Character Sketch

• Identify a person in the draft you’ve brought to class.

• Take 10 minutes to re-render using two aspects of direct characterization.

• Use these two elements to “show” rather than “tell” who this character is. Do not use indirect characterization. In other words, do not explain how you see or feel about this person. Rather, show them (through two aspects of direct characterization) how you see them.

Direct/Indirect in Non-Fiction

• DIRECT

• Visual appearance

• Dialogue

• Action

• USE TWO OF THESE TECHNIQUES IN THIS EXERCISE

• INDIRECT

• Interpretation by the author/narrator

• Interpretation/description by another character

• DO NOT USE INDIRECT IN THIS EXERCISE

Review in pairs

• Exchange the writing; do not explain what you’ve tried to conveyed.

• Each writer identify examples of direct characterization and the impression you have of the character on the page.

• See whether or not you’ve expressed/characterized as you intended to. If not, why not? If so, what language/descriptions/dialogue aided that?

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: sight, taste, touch, sound, smell, p. 3 & 19 TIS;

• Sensory detail creates for the reader the experience through the use of details whether it’s a sense of place, physical responses, visual reactions, even sense memory

Exercise

• Right now, review the pages you have already written for your memoir piece

• Identify a paragraph that lacks vivid physical detail;; a scene in a location without a sense of place; 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 InfluenceMy 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?

Gun, Needle, Spoon

• In this excerpt, how is time working?• What kind of vivid details does O’Neil

provide and how do they contribute to the writing?

• This is memoir and a true story, but O’Neil is both the author and the narrator, the “character” telling the story. What do we know about this character?

The Same Story

• How does Suzanne Roberts’ “The Same Story” differ in its use of time from O’Neil’s?

• Both pieces are in the first person; is there a difference in voice and perspective? What is it and what do you think creates that difference?

• What is the story Roberts is telling, beyond the actual story—what is the deeper meaning and is she effective in conveying it?

Black Swans• Each group will analyze specific elements of how Lauren

Slater applies the techniques of creative nonfiction. Provide specific examples, as you will be asked to do for your critiques and for your craft analysis papers.

• Group 1: Examples of sensory details and metaphor, and how those support the larger themes of the essay.

• Group 2: How does Slater use characterization in this piece? Pick two examples of characters and how she shows us who these people are.

• Group 3: Scene versus summary. What is the importance of those portions of the essay that are rendered in scene and how do they contribute to the overall arc of the piece?

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 summary (TIS, p. 177). Even if you end up keeping it as a summary for next week’s drafts, 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

• Bring in five copies of your memoir. One will be for me; one will be for each member of your workshop group: these will be assigned next week.

• Additional readings and assignments are on the class website. You will have your first in-class critical writing assignment, so be sure to have your books and be caught up on all readings.

• Your critical essay will also ask you to consider the various views on truth and fact in memoir.