A strong response paper will make a connection between the material and your own opinions about the material. This assignment is intended to be a transformative activity. Through examining your experience of the narratives, you create unique meaning of the subject at hand. Transforming your new experience into words can be difficult, but it is rewarding and will help you develop a vocabulary and writing skills for your assignments in this course and others. The response paper is relaxed but clear, written in academic language with at least 500 words. 

Keep in mind that every writer, director, cinematographer, etc. has an intention, a set of beliefs or values, a specific (or vague) point they aim to make. Your first task in a response paper is to determine this and communicate it to your reader, which in this course is your instructor. This conveys that not only have you read/watched the material, but also how well you have analyzed the content. Next, you should reflect on the point, intention, meaning you have ascribed to the work. In reflection, discover how it relates to your own perspective. This becomes the main thrust, the thesis if you will, of your response paper. Finally, conclude with observations on how your opinions and how the writer/filmmaker created meaning collide or coincide. Explain why. 

OVERVIEW:

– What meaning is the writer/filmmaker trying to convey?

– What is my personal thought relative to the writer/filmmaker?

– How has viewing and reading this work affected my understanding of it, of apocalyptic narratives overall, and of my lived world experience?

HINT: The more specific you get with your observations, the more precise and analytical your response papers will be. For example, instead of choosing to write generally about cinematography, tension, and Interstellar, discuss how the camera movement mimics gravity and weightlessness and how this adds to the feeling of being out of control, etc. This way you can watch a three to five minute clip over and over, or one paragraph of The Birds, to get specific about what impressed you, or what bothered you, etc. resulting in a stronger response paper overall.

Notice that you may write from your perspective (I, me, my) sparingly, but you shouldn’t rely on it completely. Demonstrate your knowledge as well as offering your reflection on the narrative.