Creative Writing
Notes for Week Two
Chapter Three:
"Writing with Detail" (40-57)
In this chapter, you will read information of considerable importance for the entire semester, for all interesting creative writing depends for effectiveness on vivid details. And you will have plenty of opportunities to practice and hone these important skills--the use of these and other tools of the trade--as you get in the habit of putting into effect this precise and evocative language.
Each of the short poetry assignments for the week requires that you use specific details: in your Haiku and in the poems about Food and Symbols--and in your humorous body images, whether you present individual images or write in prose.
You will also enjoy the fun exercises.
The beginning of the chapter lays an excellent foundation:
This chapter will encourage you to acquire and practice the skill of gathering specific, sensory details which will make any writing you do--memoir, poetry, drama, fiction--more powerful.(40)
Indeed, as you will read over and over, the difference between memorable and mediocre writing lies in the details. Just look at the poems for this week from Welch and Wall--note the effective use of details, which work to make the ordinary interesting.
Remember that the use of details and especially of sensory details makes the writing more specific, more emphatic. As the chapter underscores, emphasis plays a huge role in creative writing, in any effective writing, for that matter.
The writing assignments, all of them relatively short, as will be the case throughout the term, require you to put into practice what the chapter explains, for instance, using the five senses and figural language, including metaphor and simile.
We tend for obvious reasons to emphasize sight in our general communications. Remember, however, that creative writing compresses reality, if you will, especially prose. And to bring ideas and objects to life, to make them emphatic, you need to get in the habit of altering your approach.
Do not rely, therefore, on abstractions to carry the ideas: you writing points to abstract ideas or themes though implication and evocation as opposed to direct statements about friendship, beauty, and emotions.
Work, therefore, in all your writing this term to give value to senses other than sight.
This strategy plays a central role, for example, in Wilfred Owen's still disturbing poem about WWI; but you will use the same approach to make commonplace items such as doors and toes come to life.
Push the envelope and take chances.
When you write your Haiku--and you have a total of seven to write this week--practice using senses other than sight. Feel the bird's wings and let your reader hear the wind through a field; make the appropriate comparisons.
As our authors point out, "To a certain extent, all writing is personal"(47), just what the authors you read for this week in Road Trip emphasize, both Don Welch and Eamonn Wall.
Remember: when you draw from your experience, which includes what you read, and use your imagination, you will write truths your readers will appreciate. So remember "Creative writing is not journalism [or diary entries]--it is imagination and language, invention and exploration, forms and rhythms and images" (49) that spring from a tremendous number of avenues connected with your experiences, from the glare of Nebraska's summer sun to the feel of a new car's seats.
So if you write a short poem about a specific door, and you find yourself saying, "But that's not the way the event happened," you must change what happened to fit the direction in which you wish to go. Draw on experience, of course, but do not let actual details hamstring your imagination.
Note what the authors have to suggest on this subject:
It is even good to deliberately change the actual details of memory and experience. Then, you can use not necessarily the details that occurred, but those that are most appropriate for the subject you are imaginatively exploring with your writing. (51)
So draw your details from a wide variety of sources. I remember what the Canadian writer Alice Munro had to say about one of her most famous stories, "Boys and Girls" (a great story to read). She stated that the story was the most autobiographical narrative she had written but that the piece had little to do with ab actual experience. She drew characters and settings from an orbit of experience, but Munro does not detail things that actually happened to her.
So remember that "Creative Writing, in fact, is admixture of memory, experience, and imagination" (52); thus, while you might never have actually seen a Burrowing Owl in the wild or visited the Trace Trail in Peru, NE, you can write very vivid poems about each, for "All good writing has an authenticity that comes from being true" (52).
Consequently, as Jean Cocteau wrote, "The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth" (52).
As you read through the chapter, note how the authors draw from all manner of artistic endeavors, from writing poems to playing a role in Die Hard. The connections are always interesting and instructive, as is the case with figurative language as well--comparisons work wonders to make writing emphatic.
So experiment with making your writing more emphatic by using specific details and by attacking the senses. And remember, you learn new habits, so do not get frustrated with the efforts, for most often, learning new writing habits require that you break familiar, habitual practices.
The final pages of the chapter, "Writing in the Information Age: Internet Resources," might strike you as outdated. Such is pretty much always the case with this material.
We use in this class a blog, which is a relatively new internet tool for the masses; and you can download the videos I produce using iTunes and both iPods and MP3 or MP4 players--the technology adds a new element to the class, to be sure.
Get in the habit of including in your discussions links to internet pages, another way to expand our class.
The journey takes many twists and turns and always changes!
Again, put what you read in this chapter to use in your writing for this week.
Attack the senses and experiment with figural language.
Avoid overuse of "to be" (is, are, were, was) in your poems; instead, use active, descriptive verbs.
No "There is" and "there are" allowed!
Share your work on the Discussion Thread.
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