Using the sample essays from your text - identify and discuss what you see as features of creative nonfiction, then make a list. What are the "essential" features? What are the sometimes there and sometimes not features? What are some of the differences between short and long forms?
The short stories I read were: "Out There"
"Portrait of my Body"
"Some Things About that Day"
"I Think I'm Musing my Mind"
The First Idea I want to touch on is writing from the author's view point. The reason novels are fiction is because there is usually a narrator. If there isn't a narrator, then the person telling the story isn't a real person. The point of non-fiction is that the person telling the story is REAL and everything that happens in the story is also REAL and factual.
All of these stories are written from the point if view of the author. They are all telling a story about a time in their life. The author of "Portrait of my Body" actually uses parts from his entire life and mainly speaks from the past while bringing the story back to the present. While speaking in the first person and only having their story be told by them you as the reader have to believe everything they say as to be fact. The author tells you a story about their life and since it is from their point of view it is factual in the sense that it happened to them. Overall these stories are about a particular moment in someones life.
Heavy description and imagery was found in "Out There" and "Some Things About that Day". The author explained a situation in great detail while placing you the reader in their shoes.While the other two stories, "Portrait of my Body" and "I Think I'm Musing my Mind," were heavy in detail and emotional thoughts. I also found these pieces to be extremely intimate. All of them touched on ideas or parts of their life that the reader can resonate with. The themes of these pieces can easily be recognized and related to. Fear, loneliness, self awareness, despair, shame, helplessness, determination, and perserverance. We as the reader can identify these intimate details and begin to understand the author better.
Between the four stories there were two short forms and two long forms. I found that I resonated with the short forms better. There was less words but that did not effect the story. I found the prose to be stronger in the shorter stories. They grabbed my attention and demanded me to feel how the author felt. The longer stories I felt had unnecessary details and could have been shortened. But The author might have found certain details important that I disagreed on. I did not need to know that many details about the author's body in "Portrait of my Body" but he found it important to list every detail. I actually felt that "I Think I'm Musing my Mind" should have had more detail. I was confused as to why the author couldn't speak. I understood the surgeries and rehab but I didn't understand what caused him to lose his speech. I would have liked this explained better. Besides that minor detail this was a very strong story.
Hi Melissa,
ReplyDeleteRoger Ebert lost his ability to eat and speak because he had thyroid cancer and his lower jaw and other parts were removed. He was a film critic and a wonderful writer...he won a Pulitzer prize at some point in his life. I know it didn't say so in his story, but I've followed him for years and had to look up the exact details to learn what happened to him with his cancer, but that's the great thing about reading non-fiction--you can look up who the writer is and more. Ebert died last year and will be greatly missed.