750: Map & “Up, Up & Away” Process Writing

For this 750, you’ll write out your map (this part of the 750 is necessary), then move on to the following process-writing questions.

The first prompt is necessary; the rest are optional.

What does this essay mean? To get at the meaning,  finish one of these sentences:

This is a story of _______.

or

This is a story about ___________.

(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 does the writer construct this meaning in this essay?

 

How does the writer set up (or foreshadow) the violent event at the end?

 

In what ways is this an essay about the visible & invisible?

 

What makes this essay funny?

 

This is a personal essay built around the cornerstone of a significant event. What technique(s) might you steal for your own essay?

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