Creating
a Sense of Immediacy
Dawn Davishall
English II, Regular and Pre-AP
Barbers Hill High School
Mont Belvieu, TX
Barbers Hill High School
Chambers County
8 schools in the district serving 2,792 students
High school enrollment is 769 students
supported by 58 full-time employees
Demographics:
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1 American Indian
24 African Americans
65 Hispanics
679 Caucasians
Seven 55-minute periods each day
High level of student involvement in all areas of UIL
UIL Reading-Writing Coach
From Where I Stand
Younger students are encouraged to create. Their
natural poetic sense is drawn out. Older students have
been expected to be more analytical, and many
teachers, including this one, have felt safe there.
Writing involves risk.
As the focus shifts from process-oriented instruction, “we
have begun to struggle with teaching craft as opposed to
ready-made forms” (Lane 39).
Fostering intrinsic motivation will support an environment
of trust and safety in which writing can flourish.
What is it that I sit and read with wonder?
What do I love so much that I am moved to read
and reread it, to slow down and spend time with
it, to show it to my friends, share it with my
students, and recommend it to my book club?
Language that puts me where the writer is . . .
in the moment, in the scene, walking around in it.
What Makes Writing Real?
If a writer is immersed in the world she’s creating, it is more
likely that the reader will be immersed in that world as
well. It is the writer’s job to open up, peel away, expose
the underbelly. She is encouraged to show, not tell,
breathe life into the piece, stand inside it. In Writing
Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg exhorts one to “stay
in direct connection with the senses and what you are
writing about. If you are writing from first thoughts—the
way your mind first flashes on something before second
and third thoughts take over and comment, criticize, and
evaluate—you won’t have to worry. First thoughts are
the mind reflecting experiences. . . . They can easily
teach us how to step out of the way and use words like a
mirror to reflect the pictures” (68).
The Telling Detail
In What a Writer Needs, Ralph Fletcher notes that “a writer can bring a
character to life with a single, carefully chosen detail. There is an art
to this, of course; find the right specific and every aspect of the
character comes into instant focus for the reader, right down to the
color of his socks, her earrings” (58). He goes on to say that “the
bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Don’t write about senility or
a man losing the ability to take care of himself. Write about the
missed belt loops. Put forth the raw evidence, and trust that the
reader will understand exactly what you are getting at” (59).
Showing not telling, yes?
Exposing the underbelly?
So quit telling, and show!
With a sense of discovery, let’s read selections from the following
works to uncover how these authors create a sense of immediacy:
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
“Barbie-Q” from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Annotate your texts, underlining, making marginal notes, and asking
questions. Or simply listen and let yourself be immersed in the language.
The farmhouse in All the King’s Men
Techniques
Tone
The Act of Framing
We don’t frame pictures of folks we don’t like, places that
we’d just as soon not have visited, events that held little
meaning. No, instead “we frame pictures of loved ones,
special events, not-so-special-events, animals, birds,
butterflies, places . . . because we want to remember
what’s in the picture—because the picture is special. . . .
Framing in writing also does that. It invites the reader to
look at something closely” (Armstrong 11).
Do you see a frame around Warren’s farmhouse?
. . . Or we can think of this technique as an
author’s using a MAGIC CAMERA
In after The End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision, Barry Lane
suggests that “writers have a magic camera that they can point at
the world and create snapshots that contain smells and sounds as
well as colors and light” (35). Further, he encourages us to “listen
to the invisible questions that whisper in readers’ ears, begging
them to read on” (20).
Warren has taken a snapshot,
painted a still life, created a scene that we can walk into.
Try it!
1.
2.
3.
4.
Think of a person that you know very well. Place that person in the middle of an
empty page, and then pretend that you have a magic camera that can freeze any
moment in time since you’ve know that person. Jot down at least five or six
moments, briefly noting them;
Pick one moment and write a snapshot of that moment, creating a picture with
words that frames the person so that your reader can see what you see. For
example, instead of “Dad took me ice fishing,” we have “Dad knelt beside me by
the ice hole, his hand in the icy water reaching for the perch that slipped back in.”
After you’ve taken some time to create a snapshot of this person, read over what
you’ve written and ask yourself at least two questions that will lead to more detail.
Then go back and either insert or add this detail to the snapshot.
Next, share your snapshot with a partner or group. The listeners should write
down questions that grow out of their natural curiosity about this person. You then
add more detail to the original snapshot.
Barry
Lane
“We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. . . . In
order to write about it, we have to go to the heart of it and know it, so
the ordinary and extraordinary flash before our eyes simultaneously”
(Goldberg 75).
Alternately, try this spin-off
Recall the scene in All the King’s Men when the men “saw the house.”
Return to a story you’ve written and find a place in which you could insert a
snapshot, framing a scene for your reader. Place a caret (^) in this spot in
your story and write your snapshot on a separate piece of paper.
Share your re-vision with fellow writers, asking them to comment on the scene
and its clarity. Are there any unanswered questions? Could you layer, even
more, your writing?
Discuss the effect of layering. When is enough enough?
Remember that we are ever
reading like writers and writing like readers.
451 and “On the Rainy River”
Tone
Technique
Creating a Sense of Immediacy with the List
In Writing with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres, Tom Romano
observes that “a list allows a writer quickly to confront readers with
abundant detail, enabling them to see an untainted, holistic picture.
In list making, syntax and logical connections of language are not
important. Simple, unexplained, occasionally poetic,” the list is often
seen as objective, a “still life” to which the reader brings meaning
(87). However, he also notes that the list can also be calculated, for
a writer can choose to “include some items and exclude others. . . .
The list offers the writer opportunity to amass pointed detail in a
particular context for devastating effect” (89).
How have both Bradbury and O’Brien created
a sense of devastation with their lists?
Try it!
For practice, do a quick-write of one of the following:
Job opportunities for teens;
Entertainment;
Your bedroom;
Reading materials;
Topic of your choice.
Look at your list.
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Is it accurate?
Is it objective?
How could you manipulate it to create bias? Look at the following list
poem for an example of how a list can make a statement simply by
omission.
A List, a Social Critique, or Both?
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interview.
Jennifer Pickering, Graduate Student,
Utah State University
“Barbi-Q”
Tone
Technique
Does Cisneros create a sense of immediacy? How?
Lists, Lists All Over the Place:
Immediacy, Detail, Power
Historical Fiction
Vignettes
Social
Commentary
Science
Fiction
As Mark Twain exclaims:
“Don’t say the old lady screamed.
Bring her on and let her scream.”
What can we do to show not tell? According to Joyce Carroll
Armstrong’s Dr. JAC’s Guide to Writing with Depth, there are “five
ways to practice showing
Analyze the work of published authors;
Compare telling writing to showing writing;
Recognize and use “show don’t tell” as an elaboration technique;
Identify telling parts in your writing;
Replace the telling parts of your writing with showing parts.”
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1953.
Carroll, Joyce Armstrong. Dr. JAC’s Guide to Writing with Depth. Spring, TX:
Absey & Co., 2002.
Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New Your:
Vintage Contemporaries, 1991.
Fletcher, Ralph. What a Writer Needs. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala, 1986.
Lane, Barry. After the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990.
Romano, Tom. Writing with Passion. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1995.
Warren, Robert Penn. All the King’s Men. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co.,
1946.