WEBINAR | The Fine Art of Containment: Finding New Ways to Hold Your Story
WEBINAR | The Fine Art of Containment: Finding New Ways to Hold Your Story
April 23 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT
Structure can seem like such a mundane word, but in this webinar, we’ll find exciting new ways for you to bring your story to life on the page.
Nonfiction
You’ve mined your memories, written your scenes, and come to some insights—yet your personal essay or memoir still doesn’t seem to fully engage your reader. Radically revising your structure might be the answer.
We’ll be thinking of structure in the sense of “containers,” the way you might choose the perfect vase for a bouquet. Containers in this context could be thought of as through-lines that both hold and propel the narratives. These container scenes create both boundaries and forward movement for material that might otherwise have a hard time finding its focus.
In this webinar, we will explore the various “container scenes” writers have used to structure their essays, and how you can identify container scenes that might already exist in your own work.
In this webinar, you will:
- EXPLORE how to structure a personal essay to fully engage a reader
- PLAY with Beginnings and Endings
- DISCOVER how to identify a container scene in the works you read
- IDENTIFY and employ container scenes in your personal narratives
- BE EQUIPPED with suggestions for future reading and practice
This webinar is ideal for writers:
- Eager for fresh insights into revision practices
- Interested in how published authors structure their personal essays
- Looking for inspiration to draft new work and revise existing pieces
Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER
BRENDA MILLER’s most recent book is A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing on Form. She is the author of five more essay collections, including An Earlier Life, which received the Washington State Book Award for Memoir, and she is the recipient of seven Pushcart Prizes. Her book of collaborative essays with Julie Marie Wade, Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, received the Cleveland Poetry Center Award for Creative Nonfiction and was published by Cleveland State University Press in 2021. She co-authored, with Suzanne Paola, the textbook Tell it Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, now in its third edition from McGraw-Hill Higher Education. She is a Professor Emerita of Creative Writing at Western Washington University.
Questions? Please email Info@craft-talks.com
