“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” ― Virginia Woolf
Welcome to the fourth day of Essay Camp.
Hello campers. How is the writing going? Have you had a chance to take any walks around our imaginary campus to see the autumn colors? Have you pressed any dream-leaves between the pages of your notebook?
If you haven’t managed to write much this session, or at all, maybe you’ve at least managed to do some reading or spend some reflective time instead. If you’re reading this sentence at least, you’re still here, and we’re glad to have you.
Today we’re going to talk about essay structure.
In previous sessions, I received many requests to talk about how to actually finish an essay, and we’re going to do that again here.
By talking about it today, I hope I can give you a little extra time to think about all the different ways that your writing might take shape, before the last day.
Your assignment after the end of Essay Camp, should you choose to accept it, will be to finish one essay or other piece of writing. It does not have to be long, and it does not have to be good, it just has to be finished.
Finishing things is important, even so-called “bad” or mediocre things. It is probably the most important thing you can do to help your writing, especially when you’re just starting out (and aren’t we all, in a way, always just starting out?). Writers, like figure skaters, must ultimately learn by doing, and it’s a very different experience to actually write an essay, story, or book, than it is to imagine doing so (I assume it works the same way with a triple axel). Imagining helps, but doing is better—and essential.
In order to finish an essay, it helps to understand a little bit about how it’s all supposed to come together:
The essay is a funny genre—a blurry one, with undefined borders. To understand how to shape an essay, it helps to understand what an essay is supposed to do. And yet there are many things that an essay can do. There are few hard and fast rules. There is often an I present in an essay, a discernible speaker of some kind, but not always.
An essay is a piece of nonfiction writing that explores, argues, describes, recounts, depicts, or narrates, using literary techniques. An essay can be personal, and tell the kind of story you might find in a traditional memoir, or it can be analytical and present one’s thoughts on a cultural or political topic. Quite often, an essay can serve as a space for intellectual curation, in which the writer brings together seemingly disparate topics or ideas, inviting the reader to regard them in association. The essayist can put topics in conversation that a reader might not have considered otherwise, but it can also be much simpler than that.
One thing that distinguishes an essay from an article or an informational blog post, is the shape of it. An essay has an intentional shape. It is consciously a work of literature.
There is not a universal, mutually agreed upon taxonomy of literary essay types. Some common essay forms you might hear about are the “braided essay” or the “lyric essay,” although there is not a strong consensus on what precisely these two terms even mean. In recent years, I’ve been interested in “vignette essays,” which are a bit like lyric essays, but presented in brief snapshots, which can ideally function in a way similar to a prose poem.
Generally speaking, a braided essay weaves together two or more seemingly disparate narratives or subjects, switching back and forth between them, often with a certain sense of coming together at the end. A common convention with this type is to alternate between one narrative thread that is very personal, and another that is less so, perhaps based on research. The different threads inform and reflect off one another. Towards the end of the braided essay, a direct connection between these threads is often revealed, or else one thread will show itself to be a kind of metaphor for the other.
The lyric essay is less specific as a genre, but the term is generally used to describe an essay that employs poetic language, and possibly an impressionistic, unconventional narrative structure, or no discernible narrative at all. It can sometimes be described as sitting somewhere between an essay and a prose poem.
There are other kinds of literary essays, too. There is the narrative essay, which tells a story in a more or less straightforward manner, with a sequential beginning, middle, and end. Many writers choose this format, and for good reason: it works.
Then there is the fragmented essay, presented in short, disjointed vignettes, snapshots, or aphorisms—Sarah Manguso and Maggie Nelson are both known for working in this genre.
There is the essay that pretends to be something else, which writer Esmé Weijun Wang has called the “mimicry essay”, like a questionnaire, an obituary, a set of instructions, or a letter. For example, in her essay “Wolf Moon,” Nina MacLaughlin presents a fanciful questionnaire intended for the moon.
As Virginia Woolf said, “arrange what pieces come your way.” You can decide what form of essay you’ll be crafting based on the material you already have.
But whatever kind of essay you choose to write, it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning draws you in, the middle holds your interest, and the ending sees you out again. Each section has only one job, and that is it.
Like with a piece of music, the ending of an essay can have many different flavors and effects, but it must provide a sense of closure. It can crescendo to a climax, or offer a new perspective. It can end very quietly, or with a bang. Some sentences simply feel like ending sentences due to the strength of their language, their imagery, or their poetic rhythm. In journalism these are called “kickers.”
To borrow further from the language of music, there may be what is known as a “recapitulation,” in which previous themes are presented again, sometimes with a secondary development—something is repeated or called back to, but from a slightly different perspective.
Most of the time, as readers, we don’t really know why an ending feels satisfying, we just know that it does.
There is only so much you can learn about how an essay is put together, or how to properly finish one, by reading about it like this. Instead, it is better to read a lot of essays and to write some. Afterwards, you can identify why certain essay forms are effective for you, why they appeal to you, and why an ending feels satisfying—but it is hard to do this without a working familiarity with the examples themselves, which can only be achieved by reading.
Ultimately, you will need to learn to recognize how an essay feels when you’re writing one. The more you do it, the more you will find yourself circling in on an ending without even meaning to. It’s a muscle memory thing, a kind of sixth sense. You need to feel the shape of it in your mind. That’s really the best way to write one, in the end; to practice reading and writing so much that you find it coming together on its own. When it’s not native to you like this, formed as part of your creative reflexes through experience as a writer and reader, it will always be difficult.
So, when you’re reading back over the drafts you produced this week, ask yourself: do any parts of this feel like a beginning or the start of something? Does this feel like it belongs in the middle of something? Does this feel like an end? Does this “thing” I’ve written work as a vignette, or could it be used within a larger narrative? No decision need by permanent, it’s just something to think about.
Hopefully, you can begin to experiment, revise, and rearrange accordingly, once you’re ready.
Let’s begin.
“The habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.” —Virginia Woolf
Writing Assignment, Day 4
If you have already written three Five Things drafts, write another one today. When you’re done, read back over your drafts from today and the previous three days and see if you like anything you’ve written. Do not panic (I cannot stress this enough) if you hate all if it, but do see if there is anything, anything at all, that strikes you as interesting or even good. Does it feel true? Does it make you want to write more? Are there any topics here that you’d like to expand on? Pay attention to any sentences or passages that might serve as a beginning, a middle, or an end of something..
Alternate Option 1: Freewriting
If you still have not tried the Five Things prompt, I encourage you to give it a try, just to see how it feels. But if you’re not working with that prompt today, proceed to freewriting instead.
Set a timer for whatever amount of time you have, and write whatever comes. As with the Five Things prompt, try not to look back at what you’ve written. Keep moving forward without worrying about the quality of what you’ve written, until you’ve reached the end of your allotted time.
Remember, do not worry about beginnings or about the structure of your sentences at this stage. That comes later. For now just focus on getting words down on the page.
When you’re finished, feel free to read back over what you’ve written these past four days and see if any parts of it feel like a beginning, a middle, or the end of an essay you might write.
In case you need a prompt:
Write about a situation in which you wish you had said something, but didn’t.
Describe the first restaurant you remember going to as a child.
Write a letter to a friend you haven’t spoken to in years.
Write about being seventeen years old.
Write about someone else’s dog.
Write a series of questions intended for someone or something that cannot respond.
Write about a time when you were sick, and who cared for you, or didn’t.
Write about an injustice.
Write about bananas.
Write about a ghost.
Alternate Option 2: Rebel Mode
Do your thing. Work on your own project, in whatever way you see fit, for as long as you can.
Reading Assignment, Day 4
For today’s reading assignment, feel free to select an essay to read, and then think a little bit about its structure. How does it inform your experience of the material ? You can choose from the essays I’ve linked today below, pick one from Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, or simply choose your own. Even reading something like a novel can teach you something about essay forms.
To give fair warning, as in the previous Essay Camp where this list was drawn from, today I have included two essays in particular that are very intense. “The Heaviest Pain in the World” by Rob Delaney is about the death of his toddler son from cancer. It presents the narrative sequentially, in unflinching detail. The second, “Ugly, Bitter, and True,” by Suzanne Rivecca, deals frankly with suicidal ideation. If you’re feeling sensitive to either of these topics, you may want to skip these, but they are excellent essays if you’re okay with reading such material.
Then there is a reading options which is not an essay: a short story, “Chicxulub,” by T.C. Boyle, which is fiction, but uses the kind of braided structure that is commonly found in braided essays nonetheless, and does so to great effect. In a previous session, I included the flash piece “Lost-and-Found” by Sean McMenemy, without knowing whether it was fiction or nonfiction, or something in between, but like “Chicxulub,” it’s a story that could be nonfiction, and is worth reading to see what can be accomplished in so few words. However, sadly I cannot find a new working link to it, so I am including this vignette essay, in its entirety, by Annie Dillard instead:
It snowed and it cleared and I kicked and pounded the snow. I roamed the darkening snowy neighborhood, oblivious. I bit and crumbled on my tongue the sweet, metallic worms of ice that had formed in rows on my mittens. I took a mitten off to fetch some wool strands from my mouth. Deeper the blue shadows grew on the sidewalk snow, and longer; the blue shadows joined and spread upward from the streets like rising water. I walked wordless and unseeing, dumb and sunk in my skull, until—what was that?
The streetlights had come on—yellow, bing—and the new light woke me like noise. I surfaced once again and saw: it was winter now, winter again. The air had grown blue dark; the skies were shrinking; the streetlights had come on; and I was here outside in the dimming day’s snow, alive.
—Annie Dillard, “The Return of Winter,” from An American Childhood, Harper & Roe 1987
Other reading options:
“The Heaviest Pain in the World,” by Rob Delaney, 4,240 words, 17 minute read
“Chicxulub,” by T. Coraghessan Boyle (a short story), 4,374 words, 18 minute read (link)
“The Fourth State of Matter,” by Jo Ann Beard, about 7,200 words, 30 minute read (link)
“Ugly, Bitter, and True,” by Suzanne Rivecca, about 16,000 words, 1 hour 10 minute read (link)
“Bluets,” by Maggie Nelson,” about 28,000 words, 2 hour read (PDF)
“Passing Mary Oliver at Dawn,” by Summer Brennan, 764 words, 3 minute read (link)
Time To Write!
There was a lot of information today, so let’s get to it.
Happy writing!
xo
Summer
Summer,
Merci beaucoup.
Barbara