Some Shared Vocab

Seems that some folks aren't quite sure how to talk about creative nonfiction in a critique setting. Is it "speaker" or "narrator" or "character"? Do we pretend this never happened? Can we talk about the people in the essay as if they don't exist? Do we call this an essay or a story or...what?

Dicey questions, all.

First, a few quick executive decisions:

1. These are essays, not stories or anything else. That's what we'll call them.

2. No, we don't have to pretend this is fiction. In fact, let's not.

3. How to talk about the voice of the essay? By doing just that--talking about the voice. If we need to address the writer as a presence in the action of the essay, let's just do that directly. Using the generic title of "speaker" and "narrator" feels odd to me.

4. Tone is always important, but it's crucial in this particular workshop. ALWAYS err on the side of empathy and diplomacy.

5. On the flipside, as writers you need to remember that everything you submit for critique must be fit for public consumption. If you cringe at the idea of sitting through thirty minutes of discussion about the issues in the essay, you need to submit something else for critique.

6. In responding to your peers' essays, don't worry about whether they fulfill the "assignment." I'm more interested in whether an essay fulfills its intentions.

Next, I want to re-re-direct you to the elements of narrative writing. Not all will apply in every case, but they still provide the most general tools for both writing and talking about creative nonfiction. Some highlights:

We are still and always interested in Beginnings and Endings, a.k.a. how things start and finish. The former needs to propel a reader into the work and the latter needs to provide a combined sense of closure and resonance.

Sensory details matter. Sensory details = Nouns and Verbs.

All writing has some structure, some organization. Narrative writing is plotted. Is this plotted? Are there scenes? If not, how can we describe the architecture here -- the way things are structured?

Characters, real or made-up, can still be rendered as round or flat. We can still talk about those renderings, how the serve the essay as is, and how they could serve it better. We can also still talk about conflict between and within the principal players in the essay even if they're real.

And, again, we will always be dancing with the issue of voice because I think it's the essential element of creative nonfiction. Voice, as I define it, exists on the level of the language (word choices, sentence constructions, tone, pace) and on the level of the ideas (how does this writer observe the world and what are his/her peculiar obsessions).

Finally, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I think a reconsideration of our toolbelt metaphor is appropriate and useful.

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