The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative
Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: “Who am I writing for?” It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person. Don’t try to guess what
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
sometimes the answer to the question reveals something much deeper — a hidden truth that often makes for a great story. Bruce Springsteen once said in an interview: “Most people’s stage personas are created out of the flotsam and jetsam of their internal geography and they’re trying to create something that solves a series of very complex problems
... See moreMatthew Dicks • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
The noted neurologist and author Oliver Sacks had this to say about originality, in his essay “Prodigies” from the book An Anthropologist on Mars: Creativity, as usually understood, entails not only a “what,” a talent, but a “who”—strong personal characteristics, a strong identity, personal sensibility, a personal style, which flow into the talent,
... See moreHaruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation: The master storyteller on writing and creativity
I used these definitions, drawn in part from Vivian Gornick’s The Situation And The Story. The personal essay was the attempt to make sense of a topic using experiences and research, sometimes taken from life experience and sometimes not. The memoir was the attempt to understand the self in relationship to a time period or a topic generated out of
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