So You Want to Write An Essay'

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So You Want to Write An Essay.

• JMSC 6014
• Advanced Writing Workshop
• April 20, 2002
• D. Weisenhaus

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What is an essay?

• Coined in 16th century, French verb essayer (to
  try) -- Michel de Montaigne (1530-1590)
• A good essay must have this permanent quality
  about it it must draw its curtain round us, but
  it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.
  --Virginia Woolfe

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What is a prize-winning essay?

• National Magazine Award for essay writing honors
  the eloquence, perspective and fresh thinking
  that an author brings to bear on an issue of
  social or political significance.

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Formal vs. Informal Essays

• Formal essay is characterized by seriousness of
  purpose, dignity, logical organization,
  lengthThe technique identical to factual or
  theoretical prose writing in which literary
  effect is secondary to serious purpose.
• -- A Handbook to Literature
• The formal essay IS its ideas and its arguments.
  Does not necessarily aspire to art. (See Andrew
  Sullivan, Whats So Bad About Hate.)
• Not personal

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Formal vs. Informal Essays

• Informal has the personal element
  (self-relevation, individual tastes and
  experiences, confidential manner), humor,
  graceful style, unconventional or novelty of
  theme, freshness of form, freedom from stiffness
  and affectation, incomplete or tentative
  treatment of topic.

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Personal Essay

• A kind of informal essay, with an intimate
  style, some autobiographical content or interest
  and an urbane conversational manner -- A
  Handbook of Literature

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Difference from column writing

• Not based on news event
• Usually much more personal
• Often longer
• Says something larger about life and human
  condition
• But some columnists do use personal essay

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Difference from memoir

• Essay thinks about the meanings of the story
  told, using scenes and images and events from
  writers life -- the stuff of memoir -- for a
  kind of argument
• Tells a story but goes step further to analyze
  the stories and tell us what they mean
• Not a chronology -- more exposition, less
  narrative, working with ideas, explicit themes
  and logic. (well come back to this)

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Essay Checklist

• I (hard for journalists! EB Whites comments,
  see White, Gornick, Tan, Swartz)
• Intimacy
• Authenticity and life It is human.
• It is argument!

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Personal essay elements

• Conversational (parallel to dialogue, but talking
  to oneself) (Gornick, McPhee, Sacks)
• Honesty, confession and privacy (Emily White,
  McPhee)
• Contradictions and expansions of self -- Just
  as often as they tell us what they know, they ask
  at the beginnings of an exploration of a problem
  what it is they dont know and why. They follow
  the clue of their ignorance through the maze. --
  Phillip Lopate (See Amy Tan on Mother Tongue)

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More on I

• A form of discovery -- one discovers where one
  stands on complex issues, problems, questions,
  subjects.- Joseph Epstein

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Themes, Arguments

• What are you trying to say?
• Gornick failure of connection among like-minded
  individuals are inevitable
• Schwartz To think about age is to think about
  death
• Tan Language of family shapes the life of child

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Forms of Personal Essay

• Can include
• Reportage (read John McPhee, Tracy Kidder)
• Dealing with decisions made
• Relationships (McPhee, Tan)
• Speculative questions about found objects,
  missed opportunities
• BIG topics (Schwartz)
• small topics with big ideas

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Structure

• Varies wildly.
• Often starts with a small subject, which grows
  into something much larger (e.g., sand castles
  and the needs for destruction in human nature!)
  Individual to universal. Specific,
  generalization, then more particulars. (Gornick)
• Use specific examples that stick to one theme.
  All subjects are linked to each other
  (Montaigne)
• Can use quotes (dialogue or experts) (Gornick)

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Next Finding a Voice

• How do you find yours?
• Writing for the ear
• Use of language to convey voice
• Borrowing techniques from fiction