Crwr 205

The four big CNF forms:

- ____

- ____ essay

- Literary ____

- Travel

What do all forms of CNF have in common?

1. They are all _____

2. Nonfiction is often more ____

3. CNF uses ____ (dialogue, people doing things in real-time)

4. CNF uses "_____" language

Memoir

Difference between autobiography and memoir:

1. Scope:

a) _____ has a more narrow scope

b) _____ is something more sanitized, there for official record

2. Style:

a) More ____ style commonly associated with fiction; more about telling a story

The History of the Memoir

____ ____: known primarily as a saint, one of the most prominent Christian thinkers in history

- He wrote a book called Confessions, in which he revealed that he had a sinful past

- He was the first Western author to make the accomplishment an invisible, internal one, and the journey to salvation a spiritual one. The arc from utter abjection to improbable redemption, at once deeply personal and appealingly universal, that is one that writers haver returned to - and readers have been insatiable for - ever since.

- Before him, memoirists talked more about their _____

The History of the Memoir

___-___ ____:

- "Confessions"

- Most famously introduced the idea of the noble savage

- In "Confessions," he recounts the theft of a ribbon in the house of the family he worked for. When the theft was discovered, he blamed a young woman who worked as a cook in the same household.

- For better or worse, he gave the impetus to the transformation of "confession" into a secular, public, and purely literary gesture.

The History of the Memoir

____ ____:

- Memoir as an act of witness

- Narratives meant to serve as politcally meaningful testimony to systemic crimes against an entire people

- He himself was once a slave. One of the first to write what is now known as the "____ memoir"

The Contemporary Memoir

A memoir can encompass:

1. A pivotal ___ ____

2. A passion or interest experienced over a lifetime

3. Writing about a self-imposed project

The contemporary memoir has a bad reputation - it seems a little cheap, partly because everyone can write a memoir - "...an overpowering need to be the ___ ___ ____." (Mendelsohn)

Stories happen when people ____ things.

Voice

- "The voice should permit a range of emotional tones..."

- "___-___ is so key."

"Everything we call art, whether it's music or dance or writing or painting, anything we call art is a container for something called an ____." (Lynda Barry)

Scene versus Narrative

Narrative: events over an _____ period of time recapped ____

Scene: events related in "___ ___." Often features dialogue.

Memoir

The problem about writing about yourself is turning yourself into a _____ (and not an ____). You can't just be a fly-on-the-wall in a memoir.

Memoir

How do you turn yourself into a character?

- ___ ____: "past you" meets "present you"

Jonathan Lethem: "13, 1977, 21"

- Memoir

- "___" and "___" style

Michael Christie: "All Parents are Cowards"

- Memoir

- There's a ___ ___ in this story - when the author realizes that what they once thought is actually the opposite

Structure

Why don't you want to write a story from point A to B... to point Z?

The sequence of a story can be shaped to:

- Build ____

- Weave ___ story

- Develop a theme

Theme is a nebulous term that describes the part of the story that deals with ____ ____. It is not a moral.

Examples: "marriage, "the challenges of a marriage," "can one love the same person romantically for an entire lifetime?"

How do you find themes in your own life?

Suggestions:

- "_____" (e.g., job, kiss, goal, punch)

- "_____" (e.g., from illness, injury, heartache)

- "_____" (e.g., a friend's marijuana problem)

_____ are another way of poetically reinforcing themes.

Jenny Manzer: "The Boy With the Galloping Heart"

How does Manzer write about herself and others?

- She doesn't overtly announce her feelings; it's more in the ____

Writing about others

"Swing Low" by Miriam Toews is written from her father's voice.

- If you're going to make things up in your CNF piece, it's best to admit to it ___ ___

____ ____ by Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote

Dialogue

_____ discourse

Example: He says a few things here and there, perhaps along the lines of, I'm sorry it has to be like this

What are you allowed to fictionalize in CNF?

- Memoir requires lots of dialogue, and unless you're recording every conversation you've ever had, you need to fictionalize dialogue

- ____ characters: combining several people into one character

- You can change timelines (e.g., if you had two bad experiences at the dentists, you could just combine them into the same experience)

Ethical Dilemma: Your mother, who recently passed away, dealt with a mental illness that had a profound effect on you and your sister's childhoods. You want to write about it. Your sister wants to keep that time of your lives private. What do you do?

You can:

1. Write your story

2. Not write the story.

3. Write a version of the story with some ___ ___

4. Write a piece of ___ about the experience

Tone

_____: implied meaning

_____: literal meaning

Comic writing

Gary Shteyngart utilizes both ___-___ and ____.

History of Essay

Michel de _____

- Father hired a harp player to follow him around and play whenever he was bored

- "The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, _____"

- He is credited for being the first essayist ever

History of Essay

- _____ is the essayist's "most dangerous and delicate tool"

History of Essay

George Orwell

- "...modern writing...consists of gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer _____."

Personal essays use _____.

With a personal essay, it's all about ____ (perhaps indirectly).

How is a personal essay different from memoir?

- In a memoir, you're following a character and other characters; and ultimately we want to see how these characters develop. With an essay, this sometimes happens, but more often than not it's not the characters that develop but the ____.

- In a memoir you might have a recurring theme or image, but most times that theme or image is _____; an essayist can talk about the theme _____

- Essays use more reflection and exposition; memoirs use more scene

How is personal essay different from an academic essay?

- You don't need ____ in a personal essay

- Academic essays require a ____ ____; personal essays start with an "I don't know" sense

- Personal essay uses more "I"; it has your voice, whereas academic essay have a ____ voice

How is personal essay used to describe other kinds of first person writing?

- "Personal essay" is a term that's applied to a lot of things

- "When I say 'essay,' I mean short nonfiction prose with a meditative subject at its entire and a tendency away from _____" - Christy Wampole

- "An article is often gossip. An essay is reflection and ____. An article often has the temporary advantage of social heart - what's hot out there right now. An essay's heat is interior. An article can be timely, topical, engaged in the issues and personalities of the moment; it is likely to be stale within the month. In five years it may be acquired the quaint aura of a rotary phone. An article is usually Siamese-twinned to its date of birth. An essay defies its date of birth..."

Personal Essay

- Told mostly in ____

- Theme is ____

- Personal leads to theme

- Argument developed

- Features reportage

Memoir

- Told mostly in ____

- Theme is ____

- Character is developed

Journalism

- Event or issue-driven

- ____ tone

- Less literary language

- Published in magazines and newspapers

- Features reportage and academic references

CNF

- Every day or personal topics

- ____ tone

- Literary language

- Literary/personal references

- Published in lit. journals

But there's a lot of grey area between these forms:

- _____ Memoir: exists at the crossroads between Memoir and Journalism

- _____ Personal Essay exists at the crossroads between Personal Essay and Journalism

Jessica Johnson: "The ____ of Our ____"

Structure

_____ Essay:

- You have various events (can seem like a memoir)

- Events that lead to an exciting event (it builds)

_____ Essay:

- You have one key event that you circle around (you're always talking about it)

- It leads to some insight (the key topic)

_____ Essay:

- When you have various scenes, passages, insights, collected together but they're not connected by sentences that bridge together an argument (no narrative line); they're separated

- You'll have a blank page or asterisks between them; reads like notes almost

- Example: "Time and Distance Overcome" (the story about telephone poles and lynchings)

_____ Essays:

- When you have two threads of an essay that are intertwined; kind of like a segmented essay at first

The Telling Detail

- The "___ ___ ___" telling detail (explicit)

- The telling detail without explanation (you just offer the telling details, and you allow your reader to draw their own conclusions)

Leslie Jamison: "The Empathy Exams"

- Plays an actor for medical students; had an abortion and heart surgery

- Personal essay/_____ structure (not told in linear fashion)

- Also uses the ___ ___ form: allows your to be vulnerable, to talk about things that are difficult to talk about. In this piece, the shell takes the shape of patient's case summaries

Style

- Avoid ____

- Avoid ____ (e.g., "Writing this sentence is actually pretty demanding.")

- Avoid ____ words

- Avoid words that defy logic

- Avoid the ____ voice