The following links will take you to three sets of handouts from a session presented at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in Albany, New York, April 16, 1999.  The title of the session was: "Caption, Scenario, Word: Classroom Approaches to Creative Nonfiction." In this panel presentation three creative nonfiction writers and teachers each explain a particular approach to the teaching of nonfiction drawing on prompts they have used with their students.

• Robert Root discusses an assignment inviting students to write informal “caption essays” (in the mode of Civilization Magazine’s back page) in response to photographs from their lives and illustrates the form with a caption essay of his own.
• Simone Poirier-Bures discusses the use of fiction techniques in nonfiction writing by explaining the use of the sample scenario, in which students look at a set of circumstances from the perspectives of both the essayist and the fiction writer.
• Kim Barnes describes an exercise in which students build an essay from a single word. Following these examples of different ways to engaging students in creative nonfiction, the panel will open the discussion to the generation of more approaches that foster student engagement with essay and memoir.

Robert Root, “Captioning and Capturing the Past”

        The “Captions” page of Civilization Magazine is a single page in which a writer describes a photograph or drawing or objet d’art.  Joyce Carol Oates, for example, writes about a picture of her mother and herself in one, and suggests what significance the simple snapshot has for the context of her family life at that moment. “Memory,” she says, “ is our favorite form of time travel” and the snapshot helps to get “across the mysterious abyss of time.” To help my students in nonfiction classes reach back into memory and begin to give themselves a sense of setting and detail I invite them to pick photographs of their own and write what I call a “caption essay” about them.

        In a sense this is a diagnostic piece of writing, because it only takes a week (from one class to the next), it doesn’t have to be very long, and it will give me a sense of what the students do with description, narration, and exposition.  But I want to use it for two other purposes as well: first, as an icebreaker that will plunge us all into sharing our writing and making student writing the center of class meetings—this is short enough and informal enough to not be too intimidating yet still challenging enough to require imagination and thought—and second, as a kind of group prewriting activity, which will give everyone a chance to see other people’s pictures, listen to other people’s memories and interpretations, and surface more of their own memories and reflections.  The first major piece of writing in the course will be a personal essay, and I’m expecting this exercise to bring them into a state of readiness to tackle it and to work together as a class.  I share with them my own attempt at this exercise as well as a couple pages from the magazine.  Students also use this device throughout the course, on their own for different assignments, or return to it to develop ideas further.

        I'm interested in the area of memoir and in writing from personal experiences in general. One of the things that's always challenging is defining "creative nonfiction" which seems to include a wide spectrum of writing, from old-fashioned essays to literary journalism to "faction"(?) to memoir, to experimental, impressionistic  bits I have no name for. On the far end, some nonfiction pieces come very close to fiction.  Basically I believe that to write nonfiction vividly and well, you have to use many of the same devices you use in fiction. How much and how many of them you use, and how overtly you include the reflective element seems to determine where your creative nonfiction piece falls on this spectrum.

        I have a lesson/exercise I've used with some success with various groups to show how fiction and creative nonfiction can be closely related, how using fictional devices can make a piece come alive. Briefly, it goes like this: I tell them of an experience I had some time ago that struck me, that I wanted to write about, and I use that as the "sample scenario" (It's an experience involving dogs and a cat.) First we talk about how an essay describing this experience might look like.  Then I take the students through a number of fiction-writerly questions: who tells the story? At what place in the story should I begin? How do I get my reader's attention? What tense shall I use? How do I build suspense?  After we discuss this for a while, I give them 10-15 minutes to begin writing the piece, as if the experience were their own. Then we read some of their first few sentences aloud (The differences are amazing!) Afterward, I read them my own version, which has met with some success (published in the U.S., Canada, and Australia). Because they've given thought to how to frame and develop a common story/scenario, they then see all the choices more vividly. From here we can talk about using fictional elements (dialogue, scene, character, tone) and filtering that experience through understanding and imagination.

        I often speak to my writing students about "bringing their intellect to bear" as they compose their personal essays.  What I mean by this is that the best literary nonfiction should work at a number of different levels, including the level of intellectual stimulation.  The problem we face as writers of nonfiction is how to challenge our individual stories--how to take the narrative itself and expand its breadth and reach to encompass more of the world.

        One exercise that I use to help my students achieve this goal involves building an essay from a single word. First, the students each choose one word--any word--to which they are particularly drawn, a word that resonates for them.  A young man just discharged from the military chose "paratrooper"; a middle-aged woman of Scottish descent chose "bagpipes."  I then require that the students write five sections of nonfiction revolving around this single word: The first, third, and fifth sections must be personal memories triggered by the word, and they must be written in present tense no matter the actual chronology; the second and fourth sections must be more analytical, intellectual, philosophical, and explore the word in a more scholarly way.  I direct the students to study the word's derivation and history. They often find passages in religious texts and mythologies that inform the word's meaning in their own experience.  Some discuss the word's appearance and use in contemporary literature or film.

        The goal of this exercise is to weave the word's broader application into the writer's personal experience.  Ideally, the five sections weave together and inform one another and bring to the essay a kind of intellectual unity as well as a greater depth and complexity.

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