Topic Subtopic Writing Writing Creative Nonfiction

Topic Literature & Language

Subtopic Writing

Writing Creative Nonf iction

Course Guidebook

Professor Tilar J. Mazzeo

Colby College

PUBLISHED BY:

THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412

Fax: 703-378-3819

Copyright ? The Teaching Company, 2012

Printed in the United States of America

This book is in copyright. All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company.

Tilar J. Mazzeo, Ph.D.

Clara C. Piper Professor of English Colby College

Professor Tilar J. Mazzeo is the New York Times best-selling author of The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It, the story of the ?rst international businesswoman in history, and The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World's Most Famous Perfume. The Widow Clicquot won the 2008 Gourmand Award for the best book of wine literature published in the United States.

Professor Mazzeo holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches British and European literature at Colby College, where she is the Clara C. Piper Professor of English. She has been the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Residence at The George Washington University, and her writing on creative non?ction techniques has appeared in recent collections such as Now Write! Nonfiction: Memoir, Journalism, and Creative Nonfiction Exercises from Today's Best Writers.

An experienced travel, food, and wine writer, Professor Mazzeo is also the author of Back Lane Wineries of Sonoma and Back Lane Wineries of Napa. Her travel essays have appeared in publications such as Food & Wine magazine, and her narrative non?ction account of life in the Hotel Ritz in Paris during the Second World War is forthcoming from HarperCollins.

Professor Mazzeo divides her time between coastal Maine and the California wine country.

i

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Professor Biography ............................................................................i Course Scope.....................................................................................1

LECTURE GUIDES

LECTURE 1 Welcome to Creative Nonfiction .........................................................3 LECTURE 2 Finding the Story ..............................................................................10 LECTURE 3 Honoring the Nonfiction Contract .....................................................16 LECTURE 4 Writing Great Beginnings..................................................................22 LECTURE 5 Show, Don't Tell ................................................................................28 LECTURE 6 Launching a Narrative Arc ................................................................34 LECTURE 7 Cliffhangers and Page Turners.........................................................40 LECTURE 8 Building Dramatic Sentences ...........................................................46 LECTURE 9 Rhetorical Devices and Emotional Impact........................................52 LECTURE 10 Putting It All Together........................................................................59

ii

Table of Contents

LECTURE 11 Revealing Character in Words and Actions ......................................66 LECTURE 12 Creating Compelling Characters ......................................................71 LECTURE 13 Character Psychology ......................................................................78 LECTURE 14 Getting Inside the Heads of Your Characters ...................................83 LECTURE 15 Using Narrative Perspective .............................................................89 LECTURE 16 Shaping Your Voice ..........................................................................95 LECTURE 17 Writing the Gutter--How to Not Tell a Story ...................................100 LECTURE 18 Dialogue Strategies in Creative Nonfiction .....................................108 LECTURE 19 Researching Creative Nonfiction .................................................... 117 LECTURE 20 How to Not Have People Hate You.................................................126 LECTURE 21 Revising Your Work ........................................................................132 LECTURE 22 Building Your Audience...................................................................138 LECTURE 23 Getting Published ...........................................................................143

iii

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download