Considering Genre

In a world of information, it is becoming increasingly difficult to capture a reader's attention for any extended period of time. Thus, the quick reference guide has become a popular tool to convey the necessary information about a story to the reader in an interesting and fast way.

S., Jon "Newspapers B&W" 8/11/11 via flickr. Public Domain License.

1. What genre are you going to commit to for Project 1? Why?

For the postmortem controversy, I have decided that I will write a quick reference guide to help provide insight into the Ivanpah bird crisis. Due to the large span of time between the controversy beginning and its conclusion, I feel that it will be important to summarize the key points of the story along with provide the necessary facts to interested readers. I also believe that this will be a good chance to familiarize myself with the genre since I don't have a whole lot of experience in it.

2. What genre conventions from your chosen genre are you planning on developing during next week's Production phase? What do you plan to do with the genre conventions that will help you accomplish the purpose of the project most effectively?

During the production phase, one of the things that I will be working on the most is producing the actual copy for the guide, as I expect it to be somewhat difficult to condense all of the information about Ivanpah into a small set of details that the reader would be interested in. Another piece that I will be working on is getting different media elements to add to the QRG so that it remains visually interesting while still giving the reader the information they need.

3. How are you feeling about Project 1 going in to the Production phase? What challenges do you anticipate next week as you create content for the project?

Overall, I'm feeling enthusiastic about the production phase of Project 1. I anticipate that I'll have some difficulties familiarizing myself with all of the nuances of the genre itself, but I feel like the topic is going to be solid and the material that comes out of it will be the same. I'm also not sure where I'll be getting visual content for my piece, because most of the media for Ivanpah is not licensed for public use, which could pose a challenge.