Week Five: Messages from My Father Activity Week
We have all had that moment when reading when we have left the realm of our couch or the chair outside and found ourselves immersed in and connected to the worlds created by a writer. This week, we will practice creating those same worlds, or developing those worlds we have already begun to create. In doing so, we will focus not only on continuing our work with space and time from Weeks Two and Three but also on adding telling details and moments that help us to draw the reader into our world emotionally by establishing scenes, sequences, and characters that allow our readers to feel emotions without telling them what emotions to feel. |
"The writer does not tell us the meaning, nor what emotions to feel, nor what emotions the characters are feeling. All of this is left to the reader's brain, to add its details from personal experience to what's happening to the story, thereby bringing to the story the emotions the readers felt in the original experience." --Cheney pg. 44
5.1 Writing Activity #2
The best nonfiction reading can happen when an unexpected moment of everyday turns into a magical lesson. The moment when Trillin is on vacation and reads a book that helps him understand why his family went to Galveston instead of New York (pg. 50). Or when Trillin realizes that Abe Trillin did not "impress the world at large as a powerful figure" (23).
In the photo to the right, my daughter was in the midst of a temper tantrum at Yellowstone, and she would not stand still so that I could take her photo. Instead, just as I took the photo, she spun around to face the Prismatic Springs. What resulted was one of my favorite photos: what might have been a regular picture of a crying 4-year-old is instead a testament to my daughter's wild spirit. |
This week, you'll write more of your work for the course, this time focusing on developing the kinds of passages that Trillin uses in his work to connect his reader emotionally to his father and family.
Write the passage in a Google Doc and share it with me by Sunday at 11:59 p.m.
- Write a passage that begins with a significant statement, just as Trillin's chapters do (i.e., "It seems to me that upbringings have themes" (47).
- In that passage, use realistic details as modeled by Trillin and described in Chapter 3 of Writing Creative Nonfiction by Cheney to expand on and develop that statement, to connect it to the reader's experience by filling in details that will allow the reader to connect with your story just as you connected with ARRTI or Messages from My Father.
- Keep the focus of the passage on description. In other words, avoid, as much as possible, summary or vague statements (i.e., My sister was angry.) to focus more on rich details (i.e., When my sister was angry, she tended to sigh and avoid eye contact. And on this day, she practically hyperventilated as she gazed off into the distance behind my head.).
Write the passage in a Google Doc and share it with me by Sunday at 11:59 p.m.