Home » Posts tagged 'location'
Tag Archives: location
Writing Dramatic Scenes
In writing a personal essay, memoir, travel writing, you must retell your personal experience.
To retell your story, you must recreate the scenes for the reader by using the techniques of creative nonfiction. The most important technique is “creating the dramatic scene.”
A dramatic scene is more than expressing your thoughts and emotions about an event or experience, or describing the setting/location. A dramatic scene is not expository writing or a summary of the events or experience. Both types of writing focus on “just the facts.”
Creating a dramatic scene in creative nonfiction involves using your memory, observation, and personal reflection to retell the facts in an interesting and compelling way. It also involves using dialogue, action, and details to capture the important events. Your goal is to present the facts as accurately as possible and to retell the story. Your goal is also to inform the reader and to entertain them.
This article will explain what is meant by the term “dramatic scene” and how to craft a dramatic scene when writing a personal essay, memoir, travel essay, and so forth.
Definition of Dramatic Scene
What is a dramatic scene? A dramatic scene is like a Hollywood film, which has a set, location, details, action, characters, and dialogue. According to Dinty Moore, the author of the Truth of the Matter; Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction, when you write a personal essay, memoir, literary journalism, you must craft scenes and not write expositions or summaries. A scene includes the following elements:
- Location/setting of the event or experience
- Concrete and specific details that are sensory details
- Action from characters who take participate in the story, event, or experience
- Sense of the passage of time
- Dialogue between characters to reveal something important about the character or the event or story.
Your goal is to make the experience come alive in the mind of your reader. Writing dramatic scenes is the way to recreate the experience.
Example:
Exposition or summary of an event:
This morning, I almost got into a fight with a stranger who attempted to run me over because of his careless driving.
Event based on scene:
This morning, while walking back from Tim Horton’s coffee shop, carrying my newspaper and cup of coffee, I almost got into a fight with a stranger who was driving a black Porsche. There was no sidewalk, so I had to walk home on the side of the road. Apparently, he didn’t like the fact that I was taking up the space where he intended to park. So rather than let me pass, he started to park as I was walking close to the curb. Attempting to park, he narrowly missed my feet by about 6 inches.
After he parked and climbed out of his car, I said, “You need to watch where you are going. You almost hit me with your car. There is no sidewalk, so I have to walk on the road. I have the right of way.”
He yelled, “Fuck off!”, and then walked up the street to get his morning fix of java, oblivious to how I felt or that he had done anything wrong.
I yelled back, “You are a rude person.”
I then continued to walk home. As I walked, I thought to myself: There is so much rudeness and a lack of civility in this big city of Toronto. And for a moment, I thought of going back to where he parked his Porsche, to wait for him, so that I could give him a piece of my mind. I thought of waiting for him, so that I could pour my cup of coffee on him. I thought of threatening him with bodily harm. I thought of calling the police. I thought of my mother who would tell me when I was a kid to “stay out of trouble.”
At some point during the walk home, my thoughts changed. I now felt relieved that the altercation had not escalated into something more serious or dangerous. I thanked myself for not reacting to my angry impulses.
Then I continued on my way, up the street, toward my home, enjoying the sunshine and mild spring day, one of the first since the end of the harsh, cold winter.
As I opened the front door to my basement apartment, I said to myself, “The black bears are out of their caves.”
How to Recreate the Scene
Before you recreate the scene, you need to remember what happened. Sometimes the event or experience happened recently. In this case, you can jot down the important details, action, and dialogue. Other times you will need to use your memory. You might also need to complete some research, such as reading a diary or personal journal”, visiting the place where the event took place, talking to friends or relatives who experienced the event. You won’t often remember every detail. But research and fact-checking will help you. You can also use the technique of “emotional truth.” It means that if it “feels right to you” you can write about it.
A dramatic scene has a sense of time and place. Time can refer to clock time, the time of day, the season of the year, or the time it takes for an event to occur. Place refers to location, which can refer to your family home, travel destination, nature, and so on. Be sure to include the time and location where the event or experience took place. It gives your story context and makes your story real. For instance, In September 1972, I saw the most important hockey game and sporting event in my life from the auditorium of my high school…
A dramatic scene also includes important details and descriptions. Details are concrete and specific. Details are also sensory images that appeal to the reader’s sense of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. Details make your story come alive. Example: Walking in the snow, the wind howling, the cold biting my face, I could see the trail to the road in the distance. I was hungry, exhausted, my body ached from the two hour cross country skiing in the woods, along the trail to the frozen lake, a place where I swam on during the warm, hot summer months of July and August. Now, it was January. I wanted to get home to cook a juicy, spicy pepper steak on the barbeque, drink a cold ale in front of the fire place, and relax on my lazy boy chair.
A dramatic scene includes the comments you make or the conversations between two or more people. A dramatic scene requires dialogue that reveals character or advances the narrative.
A dramatic scene includes action. You can write about your own behaviour other people’s behaviour. Your goal is to not include any action but action that is important or significant, action that is related to the event or events.
A scene can also include your own thoughts, feelings, and opinions. For instance, as the events or experience takes place, you can tell the reader how your felt or what were thinking. After the experience, you can provide the reader with your own view point.
As a creative nonfiction writer, your goal is to recreate the story or experience by using the technique of “writing dramatic scenes.” It involves showing your reading and not telling them what happened. You can show your reader what happened by describing the details, setting, and action, and by restating important dialogue. Writing dramatic scenes results in a compelling, entertaining, and memorable storytelling.
If you have any questions or comments, please post them to my blog.
Next, I will discuss point of view and voice as they apply to creative nonfiction.
How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Writing about Place
Place is more than Just Location
Writing about place or location of the event or experience is an important technique in creative nonfiction. It often plays a vital role in your story. It allows you to recreate the scene and experience in the mind of the reader. It can act as a backdrop or provide context for a personal essay. It can add meaning to a memoir. For instance, if a writer creates a memoir about child abuse, the place or location is significant. Place can also be the subject of creative writing. If you are writing a travel essay, you will be writing about the place you are visiting. Often, without a place or location, you have no experience or event.
This article will define what creative nonfiction writers mean by place/location and explain how to write about place/location in your creative nonfiction.
Definition of Place
In creative nonfiction, the place or location where the event or experience took place is more than just about the name of the place. It is also the physical location of the place, the physical attributes, such as the urban setting of crowds, pollution, public transit, traffic jams or the rural setting of open spaces, fewer people, fields, farms, and small communities.
Place is also about its socioeconomic attributes of a setting. Some places are poor, while others are wealthy. Some places have high unemployment, while others have an abundance of employment opportunities. Some places have schools and hospitals, while other places have nothing.
In writing about travel, place is much more than the physical location. It is about the culture, language, values, morals, beliefs, customs, cuisine, traditions, and way of life.
In writing a memoir, place often has significant meaning. It can be a catalyst for memories of childhood, adulthood, unique experiences. In the memoir, My Life: The Presidential Years, the Whitehouse was a special place for Bill Clinton. Place can also have significant meaning for ordinary people. In writing Eat, Pray, and Love, place had a powerful meaning for Elizabeth Gilbert. After her divorce and a mid-life-crisis, Gilbert decided to travel for a year by herself in an effort to restore balance and meaning to her life. Her memoir chronicles the three places she visited: Rome, India, and Bali. Each of these places had significant meaning to herself and to her life. She wrote about this powerful meaning in her memoir.
Some creative nonfiction writers view place as character. In recreating the scene or experience, the writer views place as a character in the story. Similar to developing a character, the place needs to be developed. The writer can use personification to develop the place. It can become nurturing, menacing, foreboding.
Yet place is more than just character. It is also about meaning. A place or location often has significant meaning. We can associate a particular place with good memories or bad memories, as being a happy place or sad place, as being a relaxing place or stressful place.
Clearly, when a creative writer writes about place, the writer must consider more than just its physical attributes or location.
How to Write about Place
In writing about place, you ought to consider the following:
- Name of the place
- Location of the place
- Physical attributes
- Home as place
- Nature as place
- Travel as place
- Meaning the place has for you
- Significance of the place
When writing about place, you first need to consider its name. Where did the name of the place originate? What is its history? What does it symbolize? For example, the city of Toronto originated as the Mohawk phrase tkaronto, later modified by French explorers and map makers.
You also need to consider writing about the important features, amenities, and physical attributes of place. For instance, in writing about Toronto, you can consider writing about its multicultural population, sports teams, and public transit, shopping centers, unique neighborhoods, landmarks, popular attractions, and the fact that it is located on Lake Ontario.
A place can also be about “home.” You can begin by exploring the meaning of home. Home is suppose to be a place of escape, comfort, protection, love, stability, and permanence—even solitude. What does home mean to you? What was my home like as a child? What did a like or dislike about the place called home? What memories do you have about your childhood home? For some people, home is a transient place, especially for people who travel, who are new immigrants, who end marriages or relationships.
In writing about place, you can also consider it in relation to nature. In his memoir, “Waldon”, Henry David Thoreau viewed nature, wildlife, and the woods as having a being a special place. According to Brenda Miller, who wrote “Tell It Slant”, a popular creative nonfiction text, Thoreau viewed the “human consciousness moved through nature, observing it, reacting to it, and ultimately being transformed by it. Miller goes on to suggest that when you write about nature as place, you need to consider how nature embodies larger forces, such as the physical attributes of a person you admire or the human condition or human experience.
In writing about place as a traveler, don’t write what everyone else has written. Your purpose is to find “a purpose for your writing above and beyond the travel experience itself”. (Tell It Slant) To create a travel piece that is more than just about transcribing the experience, you need to consider the theme and the significant meaning of the place.
When writing about a particular place, you ought to consider what meaning the place has for you. You can start by ask yourself the following: What does this place mean to me? How do I feel about this particular place? Do I like it? What do I like about it? Do I dislike it? What do I dislike about it? What are my memories of this place? What favorite memories do I have about this place?
Tips for Writing about Place
When writing about place, you must be original. You must be able to write about place from a unique perspective.
- Describe the place as if it is a character in your story. What is its appearance? Its behaviour? What is the place saying to you?
- Use literary devices to describe the place, such as metaphors, personification, and simile.
- Describe the physical attributes of the place using sensory images. How does place smell, sound, taste, feel, and appear to you?
- Write about place as it means to you. Do you have fond memories of the place? What do you like or dislike about the place? What is important? What is insignificant about the place? How does the place feel to you?
- Write about the significance of place. What universal truth embodies the place?
- Write about what you have learned about the sense of place/location?
- Don’t use clichés or hackneyed expressions to describe a place.
- Use concrete and specific details. Remember as many significant details about place as you can.
The place or location of an event or experience can have many meanings. Place can be your home, a travel destination, or a walk in the woods. When writing about place, consider its name. Write about its physical attributes. Write about what the place means to you. Write about the significance of the place. Write about theme and universal truth as it applies to place. Write about place from your own unique perspective.
If you have any questions or comments, please post them to this blog.
Find Your Creative Muse 