craft elements for critique, techniques class spring 2015

1. Elements of non-fiction
All share characteristics with other forms of writing

2. 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

3. Memoir Pieces Critique
Criteria
• Image, description and detail
• Scene versus summary
• Character
• Structure
• Reflection
• Voice
• Content

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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)

9. 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

10. 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)

11. Types of Dialogue
• Direct
• Summarized
• Indirect
As with scene versus exposition, choices about
dialogue should be intentional

12. 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.

13. 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)

14. Summarized Dialogue
• Condensed
• Part of the narrative
• Helps move action along
• Should not be used to gloss over important
exchanges in a story

15. 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)

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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

21. 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”

22. 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)

23. 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.

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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!

27. 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?

28. 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

29. 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.

30. 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?

31. 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

32. 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).

33. 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)