check out Sarah Jane's helpful in-class discussion notes

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comicsis a fantastic rhetoric/guide for writing in common. In "Chapter 3: Blood in the Gutter," McCloud takes us between the panels, where anything is possible. Anything at all! In transition, readers create meaning, writers suddenly change directions, and all involved instantaneously travel vast distances in time and space. Like sound synthesis, the art of comics "is as subtractive an art as it is additive" (McCloud 85). When comic artists experiment with between-panel transitions to make available what art historian E.H. Gombrich called "beholder's share," a rhythmic space of participation is made available at the level of perception itself. Here, if we really want to get to audience involvement and interactivity, we can think of call and response traditions. In a sense, call and response is always happening, even when we read silently. Texts become "animated," or come to life, when the readers, or "beholders" have space is always happening, even when we read silently. Although we might not necessarily want to call this space the "gutter," remembering the elastic space between the panels in comics can help us find resonant transitions in our narratives, and, soon, in our definition arguments, as well. As we revisit and revise our writing and peer-writing, we can can find resonance if we get "between the panels." Keeping our readers (and the limitless potential of their imaginations) in mind will help us find the best transitions as we sequence our sentences, paragraphs, and ideas. Furthermore, I hope to have occasion to further discuss the assumptions and implications of granular, "hole-y" space.

Even when when inspiration is your guide, a certain amount of craft is needed to share your inspirations and ideas with others, so let's really focus on the art and science of transitions. As you select, re-order, revise, and remix each other's blogs and narratives experiment with these 6 techniques for sentence level editing, paragraph-level revision, (re)contextualizing, and storytelling:

1. moment to moment

2. action to action

3. subject to subject

4. scene to scene

5. aspect to aspect

6. non sequitur

or any combination of the above