Creative Nonfiction Part 3 - Nola Passmore

Keeping it Vivid

Last week, I looked at how scenes and dialogue can be used to create story in nonfiction.  Vivid imagery can help readers experience the world of your story and give them a reason for staying.  Here are some tips for doing that.

The Five Senses

Writers typically highlight sights and sounds when describing a setting, but it’s easy to forget smell, touch and taste. It would be overkill to work all five of the senses into every scene, but see if you can drop in one or two where relevant. 

Describing the place where her friend's mother was dying, Lynette D’Amico writes that “death is invisible in the room that smells fur-lined, like a mouse cave.  So many candles are burning, the daughters pant and glow.”  That brief account gives a sense of what it was actually like to be in the room.  

Remember that you don’t have to be serious.  In Sleepless in Southern Africa, Dave Fox recounts how it was the birds rather than the lions that woke him up: 

“Some warble.  Some squawk.  Some chatter.  Some cluck.  One species sounds like a frog.  Another sounds like that guy behind you in the supermarket line who you want to strangle because he will not stop whistling the same six notes, over and over.”

Metaphors and Similes

As in fiction, metaphors and similes are used to heighten the image and create a particular mood.  In his bestselling biography of Ned Kelly, Peter FitzSimons describes the slab hut in which Ned was born as “a shack that looks rather less half-built than already half-destroyed … a habitation in name only, and rather more a rough shelter … a wooden cave (p. 4).”  That says so much more than simply stating they were poor.

In his personal essay Sin, Max Garland recounts a time when he set fire to his grandfather’s field and lied about it.  He starts with ten or so comparisons of what sin is like and what it’s not like, and concludes that “it was more like the feeling of barometric pressure on the rise—how the air got crowded when a storm was coming.”  By the time we get to that point, we can feel the pressure rising.

Intimate Details

Lee Gutkind argues that your nonfiction prose will be more memorable if you can add intimate details: “ideas and images readers can’t easily visualize on their own—ideas and images that symbolize a memorable truth about the characters or situations you’re writing about” (p. 127).  In her travel essay Of Danger and Beauty, Anna Elkins includes a scene where she and her friend Tsach are walking through a garden in Israel:

“… Tsach—shirtless and barefoot—looked right at home.  He picked up a rope-thin piece of discarded cactus from a compost pile, ‘I can plant this in Mom’s garden.’”

The detail about the cactus might not be crucial to the plot, but it tells us something of Tsach’s character that provides extra depth to the narrative.  

Pay Attention

In order to include the kind of description I’ve been talking about, you have to be a keen observer of life.  Jot down that funny line you overheard in the coffee shop, note the unusual way the harpist plucked her strings, sniff the shelves in the antiquarian bookstore.  As Ron Rozelle notes, you have to be “a meticulous harvester of detail” and then find the best ways to incorporate those aspects into your manuscript (p. 18). The little snippets you've filed away may be just what you need to transport your readers into your nonfiction tale and keep them there.

Sources:

D’Amico, L.  (2014).  Faithful.  Brevity, Issue 47.  Retrieved from http://brevitymag.com/nonfiction/faithful/

Elkins, A.  Of Danger and Beauty.  Retrieved from http://travelerstales.com/carpet/002852.shtml

FitzSimons, P.  (2013).  Ned Kelly: The story of Australia’s most notorious legend.  North Sydney: Random House.  See sample at http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/peter-fitzsimons/ned-kelly-9780857982094.aspx

Fox, D.  Sleepless in Southern Africa.  Retrieved from http://travelerstales.com/carpet/002861.shtml

Garland, M.  (2013)  Sin.  Creative Nonfiction, Issue 48.  Retrieved from https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/sin

Gutkind, L.  (2012).  You can’t make this stuff up: The complete guide to writing creative nonfiction from memoir to literary journalism and everything in between.  Boston, MA: Da Capo Press.

Rozelle, R.  (2005).  Description and setting: Techniques and exercises for crafting a believable world of people, places, and events.  Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books.

Nola Passmore is a freelance writer who has had more than 140 short pieces published, including devotionals, true stories, magazine articles, academic papers, poetry and short fiction.  She loves sharing what God has done in her life and encouraging others to do the same.  She and her husband Tim have their own freelance writing and editing business called The Write Flourish.  You can find her weekly writing tips blog at their website:  http://www.thewriteflourish.com.au  

Book Review - Inadvertent Things

Any new Andrew Lansdown book of poems is always cause for a celebration. It’s a big claim, but in my opinion there is no poet in Australia who handles imagery as deftly. As an example:
'Black caterpillar –
a fur stole around the neck
of a daisy bud.'
I loved this image. Equally I loved the various images in 'Heron Meditations.' We have a grey heron comes sometimes into our yard and I could see it clearly through these images of 'a Buddhist nun,' and later 'a heron warrior monk.' Andrew Lansdown writes a lot about birds, so as well as several poems about herons, you will find kingfishers, wrens, swallows, and zebra finches just to name a few. 'Azure' about a fairy wren and the Madonna is a small jewel. I also loved 'Waterlily Haiku,' and 'Sacred Kingfisher.' 'Blossom' with its comparisons of the wattle and impressionists 'dotting technique' is another small gem as is 'Buds.' I appreciated the humour in 'Jonquils and Daffodils' as well as 'Pygmy Bat' and several other poems and I liked the,
'Liquidambar –
Educating evergreens
About autumn.'
Lansdown also perfectly captures small family moments in poems such as 'Touch,' 'Ferocious Animals' and 'A Good Death.' 'Australian Summer' conveys a very accurately observed picture of the land. There is poignancy that brought tears to my eyes in 'Meditations on Pain,' and 'Ambitions,' but 'After Pain\ also conveys a sense of hope.
Trying to pick a favourite Andrew Lansdown poem is like trying to pick your favourite child – not possible. However a few others I loved were: 'For Grace,' 'Wren Haiku,' 'Time Out', 'Inadvertent Things 1', 'Incoming Heron' and 'Black Bamboo'. But I am sure next time I pick up this book, which will be often, I will find other favourites. There is just something about Andrew Lansdown’s poetry that always speaks to my heart. These poems in traditional Japanese forms are a joy to read and to savour. Loved the cover of this book too.

Over time Dale has written fiction, poetry, children’s fiction, bible studies and Sunday school lessons. More information about Dale can be found at www.daleharcombe.com or on her Write and Read with Dale blog http://www.livejournal.com/users/orangedale/

Book Review- Gestures of Love

Book review by Dale Harcombe

Sometimes it can be difficult to be a committed Christian and also be respected by the secular world for writing craft. Andrew Lansdown can lay claim to being a Baptist pastor, an education  officer in prisons, a tutor and also one of Australia’s most respected poets, His poems have won awards and been published in many of Australia’s leading literary magazines and newspapers.

Any new Andrew Lansdown book of poetry is always a cause for celebration. His newest collection of poems collection spans 35 years of fatherhood. I particularly liked: These Gifts, End of Day, Home, Paper Wasps, Freedom and I felt the regret and distance in Aftermath and my absolute favourite Lansdown poem Boat. Into Darkness is another favourite here.

Andrew Lansdown has the capacity to tenderly capture the small moments of everyday family life without reducing them to sentimentality in such poems as Binoculars, Confinement, Mowing, After a Storm, Dialogues with my Daughter,  and Poised on a Premonition, to mention a few.  I could go on and on. There are so many poems to recommend in this book. Even though I have read a number of these poems before in other volumes of his poetry, it is like coming upon a familiar friend to read them again here gathered around this unifying theme. Some of them deal with the Fatherhood of God and the experience of being a child of God as Andrews’ own experience of being a father.

To my mind poetry books are not meant to be devoured in a hurry. They are to be read, re read and savoured which is exactly what I have been doing with this book. Anyone who loves imagery and poetry based on everyday life will gain a lot from reading and re-reading this collection.  It has the capacity to help us to remember to delight in the small moments. This collection is a joy. It is not hard to see why Andrew Lansdown is such a respected name in Australian poetry scene, while his Christian faith shines through his poetry.

 

Dale writes fiction and poetry. Her latest novel is Streets on a Map is currently available as an E book. She has also written children’s books, bible studies, Sunday school material, devotionals, and articles about marriage, home and Christian living. She is currently at work on a new novel, tentatively titled Sandstone Madonna and some new poems. You can find out more about Dale from her website www.daleharcombe.com or her Write and read with Dale blog  

http://www.livejournal.com/users/orangedale/