Poor Me—Content
Finish one of these sentences:
This is a story of _______.
or
This is a story about ___________.
(Here are three abbreviated examples of how this kind of thing works with other stories:
1. This is a story of a man coming to a kind of reckoning with his grief over his father’s suicide. For years, this man has been stuck on the question of why? about his father’s suicide. But then he goes on a fishing trip alone – alone for the first time in years – where he meets a stranger who helps him get over that hump.
2. It is a story of healing. Emma is resurrected from her obsession with grief and her misery by art.
3. This is a story about a period in Revie’s life when his father is making the transition to a new state of life, post mom and post marriage, while Revie flounders. He is being left behind by his father. It’s really a story about grief, and how grief is private, a room one enters (and leaves) alone.)
How can you tell that this essay is about what you say it is? How does the writer create this meaning?
Who has power in this essay? What are the sources of power?
Poor Me—Craft
Look back at what you wrote for the prompt about how the writer creates the meaning of the essay. What techniques might you steal from this writer to build meaning in your own essay? (In other words, what moves could you make in your own essay to make meaning out of your event without saying to the reader And here is what this event meant to me…?)
Narrative Map
This one’s mandatory for the 750: Per the Furunessay on narrative design, write a narrative map for your essay.