Laura Nyro
I recently downloaded some Laura Nyro songs from her final album, Angel in the Dark. The producer’s notes mention how important the imagination was to Nyro—it was the “ultimate, the center of spirituality.”
In working with first year college students and their writing, I notice their motivation rises when I give exercises or assignments that invoke their imaginations.
Tagged with: audience, exercises, learning, narrative, quotation
Fairy Tale
I am in New York right now. In today’s Daily News an editorial cartoon depicts Hillary staring into a mirror apparently asking “Who’s the fairest of them all?” And the mirror keeps answering back, “Barack.”
The campaign has divided women in ways I never would have expected. A good friend just sent me a petition, signed by thousands of women, who call themselves “feminists for peace and for Barack Obama!”
Tagged with: narrative, story, struggle
Conflict and Resolution?
My older brother and I do not get along. It’s a sad story, I suppose. Both in our 50’s, we live miles apart literally and figuratively. The figurative distance started in childhood. And now, he has five children—the oldest and I have found an adult connection, one I value very much. When she was born over 20 years ago, I wrote her a story about reaching for the moon.
The other day, she wrote me a story. She is a nurse in a NICU unit. Here’s how it goes:
Tagged with: discovery, narrative, story, struggle, truth
More Stories
At a recent dinner party, a sports fan suggested to the rest of us, non-sports fans, that we would be happier people if we watched sports. “It gives you something to root for. It gives you hope,” she said.
I said, “Well, it is true, that a game is a great story—conflict, crisis, suspense, resolution.”
Tagged with: construct, narrative, story, structure
Bonanza
Check out my new video post on the fiction site. Also on YouTube.
Comfortable Place to Go
When we ask students to write, we ask students to construct thought. And I have been trying to think about that in simple and obvious ways. I fall back on the narrative because its first person construction of conflict, climax, and resolution creates a comfortable place to go. Students are drawn to reading and writing narratives because they are familiar, and their formula is somewhat ingrained. (I realize my ideas come from a western point of view). So, I think, if we can break down the narrative into its parts and then find those parts scattered in other rhetorical modes, maybe that familiarity will create some new comfort. That’s where I’m at after my first two weeks of a new semester.
Tagged with: narrative, structure, students
Story Structure
For homework, students read three narrative essays, two by published authors Dick Gregory and Steve Brody, and one by a student named Lisa Driver. I showed students how Brody’s piece was built on a story structure with crisis, complications, and climax. Then I asked them to analyze the structure of Gregory and Driver’s pieces, using the same language.
Next class, I hope to continue the discussion with essays that are less story-like, showing students that crisis, complications, obstacles, climax, resolution are useful devices for any type of writing. We’ll see how that goes.