Final Paper

Esthetics Essay

By Matt Carroll

           

This semester was very interesting because of the wide variety of stories we’ve read, the advice given in workshops, and the exercises done in class. There have been numerous tools I’ve learned that helped improve my writing.

 

Structure

            When looking back on my first story at the beginning of the semester Paying the Toll, I realized how underdeveloped it was. It lacked a proper structure that could help advance the story the way I meant it to. I thought one of the more interesting stories that helped me realize how important structure was Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. O’Brien had a different style than anything I’d read before. He used repetition to his advantage and everything he put in his story had a significant meaning. Every phrase either developed the story or foreshadowed something that was referred to later. Also, O’Brien is very good at writing something and then proving it like on page 478 “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity.” He later proved this by using the title line they carried and he would give an example of the function of the object in the soldier’s life.  

            When I wrote the story Memoir I had a few of those ideas in mind. It was the first time in class that I had a good story arch. I felt my structure was better than the previous stories I wrote. I determined that if I mentioned a briefcase in the first act of the story that it, much like a main character, needed to play an important role in the third act of the story. The difference between the first draft of Memoir and the second draft was my ability to create a functional world. Part of this is attention to detail and learning how to read as a critic.

 

Learning to Read

            I am a Psychology major, and in this section of academia I’ve read studies that are peer-reviewed articles on a topic with thick terminology. Writing can be very plain, technical, and straightforward. The best part of this class was the wide variety of stories that made me question structure and the intentions of the writer. Usually when I read something I take it at face value and I suspend my disbelief to enjoy the story. In this class I was able to question what the writer was doing and the universe the writer created.

            I think I didn’t really start doing this until we met the visiting writers. It was a great thing for my writing to meet these men because they talked about why they wrote their stories the way they did, as well as their intentions. I think the first time I truly starting reading and writing with a critical mindset was with Roald Dahl’s Taste. If I were to read this story with the mindset I had before meeting the writers I don’t think I would have enjoyed how well Dahl knew his material on wine tasting, the fine details that impressed me, as well as the little things he mentioned in the beginning of the story, such as the quiet server, that had a huge impact at the end of the story, like the server revealing the protagonist’s plot. Between the visiting writers and Taste I felt like I could sit down and read something, see the tiny clues the writer leaves in the first act, and use that in my own writing. In my revision of Memoir, the writing due the week of the Dahl reading, I felt like I really used this new revelation to my advantage. I mentioned the main characters forgetfulness, his wife away on business, and other small details about the briefcase that become major factors in the third act of the story. I felt like I could design a story better after that week of class.

 

Exercises in Class

            How Much Do You Know About Your Characters? Before I read that in class assignment I couldn’t recall my main character’s birthday or favorite color. I thought this was a great exercise and I really used it when I designed my characters in my main project Sunsets on the Far Side of the World. When writing about any of the characters in this story I felt like I had a good grasp on who they were, an intimate grasp that helped me relay to the reader what I tried to portray. In my story I mention that Edmond is the type of guy who can’t cut a loss. I then “Find the bruise and put my thumb on it,” which is something I really tried to use with most of my writing now. The “bruise” idea ties directly into some of the aforementioned ideas about using the little things in writing to reveal import things in the climax of your story arch.

            The second set of exercises on facial expression using comic book techniques was very interesting. I’m a comic book buff (Anything X-Men and Batman usually work for me) and it makes sense for a writer to be able to visualize what happened in a scene. To show an expression instead of revealing it is much more powerful. In my revision of Memoir I try to do this, and there were some parts of Sunsets on the Far Side of the World, where I felt I really grasped that idea. I plan on using the exercise we did in class later on in Sunsets: “They watched him step off the ship with eyes wide open and pupils dilated, mouths rounded like the barrel of a smoking gun, and foreheads wrinkled as their heads slightly tilted back to sit squarely on their tensed shoulders,” whereas before I would have simply wrote they were surprised to see him.

 

Most Influential Story

            My main project is Sunsets, and I think the most influential story read in this class was The Master of Monterey By Lawrence Coats. I started reading the book at the beginning of the year and I thought it was unfortunate it took me so long to read because of time constraints until I looked at the division of the book as short stories. After that I really savored the book.

            The reason why the book was so influential on my writing is because it takes something that is very real and believable and puts a twist of fantasy and fiction to it. That’s what I wanted to try and capture when I wrote Sunsets, I wanted a world with fantasy aspects to become believable. An example of this was the description of the unusually tall Commodore with a “question-mark shaped body.” Other examples included Hannibal Memory’s unusually obese body, or the description of Arcadia and her family history with the bull. I also liked the style Coates used in his writing.

            In the future I would love for my writing to be similar in style to John Cheever’s. Good-bye, My Brother had a great writing style I will use as inspiration in my future writings. His writing was elegant, understandable, and revealed character through the character’s actions. An example of this was the separated sibling, Lawrence, watching everyone play backgammon. Cheever showed the family tensions through one night of backgammon and he also revealed something about each character and their tie to the family in these actions.

 

Workshops

            I thought the workshops were a great tool to improve my writing. In the span of the semester I had four opportunities to have my writing workshopped. This was a valuable tool for the class because style problems, punctuation, grammar, and other errors were pointed out. The most valuable part of the workshops was the gentle-constructive criticisms that helped me pay attention to the small details of a story. As Lawrence Coates mentioned in his presentation: research and the details of writing help portray the story the way you want.

            The biggest lesson I learned from these workshops are to “Keep your thumb on the bruise” when you write, story arch, and personally I learned how bad grammar and punctuation can really impact (badly) what your readers think of your writing. Everyone in the class was so kind at pointing out the errors, and they were really helpful, but it made me realize that to be a good writer you have to be a student of English theory, criticism, and the technical parts of writing the language.