Elements of non-fiction

All share characteristics with other forms of writing

Technique Critique

• For all workshops and your craft analysis papers,

you will be asked to analyze the use by the author

of various craft elements of creative nonfiction

• This means performing a close reading of the text

and providing specific feedback on how these

various elements are used.

• For each assignment, I will tell you in advance

which elements you need to analyze/critique

Memoir Pieces Critique

Criteria

• Image, description and detail

• Scene versus summary

• Character

• Structure

• Reflection

• Voice

• Content

Image, description, detail

• Strong writing contains specificity; weak writing is

vague, reliant on clichéd imagery and abstraction

• Consider the use of sensory detail as described in

chapter one in Tell It Slant.

• Create for the reader the experience through the

use of details

Exercise

• Right now, review the pages you have already

written for your memoir piece

• Identify a paragraph that lacks vivid detail;

perhaps a character whose physical description is

missing; a scene in a location without details; an

emotional response without physical details. Take

10 minutes now and rewrite that paragraph (or two

if you like) and amplify with concrete, physical

language.

Scene & Exposition

• You’ve heard this before: Show, don’t tell

• In this case, we are talking about showing action

rather than recounting it

• This has a special challenge in non-fiction and

memoir in particular

Read this:

I was at an Italian restaurant in Melbourne, listening

as a woman named Lesley talked about her

housekeeper, an immigrant to Australia who

earlier that day had cleaned the bathroom

countertops with a bottle of very expensive acne

medication: “She’s afraid of the vacuum cleaner

and can’t read or write a word of English, but other

than that she’s marvellous.”

—David Sedaris, “Stepping Out,” New Yorker

Now read this:

Lesley pushed back her shirtsleeve, and as she reached for an olive I noticed a rubber bracelet on her left wrist. “Is that a watch?” I asked.

“No,” she told me. “It’s a Fitbit. You synch it with your computer, and it tracks your physical activity.”

I leaned closer, and as she tapped the thickest part of it a number of glowing dots rose to the surface and danced back and forth. “It’s like a pedometer,” she continued. “But updated, and better. The goal is to take ten thousand steps per day, and, once you do, it vibrates.” (Ibid)

Scenes happen in real time

• Scenes happen in real time, through action and

dialogue

• Exposition summarizes action and dialogue

• Scenes slow the writing down

• Exposition—summary—condenses and speeds it up

• So you want to choose wisely and make sure the

impactful elements are conveyed through scene, and

not summarized

Dialogue

• Dialogue in non-fiction is technically expressed in the same way it is in fiction

• With dialogue tags:

“No,” she told me. “It’s a Fitbit. You synch it with your computer, and it tracks your physical activity.”

(Sedaris, ibid)

Types of Dialogue

• Direct

• Summarized

• Indirect

As with scene versus exposition, choices about

dialogue should be intentional

Direct Dialogue

• “No,” she told me. “It’s a Fitbit. You synch it with your computer, and it tracks your physical activity.”

• Used for direct action

• Non-expository

• Can convey more than the actual words said

• Can show the reader the character of the person speaking.

Summarized

I was at an Italian restaurant in Melbourne, listening

as a woman named Lesley talked about her

housekeeper, an immigrant to Australia who

earlier that day had cleaned the bathroom

countertops with a bottle of very expensive acne

medication…

(Sedaris)

Summarized Dialogue

• Condensed

• Part of the narrative

• Helps move action along

• Should not be used to gloss over important

exchanges in a story

Indirect

We saw David in Arundel picking up a dead squirrel

with his grabbers,” the neighbors told Hugh. “We

saw him outside Steyning rolling a tire down the

side of the road”; “ . . . in Pulborough dislodging a

pair of Y-fronts from a tree branch.”

(Sedaris)

Indirect

• Reported by someone other than the narrator

• Creates the feel of direct exchange

• Similar attributes to summarized exchanges, as in

shouldn’t be used to convey important information.

All Together

• Using all three methods of dialogue creates

variety in the text

• Eliminates long pages of direct indented dialogue

• Combines the telling and showing of human

interaction

Mechanics

• Direct dialogue uses quotation marks.

• Each speaker uses a new paragraph

• Quotation marks within punctuation

• Use basic talking verbs for dialogue tags (said,

says); dialogue tags should not be intrusive to the

reader.

Character

• Character in writing is created through a

combination of direct and indirect characterization.

• Description of appearance and dialogue are two of

the main forms of characterization, and you want

to aim to use both in these drafts.

Structure

• Structure simply means how you choose to tell the

story, how you choose to order the elements

• In non-fiction, it can be tempting to simply tell the

story in chronological order

• But this isn’t your only option

Double narratives

The collie wakes me up about three times a night,

summoning me from a great distance as I row my

boat through a dim, complicated dream. She’s on

the shoreline, barking. Wake up. She’s staring at

me with her head slightly tipped to the side, long

nose, gazing eyes, toenails clenched to get a

purchase on the wood floor. We used to call her

the face of love.

—Joann Beard, “Fourth State of Matter”

Second narrative thread

They’re speaking in physics, so I’m left out of the conversation. Chris apologetically erases one of the pictures I’ve drawn on the blackboard and replaces it with a curving blue arrow surrounded by radiating chalk waves of green.

“If it’s plasma, make it in red,” I suggest. We’re all smoking semi-illegally in the journal office with the door closed and the window open. We’re having a plasma party.

(Beard)

Reflective & Circular

Structure

• In which the author doesn’t lead us from a

beginning to an end in chronological order, but,

rather, circles around the topic, always returning to

its central point.

Under the Influence

My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food--compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling. I use the past tense not because he ever quit drinking but because he quit living. That is how the story ends for my father, age sixty-four, heart bursting, body cooling, slumped and forsaken on the linoleum of my brother's trailer. The story continues for my brother, my sister, my mother, and me, and will continue as long as memory holds.

In the perennial present of memory, I slip into the garage or barn to see my father tipping back the flat green bottles of wine, the brown cylinders of whiskey, the cans of beer disguised in paper bags. His Adam's apple bobs, the liquid gurgles, he wipes the sandy-haired back of a hand over his lips, and then, his bloodshot gaze bumping into me, he stashes the bottle or can inside his jacket, under the workbench, between two bales of hay, and we both pretend the moment has not occurred.

—Scott Russell Sanders

Unified vignettes

• Creative non-fiction is often very successful not by

sticking to a strict chronology, but by bringing

together several different scenes connected by

reflection or theme

These are just a few

examples

But the form is only limited by how you decide to tell

the story, how you choose to frame it, so play

around

It can be helpful, too, to visualize your story a bit as

a shape as a way of thinking about how you want

to ultimately shape the story itself.

For example: a circle!

Reflection/ Interpretation

• While showing scenes and characters is what

makes your story a story, reflection is necessary

at moments to provide meaning and transcend

anecdote.

• Reflection can also be provided by considering the

thematic resonance of the piece. Ask yourself,

what is the second story here? What is the deeper

meaning and where in the narrative can I amplify

this meaning?

Voice

• One way of thinking about voice, is to think about the tone of your story

• Is it happy, sarcastic, confused: does the voice of the story match the mind of the narrator at the time the story took place?

• Another is to think about perspective: Is it an adult voice telling the story that belonged to a child when it happened?

• Strive for authenticity of voice, the voice that makes sense for the story itself

POV

• Point of view in non-fiction works as it does in fiction:

• First person

• Second Person

• Third Person

• Consistency is key

• First-person is the most common in memoir, but if you

have a reason to use another POV, go for it.

Content/ Research

• These are memoirs, so to a large degree you can

rely on memory to construct your story.

• As readers, however, you will be asked to

consider the completeness of the story. Are there

questions unanswered that keep the reader from

understanding the experience? Does the author

need to go back—perhaps consult others—to

provide the detail and specificity required?

Use Critique

• The feedback on these elements, as well as the

elements of reflection and research can help you

during the revision process

• Trying to pay attention to all these elements while

writing can be challenging

• But systematically looking at each element of non-

fiction when revising will make for a stronger final draft

• And analyzing these elements in other’s writing will

help them and make you a stronger writer

Let’s do another exercise

• Go through the pages you’ve written and find a

passage of summery (TIS, p. 177). Even if you end up

keeping it as a summary, transform the summary into a

scene with as many elements of scene as possible

(physical description and dialogue).

• If you don’t have any summary in your piece, try an

alternative exercise on POV. Rewrite part of your

memoir from a different POV to see how this changes

the material (do not do this exercise if you can do the

first one).

For next week

• Continue working on your memoir pieces, keeping in

mind these elements

• Bring to class five copies of your pieces (one for me

and one for each member of your workshop group,

which will be assigned next week).

• Read: Chapter 15, Sharing Your Work: The Writing

Group and Workshop (Tell It Slant)

• Prepare for David MacLean’s Skype interview (see

course website for details)