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OBJECT  A STORY AND A HALF

OBJECT  A STORY AND A HALF.

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OBJECT  A STORY AND A HALF

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  1. OBJECT  A STORY AND A HALF Your story should tell a “story and a half”—that is, there is your own very particular and literal experience that you will relate, AND there is a larger more inclusive idea lurking within it. It is this larger idea that will hold the value and the deeper purpose of your narrative essay for your reader.

  2. QUESTION: How do we get at that larger, more inclusive idea that will create the common ground between your individual experience and the reader’s shared understanding of it? ANSWER: Through an analysis of the facts of your story. Analysis is what moves us from FACTStoIDEAS—and IDEASare what we want from an essay (otherwise it’s just a letter or a journal entry). Good essays—eve detailed personal essays—trade in IDEAS.

  3. FACTScannot be moved from context to context; they are true or not true only in the situation in which they occur. They are context-bound. IDEASCAN be moved among contexts; they are transferable and, once transferred, can lead to new and useful insight and understanding. IDEAScan transcend the literal limitations of FACTSand can be APPLIED in many useful ways to various situations. It is the IDEA that your essay will really be about, not simply the facts of your story.

  4. After you can identify the underlying idea within the facts of your narrative, then you must articulate your attitude toward it: Philosophize about it. Express “what is to be learned” from it—AS OPPOSED TO “What I learned.” (NOTE THE QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE between the two. “What I learned” is still part of your own story—not a larger inclusive idea.) • Proceed through the follow steps: • Comb through the facts as you have presented them • Identify the UNDERLYING SUBJECT in your piece (you may be surprised; it may not be the obvious one. What are you really writing about? The benefits of disappointment? The nature of memory?) • Comment on that subject, according to those facts in your story: What is there to be learned from this? Or, what philosophy is suggested in this? What can relate my story to the reader’s world?

  5. Picasso’s “Guernica”

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