{"id":2721,"date":"2011-06-03T15:55:36","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T21:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2721"},"modified":"2011-06-03T15:58:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T21:58:11","slug":"a-quick-writing-course-from-john-mcphee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2721","title":{"rendered":"A Quick Writing Course from John McPhee"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to teach a class in creative nonfiction (a descendent of the “New Journalism<\/a>” of the 1960s-1970s). If there is an American master of creative nonfiction, it would be John McPhee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I could have just taken this long interview with McPhe<\/a>e from The Paris Review<\/em>, chopped it into bits, and had most of a semester’s worth of lecture notes. It’s that good.<\/p>\n

A few excerpts\u2014here is McPhee on choosing what or whom to write about:<\/p>\n

I certainly don\u2019t go around looking for loners, but I guess I am interested in people who are expert at something, because they\u2019re going to lead me into some field, teach it to me, and then in turn I\u2019m going to tell others about it. The ideal situation is to be watching somebody do their thing, and they don\u2019t give a damn about you because they\u2019re so absorbed. They\u2019re confident about what they\u2019re doing, and they\u2019re not at all consumed with self-consciousness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I used to tell all my students, particularly those just starting out, to read their stuff aloud. (It’s amazing how many students cannot read aloud comfortably.) McPhee does it:<\/p>\n

Certainly the aural part of writing is a big, big thing to me. I can\u2019t stand a sentence until it sounds right, and I\u2019ll go over it again and again. Once the sentence rolls along in a certain way, that\u2019s sentence A. Sentence B may work out well, but then its effect on sentence A may spoil the rhythm of the two together. One of the long-term things about knitting a piece of writing together is making all this stuff fit.<\/p>\n

I always read the second draft aloud, as a way of moving forward. I read primarily to my wife, Yolanda, and I also have a friend whom I read to. I read aloud so I can hear if it\u2019s fitting together or not. It\u2019s just as much a part of the composition as going out and buying a ream of paper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here is an excerpt from a section of the interview where he talks about how creative nonfiction pieces develop their own structure\u2014and how that structure can be manipulated.<\/p>\n

But what if you started telling the piece of writing further down the river, I wondered. That way, when you get to the end of the trip, you\u2019re really only halfway through the story. What you do then is switch to the past tense, creating a flashback, and you back up and start your trip over again. By the time you get to that bear, that bear is at the perfect place for a climax. That\u2019s what\u2019s exciting about nonfiction writing. In this case it\u2019s a simple flashback, but it also echoes all these cycles of the present and the past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole interview here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to teach a class in creative nonfiction (a descendent of the “New Journalism” of the 1960s-1970s). If there is an American master of creative nonfiction, it would be John McPhee. I could have just taken this long interview with McPhee from The Paris Review, chopped it into bits, and had most of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-2721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-HT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":594,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=594","url_meta":{"origin":2721,"position":0},"title":"Porch-ismWhile I was fretting last\u2026","author":"Chas S. 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