It's a Frame Up:

1. It's a Frame Up: Devising Beginnings and Endings, Introductions and Conclusions

2. Often, getting an essay started and getting it concluded can trouble students more than finding something to say in between. • Students can always rely, on the old standbys: the traditional introduction and conclusion, telling the audience what will be said and concluding with what has been said. Granted, this approach works well enough but these crusty techniques come off as predictable and boring.

3. It is a single word, a literary/historical reference, or a personal narrative that can provide a fresh way into and out of one’s writing, surrounding it much like a window frame surrounds a glass pane or a decorative frame surrounds a picture or mirror. Just as the right picture frame becomes one with the painting, the right rhetorical frame becomes one with the composition, enhancing as well as complementing. This frame not only starts and concludes the writing, but can also: reinforce the main idea offer a broader perspective or even interject a bit of humor. What Is a Framing Device?

4. Why use the “Frame Up”?IT’S CREATIVE • A carefully crafted frame can make satisfying metaphorical connections for both reader and writer, giving a paper a deeper sense of meaning and a way into and out of an assignment that escapes traditional patterns such as, “In conclusion,...”

5. Three Different Framing Devices • The Single-Word, Single-Image Frame • Allusions as Framing Devices • Personal Experience as a Framing Device

6. The Single-Word, Single-Image Frame • Choose a word or short phrase that is significant to or metaphorical for your topic • Free-write on that word or phrase for 3-5 minutes • Use portions of that free-write to open your piece or introduce your thesis. • Touch on/reflect on that word or phrase again in your conclusion • Use a bit for your title

7. The Single-Word, Single-Image Frame The good/bad, shades of grey INTRODUCTION Shades of Grey: Making decisions during the Cold War It is difficult to determine if decisions are good or bad when politics are involved. Rather, the political world is shadowed by shades of grey.  Mostly, the people at home think that decisions made by our leaders are good. However, abroad, those same decisions can appear negative.During the Cold War, the United States made many good decisions to completely stop the spread of communism at home and abroad. However, besides many good decisions, the U.S. also made bad choices that left several resentments between nations. (Thesis)

8. The Single-Word, Single-Image FrameThe good/bad, shades of grey CONCLUSION Although the United States made many good decisions during the Cold War, there were bad decisions that left some countries in disagreement with the United States. The CIA involvement with the Cuban Missile Crisis negatively impacted the United States’ international relations. The Korean War and the Marshall plan helped prevent the spread of communism abroad, while McCarthyism led to the cruel execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Independent of how good or bad the choices were that the United States made, they were determined with the objective of ending communism and preventing both spread at home and abroad. Rarely are decisions wholly good or bad, rather they are grey shades of perspective.

9. The Single-Word, Single-Image FrameAn Example • Syndicated columnist William Safire relies on the single word tsunami, as a metaphorical framing device. • In a 1994 article, he calls on tsunami, the Japanese word for a “great wave caused by underwater seismic shock,” to frame an article on the shock that caused the conservative wave of that year. His introduction connects the definition of tsunami with the main idea of his article: the majority of voters “shook up” legislators to express their lack of faith in an ever-growing government. • The column ends with a second mention of the tsunami, identifying it as a shock that does indeed change everything and that leads to exciting days politically, an analogy that reinforces his (but not everyone’s) opinion.

10. Allusions as a framing device • Choose something from history, literature, or popular culture that is significant to or metaphorical for your topic • Free-write on that allusion for 3-5 minutes • Use portions of that free-write to open your piece or introduce your thesis. • Touch on/reflect on that allusion again in your conclusion • Use a bit for your title

11. Allusions as a framing device: An example • A student might write a paper on the relationship between humans and plants. Introduction • “Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies . . . ” During the Middle Ages peasant, monks and kings carried a pocket full of flowers to mask the stench of death during the time of the black plague. This is only one of the many useful purposes of plants that have benefited us throughout the ages. Plants and human beings have an integral relationship that demands respect. (Thesis) Conclusion • The paper could then conclude with a reinforcement of the warning that we depend on plant life to add quality to our own lives: “Without plants, life on Earth would cease to exist as we know it: ‘ashes, ashes, we all fall down.’”

12. Using folk and fairy tales as allusions • One student, writing about her struggle with obesity, puts to use the question that opens Snow White: Introduction • “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” The evil queen in Snow White asks this question daily to reassure herself of her beauty. However, in my world the question is not “Who is the fairest, rather it’s, “Who is the fattest?” It is all I can think about as I stand in front of that cruel mirror that taunts me each day as I get ready for school. Conclusion • I now realize that my struggle is not all that different from my peers who are looking for a way to fit into our glossy, magazine world. Today when I stand in front of the mirror and wide-eyed see the girl staring back, I ask confidently, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the healthiest of them all?”

13. Personal Experience as a Framing DeviceThe Anecdotal Frame • Choose an experience that is significant to or metaphorical for your topic • Free-write on that experience for 3-5 minutes • Use portions of that free-write to open your piece or introduce your thesis. • Touch on/reflect on that experience again in your conclusion • Use a bit for your title

14. A personal narrative frame example: • In paper on the negative impact television violence can have on children, a student begins with a description of his family’s extended Thanksgiving dinner. Introduction • The peacefulness I felt as the family members gathered to give thanks for all our blessings vanished once I entered the family room where my younger cousins were mobilized in front of the television for the Power Rangers program. After watching intensely physical confrontations between red and blue clad warriors, the normally docile three- to twelve-year-olds turned into “miniature fighting machines.” They eagerly kicked and punched any interloper including me with no reprimand from their parents. I had to seriously question the laissez faire child-rearing attitudes of my aunts and uncles. This incident reflects the growing problem of children’s viewing of television violence and the need for solutions to this problem. (Thesis) Conclusion • The writer concludes by offering a plan for handling the situation at the next Thanksgiving dinner: “I may not be the most popular cousin for turning off the Power Rangers, but what is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular. I can live with not being popular.”

15. Personal Experience as a Framing Device:An example • On a much different note, a student could manipulate his memories of a particular odor into a framing device. • For example, for an assignment in writing a reflective memoir, a student might describe his first car-purchasing experience. Introduction • As I opened the door of the polished ’76 Mustang, the musty smell of the used car and “Blue Bouquet” air freshener filled my senses. I looked at my dad with a sense of pride and winked to tell him this car was definitely the one. Conclusion • Regardless of where I am or what I am doing, whenever I smell the scent of a Blue Bouquet air freshener, I can hear the rumble of the exhaust behind me, feel the air rustling my hair, and sense the urge to slam the pedal to the floor so I can feel the sheer bone-crunching power of acceleration.

16. A good place to find rhetorical frames commonly used by professional writers is in newspapers that run feature articles and columnists. EXTRA CREDIT: Earn up to three extra credit points by scanning your newspapers and magazines for rhetorical frames and turning these in by ______________. Where do we find rhetorical frames in the “real world”?

17. Framing TrapsTRAP #1 • Sometimes a framing device can take on a life of its own, becoming more developed than the content. It is a, pun intended, “runaway frame.” • For example, in a student’s essay that describes a supposedly distasteful fast-food job she held in one town while living in another. For her introduction and conclusion, she gives a hair-raising account of her forty-minute commute to work over black ice. Although the purpose of her paper was to dissuade readers from taking a position at the particular restaurant where she worked, the overly long framing device was far more compelling. No reader would want to live down that hill after reading about the slippery road, the traffic, the delays, and the danger.

18. Framing TrapsTRAP #2 • Sometimes writers do not make clear the relation between their framing device and the body of the paper. • One student began and ended a paper on the Cuban missile crisis with quotes from Hamlet. “To be or not to be,” the paper begins, ending with the lines, “whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them . . . .” One may imagine many connections between these words from Shakespeare and the events of the Cuban missile crisis, but the writer did not articulate any of them. • Be on the lookout for these connections that have not yet made it from the your mind to your paper.

19. The Frame Up Once again… • A carefully crafted frame can: • make satisfying metaphorical connections for both reader and writer, • give the paper a deeper sense of meaning, • an extra dimension of authenticity, • a satisfying sense of closure, • and overall, the paper will project a wholeness, a coming full circle, that essays with traditional, often ordinary introductions and conclusions sometimes lack.