Check-in
Welcome back. First, we’re going to take some time to check in, before we get started with the class.
Advice from Annie
According to Walter Benjamin, one of the things storytellers give us is counsel or advice. Annie Dillard is a great storyteller, and is also writing to offer advice about what it means to write.
What advice in the text stood out for you? Add it to the shared board. You have five minutes.
Subject Matter
Dillard writes that in crafting creative nonfiction, “There’s nothing you can’t do with it. No subject matter is forbidden, no structure is proscribed.”
- Private freewrite (7 min): “What would I write if I truly believed ‘no subject matter is forbidden’?”
Sharing and discussion.
Passion
Dillard ends her essay by talking about passion. She writes:
Caring passionately about something isn’t against nature, and it isn’t against human nature. It’s what we’re here to do.
Think about the mid-term that you are writing. Now write in response to this question:
- What do I care most passionately about here?
Communicate with your audience
Passion is fine. Good, even. But if this passion remains private, you have not communicated it effectively. For this exercise, think about the scenes in your work-in-progress (or your last mini-assignment). Ask yourself these two questions:
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What does the reader need to know to make sense of this?
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What am I not telling the reader that they need to know?
Remember that you don’t need to give lots of background. Think of how a film might establish a scene. There’s a snowy landscape, it’s dusk, there are ribbons of pink cloud. Then a single line of text appears on the screen: “Iceland, 2023”. This is enough. You don’t need a whole history of Iceland, its politics, a tourist guide to how wonderful it is. You just need the scene, and this one anchoring detail. If you had this in a film, then the audience would immediately fall asleep. And it’s the same in real life!
A Scene
Now, to finish off, write or edit a single scene from your mid-term, taking into account the need to communicate with your audience and the advice from Dillard. And ask yourself as you write, “What do I care most passionately about here?”