Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Topics and Narrative

Degregory writes that one of the most important parts of writing about a topic is that you have to be at the scene.  It's not enough to just hear about it.  The other necessary condition is that you have to have access to the person's everyday life and have an insight.  I found the part about the transgendered girl eye opening because sometimes I'll focus on one topic for such a long time and realize I have nothing worth writing and I may give up.  For Degregory, it took ten months for her story to finally have a meaning but it seems that it was worth the time.

When reading the ten tips written by Kramer, I thought the most helpful tip was "pinpoint your subjects' emotional experience, not your own."  Most if not all of the writing that I've done has been based off of my own feelings toward the subject and I need to learn to think about not just my response but the character's response like Kramer said.  I also like the tip about using metaphors because sometimes metaphors can help put situations into perspective and can brighten up the piece.

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