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Three Ways to Energize Your Writing
Readers become bored easily. Unless our writing is energized, we are likely to lose their attention.
In my creative nonfiction writing classes, I conduct workshops in which students read and provide feedback on their classmates’ first drafts of writing assignments. The writers then use the feedback they receive to plan and write revisions of their work.
In these workshops, I prompt my students to look for the “hot spot” in a piece of writing. Where in the writing does the energy level rise? Where does the intensity of the message increase? Where do they as readers get caught up in the story? If readers make writers aware of the hot spots, then writers can focus on them as they revise, making sure to take advantage of those high-energy points to make their message more engaging.
Readers become bored easily. Unless our writing is energized, we are likely to lose their attention. Energy gives our writing vitality. It creates for readers a sense of movement or progress as they read. It lends urgency to our message.
To increase energy in our creative nonfiction, we can consider three elements of our writing.
1. Our Subject
In crafting a memoir or a personal essay, we should set aside safe subjects and choose to write about what confounds, perplexes, fascinates, troubles, or confuses us. We should tackle the questions for which we have no concrete answers. Take on the topics that cause us some discomfort. Instead of writing about our proudest moments, for instance, those topics that produce a happy story, we might write about our most embarrassing, conflicted, or disappointing moments. A time when we felt that we were treated unfairly, or were overlooked or misunderstood. The tensions inherent in those subjects create energy in our writing.
2. Our Words
From the broad decision about our writing subject to a focus on the individual words we choose to convey our message, we should consider the level of energy we are creating in our writing. The more concise we are — the more we focus on conveying our message in as few words as possible — the more impact our words will have. The more…
