at the end of the day, you have to make this argument based on what happens in the game. (In most cases this is not a one sentence answer, but takes at least a paragraph to describe). A
Second rubric criteria:
The paper must provide an explication of Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric, citing Bogost, Custer, and this essay by Mark Love (also in the files section of Canvas). 2024 Edit: I’ll be looking at how you transform / improve upon the Chat GPT material we discusses on Tuesday.
First off, you only have to quote the Bogost essay. I will give you some bonus points if you cite the Custer and Love in a productive, non-drive-by shooting, kind of way (actual engagement rather than just shoving a quotation in there). Second, you don’t have to cite the ChatGPT material here, since I gave it to. If you are struggling with this element of the paper, then you might go to the Writing Center with a draft of your paper to discuss how to improve the ChatGPT material. They will help walk you through it and plan out how to improve it! If you need more time to complete the paper due to a Writing Center appointment, then I will automatically grant it (be sure to have the Writing Center email me after your appointment).
Third rubric criteria:
Does the paper provide enough context about the plot and characters in a game? Does this plot summary run too long?
Here’s where revision and compression might be hard. You have to describe this game–its plot, its world (if relevant), its central mechanics, its main characters in a very short amount of space. Maybe a paragraph or two. This can be a massive challenge. You will likely have to write a longer summary (2-3 pages) and then prune it down. You have to imagine what questions a reader must have, what questions are necessary to understanding your analysis, and introduce them here.
In a simple game, you might do this in the introduction. This might open the paper. More complicated games should probably have their argumentative-introduction first and then lay this out in a second section.
Fourth and Fifth rubric criteria:
The paper must identify at least two ways the mechanics work with or against that theme/argument/purpose. Remember that “mechanics” refers to rules, procedures, abilities, scoring systems, etc. Anything related to how we play the game. [Note: multiple path narratives are tricky here]
Does the paper analyze the procedural dimensions of 2-4 specific scenes, mechanics, elements of the game? Is there enough rich description for me to follow/appreciate/evaluate the analysis?
Warning: I realize those criteria don’t exactly make sense and that I need to revise them. Let me try to do some of that work here.
I’m looking for the paper to “close read” at least two different scenes or design elements. Each of these readings should have an argument or claim (e.eg., “The scoring system in this game encourages us to want to eat more ice cream”) and then point at evidence of how the game element does the thing it claims to do. Typically, in academic writing, you want a paragraph to open with the claim, and then present the evidence. (“The scoring system in this game encourages us to want to eat more ice cream. At the end of chapter 1, for instance, Gretchen reminds us that eating ice cream makes the cows happy. If you complete the chapter without eating any ice cream, then the cows will smash through a wall and attack you. Most players, however, are likely to have eaten some ice cream. If you haven’t collected enough ice cream, the cows grow sad. Beyond this emotional response, the game also rewards you with a power-up if you are able to eat all the ice cream available in the chapter. I believe this is a procedural argument because the ice cream here represents paying taxes in the real world.”) Remember as you move through your analysis to explicitly tie game play back to real-world rhetorical purpose.
Sixth criteria:
Does the paper handle sources with care?
This relates to citation practices and contextualizing quotes. For this, I will turn to the stock lecture.
Seventh criteria:
Does the title not suck?
I believe we have already discussed this.
Eight criteria:
Does the introduction lay out the argument? Do I see signs that it was actually written last?
I am a jedi knight when it comes to this. Do not question my power to know if the thesis paragraph (usually not a single statement) was actually written before you wrote the paper. I will not give you a B because you split an infinitive, but I will rain hellfire upon you if you try to slip by some lame-ass, watered-down, generic thesis that you wrote before you actually wrote the paper.
To the stock lecture.
