The film "Pieces of a Puzzle" (part of the series "Writers Writing" that was coproduced by WNET and Learning Designs and televised by WNET in 1985), helped students become better writers and facilitated the discovery of material and techniques appropriate to academic writing. First, students were introduced to reader response theory, focusing on identifying, analogizing, and appraising. They then viewed the film, which is a true story about a black journalism professor and his white female student who write stories about evictions of blacks by their landlords. Students at Brooklyn College identified more with the evictees in the film than did students at New York University, but both groups developed a more objective view after seeing the film three times. The students then read and analyzed the stories written by the professor and the student, both of which favored the position of the evictees. Finally, a formal writing assignment asked students to employ techniques of arranging and manipulating the text similar to those used by the professor and the student in the film. To help with the assignment, the film and the news stories were analyzed for their arranging, editing, and highlighting of material. Through the film viewing and the writing assignment, students learned how they can use writing to help make the world better and how they can exert control over language and thus influence people. (SRT)