Unit I: Post-Write, Kirsten Southerland

Kirsten Southerland

1. My essay included the following characters: Jimmy Kimmel (Interviewer), Quentin Tarantino (Movie Director), Harvey Weinstein (Movie Producer), and Mick LaSalle (Movie Critic). My essay primarily focused on violence in the media and how it can be related to violence in today's society. My main question that I asked in my essay was "What are your opinions on violence in the media and how it affects society today?". I then flowed the conversations from there according to how I thought each character would respond, and it led to other questions such as "Can shootings such as the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting be related to violent films?" and "What are the statistics on people becoming more violent after watching violent films?". 
2. Writing a dialogue essay differs from writing a traditional essay in several aspects. I found that when writing in dialogue, it's way easier to get off topic, just like when people actually have normal conversations they can tend to quickly get off topic. But, when writing in dialogue I felt like I didn't have to focus so much on making sure I was using correct grammar, because we all know that in today's world there aren't very many people that use correct grammar when they speak. I have never written a dialogue essay until this assignment, so I personally found it more difficult than writing a traditional essay, but just because I had never written one before now. 
3. In my essay I tried to have one character that agreed, one that clearly disagreed, and one that caused complications. I thought that I successfully did that in my essay. I had Mick LaSalle that clearly agreed that violence in the media affects the way people in today's society act. I had Quentin Tarantino that disagreed with LaSalle and the statement that violence affects people. And lastly, I had Harvey Weinstein that used to produce violent films until he decided he no longer wanted to be a part of them, but he would point out some of the reasons as to why Quentin Tarantino does what he does. 
4. The best piece of constructive feedback was from my teacher because I then knew exactly what he wanted me to do to improve my paper. I like peer review, but I like getting feedback from my teacher more since he's the one that's going to be grading my paper. The feedback I received was to use more evidence in my paper, and that was helpful to know because I wasn't aware that I hadn't used very much evidence. 
5. I think one strength in my paper was that I used a lot of motions. I did this so that when the reader was reading my paper he/she could picture what each character was doing along with how they were responding. I felt like if I didn't use a lot of emotions the characters would seem very bland in their responses. 
6. One area that could be improved, even though I tried to improve it, was the amount of evidence that I used. I felt like after I went back and added more evidence that it was better, but still not to the point I would like to be at. I also felt like my paper might have been a little rushed, so I could work more on making the discussion more specific instead of so open ended. 
7. I liked how the instructor responded to my paper with the paper that he wrote his comments on. One thing I would like for future papers where grammar will matter more would just to be to add grammatical errors that should be fixed or changed to a better word. However, for this type of paper I liked the way the feedback was done.