Thursday, May 16, 2013

Week Seven Response

Between now and Wednesday I have a lot of work to do on my profile. I have all the information/reporting that I need, it's just a matter of structure, or so I thought. Part 5 gave a lot to think about. There are so many different aspects to an effective profile: character/character development, scene reconstruction, setting the scene, sequencing, portraying a unique and strong voice and countless others. Although I think I'm doing all of this to an extent in my current draft, I can be doing it more and I can do it better. I found Hochschild's "Reconstructing Scenes" to be helpful. Atmosphere is crucial to my profile, especially in the beginning as I try to highlight the Gospel Mission's area and its importance to the homeless, low-income and those that suffer form mental illness. Hochschild says: "For your readers to experience the scene, you must do more than describe how things looked. Sounds, smells, temperature, and even the textures of objects are all important" (132). Too often I focus on what can be seen, so this was an obvious, but important reminder for me. 

He also talks about dialogue which I really need to work on. I ended up taking a lot of my dialogue out in this draft.. I really don't know how that happened.. so now I need to put it back in and avoid a lifeless narrative as Hochschild calls it. Kramer's section "Setting the Scene" was also an important section for me. He advises writers to create a sense of volume, "to array details and events so that readers experience the location in three dimensions" (137). I think that this can be very effective in my profile as location is such an important element. Orlean's section on voice was also very helpful. She talks about the importance of understanding your voice as a writer, but I'm not sure I'm there yet. "You can't invent a voice. And you can't imitate someone else's voice.." (158). That sentence really resonated with me and my hope for the final weeks of the class is to work on developing/understanding my voice.

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