The Most Important Skill

     Arguably the most important skill I have learned in the first quarter of English came from the unit on writing a five-part-paragraph analyzing To Kill A Mockingbird, which involved writing, editing, and listening to the paragraphs. This unit came and went in October but the techniques learned have not. Not only is knowing the format itself important, but the editing techniques and writing styles are equally so.

     By simple merit of being the standard short-paragraph form, knowing how to write a five-part-paragraph is a necessary. However, in all expository writing, some variation on concrete details and commentary will pop up. Therefore, understanding how to utilize these, how to intersperse your concrete details from the entire text, how to comment without summarizing, and how to make both build upon the theme, is crucial in order to write about literature.

     Another hugely important aspect of learning how to write a five part paragraph was learning how to critique and edit the paragraphs of others as well as one's own. Although it initially appears short and simple, because of its size, a five-part-paragraph must be streamlined, with every idiom, device, and word contributing to its overall theme. One must first understand in detail all of the elements in the writing in order to critique it, and even then, to forge a better paragraph, one must be able to look critically at their creation and say, "A little more to the left."


One side effect of being surrounded by all of the interpretations of To Kill a Mockingbird within the five-part-paragraphs is that I now view each book I read as a story with an innate meaning to life as well as a tale. When I read The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, and began wondering how on earth the reader was intended to sympathize with the seemingly deranged Count, I realized that, rather than the Count, it was the message about revenge that was important in the novel. In short, through my study of five-part-paragraphs, I have grown as a writer and a reader.

Lobsters

     One idea from the classroom discussion of "Lobsters," by Howard Nemerov that interested me was the comparison of the lobsters to philosophers in their ivory towers. The comparison is not so far-fetched. Like philosophers, lobsters appear from the outside to be entirely shut off from the outside world in a dreamlike state, crawling through time with no apparent regard for the rest of the world. Similarly, philosophers might also appear to an observer to be nothing more than extremely lazy humans. However, both are more than daydreamers, the lobsters with their "imperial claws" and "beauty of strangeness," the philosophers with their thoughts and ideas.

      It would be an understatement to say that this influenced my view of the poem. I started to realize that the lobsters themselves were more than victims, and that the author was saying a bit more than an animal-rights statement. Rather, I began grasping at the deeper ideas of the poem, like death, ignorance, and the cyclic nature of the world. The comparison of lobsters to philosophers opened up my eyes to the greater depths of the poem.

Five Part Paragraphs

     To write a quality 5-part-paragraph, a writer needs to do many things. Two of the most important, and most commonly forgotten, are to really think about the topic of the paragraph and to pay attention to the rubric. Many of the paragraphs that have been read in class suffer because the topic of the paragraph is too broad, the concrete details do not relate to the topic sentence, or the topic does not present enough material to work with. All of these problems relate to an insufficient amount of thought being put into the creation of the topic. Many people try to write based on the first topic that comes into their head. Although occasionally this may be effective, most often the best idea is not the first one, but the third, fifth, or even eighth topic that they think of. In addition to this, many of the remaining errors simply relate to the rubric itself. Some people forget a transition, or add a bit of extra information in their conclusion, or have too much commentary. All of these problems can be solved by simply checking the paragraph against the checklist for disparities. The errors become simple to fix in this way.

     In my own case, I probably need to check my paragraph for simple errors a bit more as well as ensure that my topic is completely cohesive. At first, my current 5-part-paragraph jumped between several points sporadically, not emphasizing any of them. In the future, I must try and keep my paragraph on a single, apparent idea, therefore bypassing this problem. Also, several of the problems with my paragraph, such as a few punctuation errors, could have been fixed just by checking the paragraph thoroughly. These errors are really unnecessary. With a few careful changes, I can significantly improve my 5-part-paragraph.

High Diction

     This fine morning, I departed English class promptly and began descending the stairs towards my mathematics class. As I walked, the thronging mass divided itself into tributaries and I endeavored to ensure that I had discovered the correct one. Eventually, the lethargic crowd awoke and sorted themselves into their respective destinations. I entered my classroom, the second to arrive, and immediately began transcribing a copy of the night's assignment. Soon, the rest of the class entered and seated themselves in their desks, and the lesson commenced

     The lecture shed light on the division of polynomials, and stratagems to use when pursuing the quotient, such as synthetic division. Although dull at times, I ensured that my eyes remained focused so as to be prepared for the toil that was to come. After a half-hour of explanation, the toil in question began. I am now led to believe that sadists locked up in some godforsaken asylum were the authors of my textbook, as the difficulty of two of the problems bordered on the ridiculous. Although the concept that these writers sought to explain was simple in nature, they attempted to include every possible complexity. Soon, the class ended and I was forced to complete the assignment elsewhere.

Tides

A duet I wrote over the summer and only got around to uploading now. I'm sorry about the MIDI quality and editing. Blame laziness. Oh, and if someone knows how to embed YouTube videos, please say so.

Most Interesting Writing

     I have written enough in school and on my own that thinking of my reactions to my own writing is a bit of a challenge nowadays. However, out of the work that I can remember, my short story in 7th grade stands out.

     A bit of background: in 7th grade, my English teacher taught a unit on short stories. We read The Necklace, The Lottery, The Tell-Tale Heart, and many others, and discussed their elements, plot arcs, and characterization. To finish off the unit, we each had to write a seven-to-ten page short story, and as you may have guessed by this point, this is the piece of writing that I am referring to.

     Unlike most things I write, which I can usually sort by whatever had been read recently, and therefore heavily influenced by, I'm not entirely sure where my story came from. It featured a 14-year-old girl named Aura, her linebacker older brother, her rather average parents, their infant son, and very little else. My entire short story literally took place throughout the course of one day inside a rather ordinary house. The country that the house was in, which I took great pains to avoid identifying, was about to be bombed back into the Stone Age by a similarly unidentified aggressor.

     Most of my short story, I realized now, consisted of various ways my protagonist attempted to distract herself from the approaching bombs. Morbid? Definitely. Suspenseful? Occasionally, which was why I enjoyed writing the story. The tension and the constant thought that in a few hours, everything that the characters were seeing would be blown to ashes made the writing process entertaining. And the little touches that I tried to add (a computer game, her older brother's football injury, the doting parents) made the story of better quality than most things I had written up until that point.

     At the same time, my writing was nowhere near perfect. One of the parts that I take the most issue with is my attempt at some sort of climax for the story, which ended up being rather flat and dull. My attempts to avoid the aggressor country and the bombed country verged on comical. The ending also was very vague, and the question I received most from those who read it was "Did they die?" followed extremely closely by "Why didn't you kill them?" Still, overall, I consider my 7th grade short story my best piece of writing.

The Count of Monte Cristo

My novel that I am currently reading is The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. The novel was written two hundred years ago, and is set in post-Napoleonic France. The story started out slowly, laying out exposition about how great a person Edmond Dantes, the protagonist, is, and how many of his peers are jealous of his good fortune, only for Dantes to be sent to prison. Dantes promptly breaks out of prison, discovers an enormous fortune, and adopts the identity of The Count of Monte Cristo. All of this, the back of the book could tell you.

The story centers around Dantes, but it seems more like there are two main characters. Edmond Dantes is naive and believes the best of everyone, quick but not educated. Then, after the events listed above, he is practically replaced. Instead, the mysterious, powerful, wise Count has taken his role. No one recognizes him, and he is practically a new character. On one hand, this is a welcome relief from the slightly two-dimensional character of Dantes, but one almost feels Dumas is setting up a plot twist. At the same time, the story is, if not full of action, at least constantly moving, with plenty of murders, vendettas, bandits, kidnappings, and intrigue to keep the plot going.

The author's characterization of people, relying on sharp contrasts and descriptions through dialogue, creates very interesting characters. On one hand, one can name a character and immediately think of a defining characteristic. Yet the characters rarely move beyond that. Even our protagonist, Dantes, is infrequently characterized beyond what he begins as, and when he becomes the Count, it feels like a tectonic shift, character-wise.

Easily, I can compare this book to Les Miserables, another story which I read last year. On the surface, both are quite similar. Both concern a Frenchman in the early 19th century who is injustly imprisoned, and both have an inordinately long length. If one compares the two, there are significant differences. Les Miserables was essentially a character-driven story, its plot consisting of the emotional conflicts of its protagonists and antagonists, and the actions by which these conflicts were displayed. The Count of Monte Cristo is a very different novel, in that it, for better or for worse, tells much less about a character, even as the characters do more. Comparing Edmond Dantes and Jean Valjean is ridiculous; they begin similarly, but soon diverge into completely different plotllines.

For a creative project, since very few guidelines have been given at this point, I am still slightly lost. Still I think it would be interesting to write a piece of music consisting of themes for the main characters. I have already composed enough music to believe that I could accomplish this, and given my lack of artistic abilities, it would be the highest quality product I could produce. In order to make the piece more understandable, I would include annotations so that a listener could understand when the piece changes.


Thanks for reading
                             -Sherwin