Craig Miranda
Mr. Hamilton
ERH 101
10 July 2015
Guide to Writing in a Genre Reflection
In the essay “The Underdog” exposes the exhilarating success stories that involve personal sacrifice, dedication and passion from individuals and teams alike; the underdog re-lives some of the riveting moments in history. The 1980 USA Olympic hockey team, headed by Coach Herb Brooks, defeated the best team in the world, the Soviet Union. This sparked a fire in an exhausted nation during the coldest part of the Cold War which became known as the “Miracle on Ice”.
The writing skills I really tried to focus on were appealing to my audience, development, content, and engaging the reader to feel the same passion I have as a writer. I really tried to create a scene for the audience and make them feel as if they were sitting in the seat or where in the locker room during the medal round game between the Soviet Union and the United States. An example of this was with how I opened the essay with Al Michaels who announced before the game, “The excitement, the tension building. The Olympic Center filling to capacity. The face value of a top ticket for tonight’s game, $67.20 Outside they were exchanging hands at three times the face value. Hello again, everybody. I’m Al Michaels along with Ken Dryden. It should be a great night. I’m sure there are a lot of people who do not know the difference between a blue line and a clothesline. It’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. Because what we have at hand, the rarest of sporting events. An event that needs no buildup, no superfluous adjectives. In a political or nationalistic sense, this game is being viewed with varying perspectives. But manifestly it is a hockey game. The United States and the Soviet Union on a sheet of ice in Lake Placid, New York”. I could have spent more time developing the backstories for all three of my examples. Rocky and Rudy did require quite an extensive backstory to truly understand where they came from and to set the scene. The skills that were targeted were improved across the board from previous writing experiences.
Link to Essay: