Week 4

I re-read Gerard’s “What IS Nonfiction Anyway?” I had a little trouble trying to fuse the two readings and figure out how I can apply them to my science essay. I pulled out a few suggestions I thought were pertinent and might be related to my essay this week. Gerard spoke about forgetting about the creative part of writing non-fiction. Concentrate on telling the story and the art part will happen. I think I did that this week because it was a science essay, so I was more focused on just getting the facts out there, and I wasn’t trying to embellish it. He says the nonfiction wirier should “always reign in that impulse to lie.” Again, I don’t think that was so much an issue for me this week because of the subject matter. Gerard also talked about writing about something when there is an urgency of the event, but also timelessness of its meaning. I think with people becoming more sensitive and having more allergies, my topic was current, but I don’t know about the timelessness part of it.

Graham talked about leads and conclusions. Hopefully I did what she was talkig about by enticing the reader to read on. According to Graham, an option is to lead with a scene. That’s what I tried to do in my science essay. She talked about making sure you go full circle and have a strong conclusion as well as a strong lead. I think it’s easy to get lazy at the end of an essay, and I have to pay attention to working just as hard on a conclusion as I do on the lead and opening paragraph. I know as a reader, if I am not intrigued or interested enough from the lead, I am not going to go any further. Also, there’s nothing more disappointing that an article ending and you’re left hanging. I need to make sure my ending is complete, but Graham also suggests make it quick. Don’t draw your reader into thinking you’re done, and give them two more paragraphs. This is something I’m sure will take a lot more writing before I start to really get the hang of it, but I’m happy to have some references and examples of how to do it. Overall, I think I understood what Graham was talking about in the lead, and I felt more knowledgeable about how to actually write a lead that would grab a reader’s attention after reading all of the supplementary readings.

I chose the “eye” perspective this week. I was a bit confused about the eye versus I, but after reading more examples, I think I understand the differences. The idea of this essay as journalism did not come up for me, I didn’t think about it from a reportage perspective. I did find myself struggling at first to keep it from a first-person essay approach. It helped me to read the other supplementary readings to figure out that I can use myself as an example, just not as the focus. I think I accomplished that.