The Open Prompt: Practice, Practice!

I. Understanding the Open Prompt-- Harder than you might think

a. The question: Breaking down the prompt into its elementary components ensures that you fully understand what the question is asking. Be sure to note if the question asks for techniques, effect, or meaning. If the prompt neglects to ask for meaning(the classic, “hidden so what? question), be sure to include it anyways.

b. The relationships between techniques, effect, and meaning: Technique creates effect, and effect creates meaning. Sometimes, if the question allows it, you can skip the effect and jump straight to meaning from technique.

c. DIDLS: Diction, imagery, details, language, syntax. All the technique you will ever need.

d. TAP: Thesis answers prompt! ALWAYS.

II. Essay Practice
a. Our delightful blog posts, six in all.

b. 2003. “According to critic Northrop Frye, "Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning." Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.”

c. 2007. “In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character's relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.”