Here’s the craft essay about Into the Wild, it ties in with the previous post Krakauer vs Gilbert. Framing Jon Krakauer In the visiting writer workshop on Friday, Lee Gutkind described how the basic building blocks of creative nonfiction are scenes and stories. An author uses a frame, or a larger story, to keep the reader turning pages, but stretches each scene out so that the substance (the “aboutness”) is cleverly woven through the narrative. In other words, the frame keeps the reader reading because it keeps him or her wanting to find out what happens next. After the workshop, …
MFA
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Another craft essay for my class. Figurative Language in Moneyball Michael Lewis’ book about the Oakland A’s, is so brilliantly told that readers who don’t care about baseball (readers like me for example) still enjoy the story. For those who like fairy tales, there’s the Cinderella story about how the A’s General Manager Billy Beane drafted players who were too fat, too short, or just not handsome enough for the other major league teams. Or for readers who enjoy a hero’s tale, there’s the one about how Beane, by looking at statistics in a new way, revolutionized the game of …
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Here’s what I wrote about Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder for my profile class. Choice of Point of View The most engaging sections of Tracy Kidder’s profile of Paul Farmer occur when the author is on the page, offering his own reflections on the complexities of his subject. By using a first person narrative and inserting himself into the action, Kidder skillfully guides the readers on the journey of figuring out Paul Farmer and his obsessions. The first person point of view allows the author to expose the complexity of his own relationship with Farmer, which adds another dimension …
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Wow! The time is just flying by as I try to stay on top of teaching, as well as, taking classes. It is painfully obvious that this new schedule is going to require some adjustment. I’m fairly sure that I’m going to have to choose between eating and sleeping because there’s not enough time to do both. I’m also not sure how much actual writing I’m going to get done. At the moment it seems like I’ll be doing a lot of writing about writing, reading about writing, and reading other people’s writing, but not so much of my own …
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I haven’t been here for a while, mostly because I decided to set up a blog on my own web server rather than using the blogger site. Then I looked at different free blogging software and although they are all great, there’s some work involved with setup and maintenance. So, I decided to just keep this one. Quick updates: The Chad Little article was well received by the magazine editor. She asked me to do another profile on someone I had pitched to her a while back. The new article is almost written and the Chad Little profile will be …