It might seem silly to just write what you’re thinking of. Like, right now I’m thinking about what I’m going to eat for dinner and whether I should clean my bedroom—how will I turn that into a poem or short story?

In reality, freewriting helps get the mind thinking in language, and while you might be thinking about dinner now, you’d be surprised what leaps and connections the brain makes into interesting writing material. Let’s take a close look at the process of freewriting and how it will benefit your work. We also provide freewriting prompts to help get the juices flowing.

First, what is freewriting?

What is Freewriting?

Freewriting (sometimes written as one word: freewriting) is a writing technique in which the writer journals their thoughts onto the page without letting their pen rest.

Freewriting is a writing technique in which the writer journals their thoughts onto the page without letting their pen rest.

The idea is simply to keep the pen moving, and that every word and idea that arises in the mind is important to jot down, regardless of matters like grammar, meaning, and usability. In other words, you aren’t trying to write capital-A Art, you are simply putting words onto paper.

In freewriting, the writer:

• Focuses on simply generating raw material.
• Keeps the pen moving with whatever thoughts arise, including (and especially) thoughts that seem irrelevant or unrelated to the previous thought.
• Does not worry about the “value,” “merit,” or “publishability” of anything written down.
• Does not worry about spelling, grammar, syntax, or readability.
• Writes for typically no longer than 15 minutes.
• Creates a daily freewriting practice, as the process gets easier and more rewarding when done regularly.

You aren’t trying to write capital-A Art, you are simply putting words onto paper.

A freewrite can be done with a prompt or simply with the writer’s mind in its most neutral state. Later in this article we provide some freewriting prompts, but first, let’s examine the benefits of this writing technique.

Benefits of Freewriting

If you’re not writing anything worth reading, what’s the point of freewriting in the first place?

It might seem counterintuitive, but freewriting can seriously improve your craft and help you write better poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction. The benefits of this technique include:

• Getting the words flowing: it’s much easier to write towards a project if you’ve loosened up the “writing muscles.”
• Freeing the mind from self-consciousness: freewriting helps train the mind not to care about “is this good?”—a question that can be debilitating for any first draft.
• Experimentation and ideation: Because the goal is to write what arises in the mind, you might inadvertently write new ideas or come up with interesting uses of language that can then be employed in future writing. To put it a different way: language first; ideas follow.
• Stumbling into greatness: Similar to the above bullet, you might accidentally write something really good or useful, or have an epiphany that you might otherwise never have had.
• Setting down your thoughts, quieting your mind: By putting your freeform thoughts onto the page, you can quiet your mind into focusing on writing projects after you’ve finished your freewrite.

Language first; ideas follow.

Some critics argue that this technique emphasizes writing over revising, or that it encourages writers not to engage with the broader literary canon. However, both critiques miss the point of freewriting. Writers should still revise and edit their work, as well as read other writers: to do a freewrite is simply to get the words flowing, making it easier to tackle the projects a writer is working on.

How to Freewrite

The freewriting process has been honed over time. Early advocates of the process include writers Dorothea Brande and Peter Elbow, but the process was really popularized by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

Here’s our recommendation for how to freewrite:

• Set aside 10-15 minutes.
• Write with pen and paper. If you have a strong preference towards typing, you can do so, but we find that handwriting is better for waking the writing mind up.
• Keep your pen moving. Don’t let it rest.
  • If you’re stuck on what to write, have some transitional phrases on hand. “How I feel about that is…” “What I’m trying to say is…” “And then…” or even just “I don’t know what to say.”
• Allow yourself to write nonsense. Write without the expectation of being “good.”
• Do not reread what you have written until after the writing session is over.
• Do not worry about spelling, grammar, writing style, “literary merit,” or legibility. You are not performing on the page, and the intent is not to be James Joyce or Virginia Woolf—there is no “good freewriting” or “bad freewriting,” it is simply writing.
• Do this once a day, preferably every morning, but certainly before you start work on a writing project.

Once you have finished your freewrite, you can reread your pages, or simply let them rest. Upon a reread, you might find sentences, phrases, or accidents of language that could be useful for future poems, stories, or essays.

Upon a reread, you might find sentences, phrases, or accidents of language that could be useful for future poems, stories, or essays.

Freewriting is also a valuable way to get your thoughts down about a particular topic. Let’s say you want to write a braided essay about an event in your childhood. If you do a freewrite about that event, you will generate a lot of raw material that you can sculpt into that essay, and you might even stumble into feelings and recollections you wouldn’t have otherwise had.

Finally, if you want to practice freewriting in a class setting, you may be interested in the Writing Circle Workshops offered by our instructor Susan Vespoli.

32 Freewriting Prompts

If you want to do a freewrite, but need some motivation, these freewriting prompts will help get your pen moving.

General Daily Freewriting Prompts

• What have you been thinking about lately?
• What questions are you trying to answer in your life?
• Write down every sensation you notice, both inside your body and in the world around you.
• Do a freewrite in which you talk to God, the Universe, or a higher power.
• What feelings are you trying to avoid feeling?
• What do you want to manifest for the near future?
• Write down the first word that comes to mind. Then, follow whatever associations arise in your brain.
• What are you grateful for?
• What do you desire most right now?
• Write about a memory that is visually or emotionally intense.
• Confess something.
• In your head, place yourself somewhere you know very well, such as your childhood home or a street you visit often. Write down as many details about that place as possible.
• What has saved you?
• What is an important realization you have had recently?
• Where do you wish you were?
• Write about and interpret a dream you’ve had.

Creative Freewriting Prompts

• Get ekphrastic and write about a film, song, or work of art that inspires you.
• What is your heart a museum of?
• Where does your mythology begin?
• Write in the voice and persona of someone or something other than yourself.
• What is the song your body sings, and who can hear it?
• Whose name does your heart whisper in its sleep?
• What is the shape of your grief?
• Write a self-portrait.
• What gets brighter the darker it gets?
• Whose voices do you hear echoing underneath your own?
• Write what you see on the horizon of your life.
• What is the root of your evil?
• What does your healing look like?
• Fill in the blanks of a memory you only partially remember.
• Write from the summit of life itself.
• Your heart is a garden. What’s in bloom?

Here are some more writing prompts we’ve written. They’re for poets, but prose writers can certainly use most of them as well. These poetry prompts might also enhance your creativity. 

What to Do With Your Freewrite

You don’t necessarily need to “do” anything with a freewrite. The point is to get your mind in a writing space so that you can better tackle whatever projects you’re working on.

However, some writers find freewriting to be helpful for generating new work. If you wanted to, you could take what you’ve written and turn it into a poem, prose poem, essay, short story, etc.

If you’d like to put your stream-of-consciousness to use, here are a few tips on revising and editing your work.

1. Highlight Epiphanies

A byproduct of freewriting is that the writer often taps into their unconscious and finds unexpected epiphanies. By epiphany, we mean a sudden realization, whether material or spiritual, that shifts the writer’s own perspective. Epiphanies can make the unfamiliar, familiar; the familiar, strange; the nonsensical or chaotic, suddenly ordered.

A byproduct of freewriting is that the writer often taps into their unconscious and finds unexpected epiphanies.

An epiphany is often central to a good work of writing. Any sorts of realizations that occur within your freewrite, highlight them—and, in editing and revising, try not to divorce the epiphany from the context it’s written in.

2. Underline Interesting Word Choice and Syntax

Another interesting byproduct of freewriting is the happy accidents that happen within language. By eschewing the rules of grammar, syntax, and linear writing, freewriters might end up juxtaposing words, phrases, and ideas that you wouldn’t normally put together, you might come across good word choice that you can use or store for later writing.

Another interesting byproduct of freewriting is the happy accidents that happen within language.

Many writers keep a journal of words, phrases, and ideas that they might use for later writing. So, don’t expect to use everything from one freewrite towards the same piece, but notice what’s interesting and unexpected in your writing, and save it for when you need inspiration or have a different epiphany about what to do with those words.

3. Identify Unnecessary Repetitions or Irrelevant Passages

As you begin to sculpt your freewrite towards a piece of writing, it will help to remove language that you don’t see as central to the freewrite itself. Here are some tips on omitting needless words:

• First, before you cut anything, save the full freewrite somewhere. You never know what you might lose if you permanently delete your writing from the face of the Earth. Make a copy or transcribe your writing, then work off of that copy or transcript.
• Identify the main topics and themes of the writing, including images or symbols that seem related to the central ideas within the writing. Many freewrites have multiple themes, so you can even make a list of those themes and consider how one writing session might yield multiple pieces of creative work.
• Look for writing that doesn’t seem related to any of the themes you identified. The goal isn’t to identify “bad” writing, just writing that doesn’t seem relevant to those themes.
• Remove writing that isn’t artfully repetitive. Repetition can be a powerful literary device, but it’s best used when it enhances and underscores the most important ideas within the text.
• Start to remove words that are clearly redundant or unnecessary. Our article on omitting needless words has more tips to help with this.

4. Decide on Form

Will your freewrite turn into a poem, prose poem, short story, essay, article, or the seeds of a novel or memoir? The possibilities are clearly endless, but once your writing has been cleaned up a little, the forms it could take should start to emerge.

What those forms could be depend on what you like to write, so rather than go in-depth about the possibilities within poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, here are a few guides we’ve put together on different forms of creative writing:

• How to Write a Poem
• What is Form in Poetry?
• The Elements of Fiction
• The Art of Storytelling
• Literary and Genre Fiction
• How to Write a Personal Essay
• 10 Types of Creative Nonfiction

5. Revise and Edit Towards Your Vision

Once you have a sense of your themes, form, and vision for the work, let your creative instincts take the reins, and use your freewrite as a base for sculpting your next great piece of writing.

Hone Your Freewriting at Writers.com!

Freewriting opens the writer up to happy accidents and exciting possibilities in language. Whether you want to freewrite with other writers or get feedback on the work you produce, take a look at the upcoming online writing courses at Writers.com, where you’ll receive the expert attention and workshopping you’re looking for.

The post What is Freewriting? + Prompts to Elevate Your Writing Process appeared first on Writers.com.

This article helps you find the best online writing community for your own writing needs. We’ll walk you through what good communities include, how to show up in the communities you join, and what we’ve learned from running the Writers.com online writing community. 

But first: what are the best online writing communities? Here’s an overview of what we’ve found on the internet. 

The Best Online Writing Communities in 2025

Here are the best online writing communities we’ve discovered around the internet. We define these communities as being spaces where writers can congregate, share their work, learn from one another, and forge the kinds of friendships and connections that sustain a writing life. 

Writers.com 

We started the Writers.com community with one mission: to share and celebrate our writing with one another. Our members meet several times a week to learn from one another and improve their writing together. In addition to Zoom writing sessions, we also have weekly and monthly instructor-led workshops and an online community space to explore our writing journeys together. 

• Includes:
  • Regular writing prompts
  • Biweekly Zoom writing sessions
  • Instructor-led workshops 
  • Free on-demand craft lectures 
  • An online meeting space to share and celebrate your work 
• Best For: Writers of all genres, in any stage of your writing journey.
• Learn More: Membership is only $47/month. Sign up for a one-week free trial here.

The Community has been everything I hoped it would be. I thoroughly enjoy the Write-Ins and craft explorations. I have enjoyed getting to know the staff and other community members and their writing—it brings a personal touch to my writing journey that wasn’t there before. Thank you so much!

—Lola Willis, Writers.com Community member

Sustenance 

Sustenance is the brainchild of poet Joy Sullivan. Members get access to a full library of previous Zoom workshops, plus attendance in regularly scheduled workshops with working, professional writers. Members also get opportunities to workshop their writing with each other in an encouraging community space. 

• Includes: 
  • Access to a library of recorded workshops
  • Attendance to regularly scheduled workshops with professional writers
  • An online community space to share and workshop writing
• Best For: Poets and lyric essayists looking to write and publish new work. 
• Learn More: Annual subscriptions currently run for $1600. Sustenance is currently on a waiting list. You can join the waiting list here. 

Paragraph

Based in NYC but with writers all around the world, Paragraph is an online writing community for serious working writers. It was founded by MFA graduates who were lacking for community spaces outside of the university, and it has since grown into a robust online platform with regular workshops and critique groups. 

• Includes: 
  • Free access to craft talks, roundtables, and query pitch workshops, including recordings of past events. . 
  • Discounts on creative writing classes
  • Access to online discussion boards. 
  • Monthly critique groups in all genres (except poetry). 
• Best For: Writers serious about improving their craft and working towards publication. 
• Learn More: Membership is currently only $25/month. You can join here. 

Scribophile

Scribophile is an online writing community primarily for fiction writers. The site hosts many different opportunities for writers to connect, get feedback, and learn from each other, and their community is both free to join and offers paid subscriber perks. 

• Includes: 
  • A forum to share work and receive feedback on novels-in-progress. 
  • Access to community writing contests.
  • Access to a directory of beta readers (paid). 
  • Detailed reader statistics for all work uploaded to the community (paid).  
• Best For: Novelists of all genres and backgrounds. 
• Learn More: Learn more about membership options here: the paid option costs $15/month. 

Shut Up & Write!

Shut Up & Write! is an international, decentralized writing community that hosts events both online and in cities around the world. Writers congregate in timed writing sessions to focus on their work, and sometimes hang out afterwards to connect and build community with one another. 

If you don’t have a Shut Up & Write! community where you live, they have resources for helping you start one yourself!

• Includes: 
  • Regularly scheduled sessions to focus on your writing. 
  • An online archive of tips and resources for writing craft.
  • Help in starting your own community if it doesn’t already exist. 
• Best For: Writers of all genres looking to build local community, including local online writing community.
• Learn More: Membership is free! Learn more here. 

Pen Parentis

Pen Parentis is an online writing community designed specifically for writers who are raising families. The community offers tailored benefits to help writers juggle their writing projects with the daily tasks that childcare requires. 

• Includes: 
  • Regular newsletters, lifestyle tips, and resources for writers balancing many obligations. 
  • An online writing community to connect with other writer-parents. 
  • Accountability groups and other opportunities to focus on your work. 
• Best For: Writers of all genres who are trying to balance childcare with the demands of their writing projects. 
• Learn More: Membership is free, with paid options. NYC-based writers also occasionally have access to in-person events. Learn more here!

London Writers’ Salon

Don’t be fooled by the name—London Writers’ Salon is an international online writing community that regularly congregates to get words on the page. In addition to daily Zoom calls, LWS offers classes, options for editorial feedback, and ongoing writing opportunities. 

• Includes: 
  • Daily Zoom-based writing sessions to focus exclusively on your writing projects. 
  • Ongoing learning opportunities, including classes and paid editorial feedback. 
  • Options to connect with agents, experts, and professional writers. 
  • Paid access to accountability groups, expert Zoom recordings, and e-books on writing craft. 
• Best For: Writers of all genres looking to focus on their work, especially fiction and nonfiction writers. 
• Learn More: Get details on free and paid membership opportunities here. 

Your Local Library

We’ll make an honorable mention of your local library. Many libraries have online and in-person writing groups; they’re often the best community spaces to host communities like this. If you find that your library doesn’t offer this, consider starting a writing group yourself!

Social Media

Social media is also a place where writers sometimes congregate. It doesn’t offer the same level of accountability as Zoom-based writing workshops, and since social media is often unmoderated, you run the risk of encountering writers who aren’t kind or supportive. 

That said, different sites offer different text-based platforms that are useful for meeting writers, especially if you live in a part of the world that doesn’t have much in the way of community. Reddit offers different forums, like r/writers, where folks can post about their writing anxieties or learn more about the craft. Tumblr (yes, it’s still around!) is also a place where writers congregate, post their work, and celebrate the craft. 

There are also websites like Archive of Our Own (great for fanfiction writers) and Wattpad that are designed for sharing work, getting feedback, and building community. 

Find More Online Writing Communities at the Poets & Writers Database

Lastly, Poets & Writers has a great directory of in-person and online writing communities that you can explore. The directory is occasionally out-of-date, but it includes groups for writers of all genres, abilities, and identities. 

Learn more here!

Features of the Best Online Writing Communities

The best online writing communities have these features in common:

• Supportive: Writing comes with its own anxieties and difficulties. The best online writing communities meet you at your needs, inspire confidence, and help you rise to the occasion of your own work. 
• Generative: Some online writing communities include prompted writing sessions; others simply carve out time for you to work on your own projects. Regardless, finding time and space to focus on your own writing is hard, and communities help create that time and space for you. 
• Educational: Every writer has something to offer. Yes, even complete newbies. In constructive writing spaces, writers learn from one another, offer feedback, and educate each other to become better authors. 
• Inspiring: You should come away from any writing space you join feeling inspired—whether that means inspiration for new goals, or inspiration to continue writing your own long-term projects. 
• Accessible and Inclusive: The creative writing world sometimes has a reputation for being closed off or elitist—and it’s true that some communities are exclusionary. We’ve found that the best online writing communities do not arbitrarily exclude any writers from their ranks, so long as all writers are willing to show up, be kind, and support one another in their work. 
• Connected: Writers also have a reputation for being introverted. But, even in the most introspective spaces, good online writing communities foster connection and friendship. Even if those are only friends you connect with over Zoom and email, you should still feel excited to write alongside other community members, and feel as though you know other writers whom you can mutually support.  

We recommend the above online writing communities for meeting all of these qualities. Whatever your writing needs are, you are sure to come away connected, engaged, and inspired to complete your own writing projects. 

How You Should Show Up in Online Writing Communities

While the best online writing communities exist to support your writing, learning, and community needs, it’s important that you also show up to any space with the right mindset and attitude. The more you invest into a community, the more you will get out of it—and we have a few tips on this based on our own experiences both building and participating in communities around the internet. 

1. Be Open Minded

One beautiful opportunity in any thriving community is the chance to learn about new and different lived experiences. Writers transcend all backgrounds, ideologies, and walks of life, and our task is to both understand ourselves and the world around us. Online writing communities are the perfect places for this—but only if you enter into one with an open mind. 

Online writing communities are the perfect places to understand ourselves and the world around us. 

Be willing to engage with people whose perspectives and experiences you don’t understand or initially disagree with. Disagreement and discomfort is not inherently a sign of danger. If anything, a community that operates as an echo chamber is far more dangerous, as it quells dissent and closes opportunities for growth and engagement. 

The vast majority of communities contain little to no friction, but the human experience is wide and diverse; if this happens, see this as an opportunity for connection and understanding, and you might find yourself forging deeper connections you would have otherwise foregone. 

2. Listen More Than You Speak

All writers want to be heard, and many writers join communities so others can hear them. You may very well join for the same reason. So this advice may be counterintuitive, but hear us out: you should try to listen more than you speak. 

Great communities are fostered when its members closely engage with one another’s thoughts, feelings, and writings.

Great communities are fostered when its members closely engage with one another’s thoughts, feelings, and writings. Community building is a two-way street: it requires both hearing and being heard. If you are 1 person in a room of 10 people, you shouldn’t speak much more than 1/10 of the time; otherwise, you might start losing opportunities to learn from other members, and for them to hear you, too. 

Don’t think about this advice too deeply—certainly, do not time yourself every time you open your mouth. But, great communities are fostered when everyone takes turns sharing their work, and it can often be more rewarding to hear someone name their own experiences: it creates new doorways for connection, and allows you to share yourself more freely as well. 

3. Know That Every Writer Has a Different Journey

Some of us write poetry; others, fiction, nonfiction, drama, etc. 

Some of us have been writing for 40+ years and have Ph.Ds. Others are relatively new to writing. 

Some of us write in the Modernist vein; others are Postmodern. 

Some writers want to publish their sixth novel; others want to self-publish their first poetry collection; still others don’t plan on publishing at all.

The best online writing communities accommodate for the beautiful diversity of the writer’s path.

Every writer is on a different journey. The best online writing communities accommodate for the beautiful diversity of the writer’s path. Do not assume anything about anyone else’s journey, and don’t expect others to automatically get yours, either. The more you learn about other peoples’ writing lives, the more you might learn about your own, and what you want to achieve in your work. 

4. Celebrate All Successes

Writing is a lonely business. We come to community to lessen that loneliness. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to share and celebrate all successes. Keep this mindset in mind with both your own successes and others’. 

When other people share successes, engage with them and congratulate them on what they’ve accomplished. This is true whether the success is a publication, a breakthrough in their work, or even just making the time to sit down and write for 5 minutes. If someone shares a win they’re celebrating, celebrate it with them. And, if you ever find yourself feeling jealous or insecure about your own accomplishments, remember that writing is not a zero sum game: we are not competing against each other, and a high tide rises all boats.

When other people share successes, engage with them and congratulate them on what they’ve accomplished. Be in the habit of sharing your own successes as well, however small they may seem.

Be in the habit of sharing your own successes as well, however small they may seem. Don’t pooh-pooh what you accomplish. The more you share about your own journey and success, the more others will encourage you to keep going, and the better it feels to write and be writing with a supportive community. 

5. See Yourself as a Member, Not a Participant

You do not need permission to be a part of an online writing community.

Read that again.

You do not need permission. Don’t wait for someone to tell you that it’s okay to join, to participate, to be with other writers. 

It can be so easy to exclude yourself from a writing space. The excuses never end. Everyone is already friends with everyone, why do they need me? You might ask. Or, I don’t have anything of value to contribute, why should I join?

Everyone has something of value to contribute, including you.

You should join because those moments of hesitation are simply untrue. Everyone has something of value to contribute, including you. Even if you are new to writing, or haven’t read as many books, or don’t feel like you belong. You are a writer, you do contribute (just by being present!), and you deserve to have a community that supports and encourages you.

Any writing space that doesn’t make you feel seen or accepted is not worth your time. If someone tells you to ask for permission, run—successful writing communities do not demand any proof of worthiness, as you are already worthy. 

You do not need permission to be a part of an online writing community.

What We’ve Learned from Being Part of Online Writing Communities

Here are some thoughts from the Writers.com administrative team about how online writing communities have transformed our writing. 

Frederick Meyer: Online Writing Communities Transform Your Learning

Running the Writers.com community has exposed me to things that I wouldn’t have run into otherwise. 

For example, I got really into doing erasure poems because of a community member’s suggestion, and I wrote a couple of the poems that I’m happiest with that way. I wouldn’t even be writing poetry at all if I wasn’t part of this space. 

I wouldn’t even be writing poetry at all if I wasn’t part of this space.

When I look at a piece of published writing in the community, I really get a much deeper sense of it. I see a lot of perspectives. We looked at this poem set in a mid-20th century house that had a mother and a few children and then the father was always traveling and he was kind of like this distant presence, and they were talking about what it was like doing chores all day and waiting for any news from the outside world. And you know, the poem hit me however it hit me. And then people were talking about what their experience was like, you know, growing up in parts of the world that were similar, parts that were different. And by the end of it, I just felt like I understood the poem so much better and it really resonated with me in a different way. 

It’s very much this mind meld when reading poems. And you get like this entire kaleidoscope of perspectives on it.

I feel like people’s comments on my writing have always been constructive and also have pointed to the parts of the writing that aren’t satisfying with a lot of accuracy. I’ve really appreciated that, and it causes you to engage with the writing that other people like or, in my case, since I’m helping organize it, it’s something on my calendar where I’m going to be really prioritizing writing and literature with a group of people that I really trust and that I really like. 

it’s something on my calendar where I’m going to be really prioritizing writing and literature with a group of people that I really trust and that I really like.

So it’s been really rewarding and a lot of the time it’s oddly therapeutic. It’s been quite therapeutic on a number of occasions and some people have been very, very kind to me in various ways. That is one of those things that I don’t really know that I need in a way. So it’s been a really rich experience. I’m really glad to be doing it and I recommend it to anybody. 

It’s one of those things that I don’t really know that I need in a way.

—Frederick Meyer, Writers.com Director

Elle LaMarca: Online Writing Communities Transform Your Writing Life

I met my critique partner of 15 years in my first online creative writing course. So although that’s not specifically about a community, I think the idea of taking an online writing course as a way to start building your community is so beneficial. If you find people that you really connect with, how you read each other’s work, that can be the foundation of your own community. I still work with this person on a weekly basis, and it’s now been 15 years.

I always feel more motivated and more inspired to write my own work when I’m inside a community.

In my experience, as someone who’s been a part of several different writing communities, writing can often feel so lonely because you have to do the work and that doesn’t change. Like, you have to write the words yourself, but I always feel more motivated and more inspired to write my own work when I’m inside a community and I’m reading other people’s work, and I’m hearing about their experiences and their journeys as writers. That’s true whether I’m leading the community or just an active participant. Being around other writers physically or even online is motivating and I always write more. 

—Elle LaMarca, Writers.com Curriculum Specialist

Join the Writers.com Online Writing Community!

Your voice is a gift. Share it in the online writing community at Writers.com. All voices, perspectives, and ideas are respected and valued in our community of writers around the globe, and your presence will only make us stronger. 

Learn more here!

The post Best Online Writing Communities: How to Find Your Writers Group appeared first on Writers.com.

Do not mistake brevity for simplicity: a successful piece of flash nonfiction still incorporates complexity and insight into its small size. If you’d like to learn more about this genre, or learn how to write flash nonfiction, read on to discover this exciting form of CNF.

What is Flash Nonfiction?

Flash nonfiction is a work of creative nonfiction that, typically, is written in 1,000 words or fewer. This word limit mirrors the limits of flash fiction, which are fictional stories told in under 1,000 words. 

Flash nonfiction is a work of creative nonfiction that, typically, is written in 1,000 words or fewer.

Alternate terms for this genre include “micro-memoir,” “flash memoir,” “flash creative nonfiction,” or “micro-essay.” Sometimes, “micro” genres are even smaller than flash—a maximum of 100 or 200 words, for example—but they bucket under this category of concise truth-telling.

Of course, what makes a flash nonfiction piece successful is not only its brevity. In order to tell a complete story about your own life, you will need to rely on the craft tools of poetry and flash fiction. 

Article continues below…

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Article continues…

Common Craft Elements of Flash Nonfiction

When reading or writing flash nonfiction, you are likely to come across the following elements and craft decisions:

1. Concise Word Choice
2. Imagery
3. Theme
4. Experimentation and Hybridity

Concise Word Choice

With few words to tell a complete story, flash nonfiction writers must push language past its limits. This means allowing words to convey multiplicities, complexities, and nuances, as well as letting images also be metaphors or symbols.

In other words, flash nonfiction often straddles the borders of poetry. When working with the constraints of such a low word count, works of flash, both nonfiction and fiction, sometimes read more like prose poetry. 

Imagery

Successful literature often operates through striking images. The need for this grows when working within the flash genre, as flash nonfiction writers rely on imagery to convey essential experiences, metaphors, and symbols. 

This doesn’t have to be a visual image—imagery as a literary device includes touch, smell, sight, taste, and even things like motion or internal sensation. A resonant work of flash nonfiction will leave the reader with an image or feeling that they digest long after the story ends. 

Theme

Of course, all works of literature have a theme. But flash nonfiction must approach its theme in as few words as possible, and thus elevate important ideas so that every aspect of the work points towards them. 

This is opposed to works of prose that prioritizes, say, the story’s plot or characters. Flash nonfiction has those elements, of course, but it must waste no words getting to the heart of things: the feelings and energies—thematic elements—that give the story its reason for existing. 

Experimentation and Hybridity

Works of flash nonfiction are more likely to experiment with form and structure. Much like in poetry, flash nonfiction’s reliance on concision requires the work to take creative approaches in the telling of true stories. Form and structure offer writers more ways to layer their ideas and structure their thoughts outside of the conventions of standard prose. 

A piece of flash nonfiction might also be a hermit crab essay, for example, which borrows its shape from other types of text. Or it might engage with the experimentation of lyric essays or incorporate poetry into the work. Whatever the experiment, successful flash essays discover their own form and language to tell the story that needs telling. 

Examples of Flash Nonfiction

Let’s look now at some examples of flash nonfiction to see these principles in action.

“Mary Ruefle Drives Me to the Dentist” by Kelly Luce

Read it here, in Craft Literary.

This quirky flash nonfiction piece is also an example of speculative nonfiction, in which nonreal, imagined, or speculative elements intertwine with the author’s lived experiences. 

It doesn’t actually matter whether or not Kelly Luce was driven to the dentist by the poet Mary Ruefle—though it’s likely that this is just a conversation that happened in Luce’s head. Ruefle’s zany, vivacious presence in the story allows Luce to access the unanswerable questions in her own life, magnifying a mundane car ride into something exploratory. 

At times, the prose teeters on the poetic, arriving at epiphany through its wit and concision. Ruefle’s poetry and imagined presence reminds Luce, as well as us readers, to always be moved by beauty. 

“Sanguine” by Molly Akin

Read it here, in Brevity. 

This is a great example of how flash forms push the shape of language to speak in such small spaces. Here, Akin interrogates language itself to understand and convey the painful nature of miscarriage. 

This hybrid, braided essay interweaves the author’s own experiences with definitions and etymologies. If anything, I find those definitions to be the most painful, salient moments of the work: it defines the author’s own pain without directly naming it. 

You can also see the craft tools of poetry in action: concision, internal line breaks, evolution in form, and a tension propelled by word play. 

“Childhood Cranes” by Andrew Bertaina

Read it here, in In Short. 

You can tell this piece was written by a poet, and not just because it references the poetic craft in the first line. Each image offered in this gorgeous prose cuts closer and closer to the professor’s emotional core, painting a kind of portrait-by-proxy, painted through periphery.

There’s an idea in the craft of poetry called the initiating and generated subject. Essentially, the idea that gets you into the poem is not where the poem ends, nor is it what the poem is really “about.” Successful poetry discovers something and takes a leap. 

I feel this is happening here. The professor telling the class about cranes and imagery is just a doorway into what this piece discovers about childhood, nostalgia, memory, change. 

“Point of View” by Lina Herman

Read it here, in Craft Literary.

This flash nonfiction piece has a kind of metanarrative: there’s the story, and then there’s the author commenting on the craft of the story as it progresses. 

It’s an interesting experiment. On the one hand, the author risks interpreting herself for the reader, rather than letting the work be open to interpretation. On the other hand, the metacommentary is a way of inserting the author’s thoughts into the work in a way that feels more genuine. What would a writer do to change the story as it happens in real life? What would it be like to press pause, step outside of one’s self, and reframe the narrative? 

That the story’s subject matter would be so intense as to fracture the author’s sense of narrative is enough to make this experiment pay off. We see the story’s lens move, evolve, catch up with the author’s experiences; the pain, distorted, becomes much more deeply felt. 

How to Write Flash Nonfiction

Here are some tips on how to write flash nonfiction. 

1. Omit Needless Words

It goes without saying that flash nonfiction can’t have wasted words. Really, no good work of writing wastes words. But in flash, the magnitude of concision increases greatly, and words need to have layered, complex meanings to convey a full story in such small space. 

It is akin to a circus performer folding themselves into a box: their body is interwoven and nonlinear, as are the words in a flash piece. Here are some tips for omitting needless words:

• Target common filler words.
  • Adverbs can often be replaced with better verbs (Does the road “run curvily”, or can the road simply “curve”?). 
  • Prepositions can sometimes be rerouted or removed (Do you have “a lot of money” or do you “contain riches”? Are you “with child” or “pregnant”?).
  • Punctuation, particularly semicolons and em-dashes, can sometimes replace conjunctions and connective words—while texturing your prose. (Note—I originally wrote “making your prose more textured”; turning the adjective “textured” into a verb “texturing” was more efficient.) 
• Let images represent themselves.
  • It’s tempting to interpret an image for the reader, or to explain an image with a lot of description, metaphor, etc. However, letting images exist on their own without interpreting them for the reader allows the reader to interpret the images themselves, giving the writing room for thematic complexity. 
  • For example, it’s wordy to say “The countryside felt lonely, with so few people around, and I was aware of how sublime and beautiful nature is.” Besides the fact that the idea is a bit cliché, it chews the reader’s food for them; it conveys no experience.
  • A concise way of writing the above idea comes from Kelly Luce’s flash nonfiction piece: “People live out there. Horses stare. Big boulders rest beside barns like ancient pets.”
• Watch out for needless repetitions.
  • A free gift is simply a gift; the hot summer sun is merely the summer sun.

For more advice on concision, check out our article on omitting needless words:

https://writers.com/concise-writing

2. Let Structure Lend Its Voice

Another way that flash nonfiction exercises concision is by letting the story’s structure create layers of meaning. 

The above flash nonfiction examples showcase how structure is wielded within story. Akin’s “Sanguine” interweaves etymology with personal experience to tell the full story of miscarriage and convey an embodied pain that, otherwise, cannot be easily conveyed. Through a discordant, braided structure, the story comes to resemble, perhaps, the author’s own body after undergoing such trauma.

Conversely, Herman’s “Point of View” incorporates point of view into the story structure itself, creating two stories: the actual event of the piece, and the author’s running commentary as she tries to understand a fundamentally heartbreaking situation. These alternating narratives combine to give the story, again, a sense of discordance, mirroring what the author’s own experience of the event might have been like. 

These are ideas that lose their power if they are merely described in the work itself. Akin gains nothing by telling us her miscarriage was difficult; she gains everything by transmitting an embodied experience through her inquiries of language. Herman gains nothing by telling us she didn’t know how to deal with her daughter’s thoughts of death; she gains everything by interweaving the story’s event with her own struggle to understand. 

3. Experiment With Perspective

Successful works of flash nonfiction often convey experience through some nonlinear mode of storytelling. 

By linear, I mean the convention that a story is one event after the next, told by a single, easily identifiable narrator, who tells us that A led to B led to C. 

Narrative is the story we tell ourselves about what happened, and the truth is not always linear. Notice how, in the flash nonfiction examples we’ve shared, the authors’ relationships to time are nonlinear: the narrators look forwards and backwards, sometimes at the same time. They speak from moving cars and classrooms, from dictionaries and park benches. 

Think about the best place to tell your story from. From what point of view? With what voice? Exploring what elements of time? These questions can lead to exciting, daring works of micro-memoir that convey more precisely our strange relationships to our lived experiences. 

4. Read Flash Nonfiction Regularly

The best way to write successful flash nonfiction is to also read it. The following journals routinely publish great works of creative nonfiction, including flash and micro pieces. 

Where to Read (and Publish) Flash Nonfiction

Here are some great literary journals to read flash nonfiction—and submit your own work to when you’re ready.

• CRAFT Literary
• In Short
• Brevity
• Hippocampus Magazine
• Smokelong Quarterly
• River Teeth

Write Your Best Flash Nonfiction at Writers.com!

The creative and flash nonfiction courses at Writers.com will help you write your most daring and original stories. Check out our upcoming online creative nonfiction courses, where you’ll receive expert feedback and teaching on every essay you submit. 

The post Flash Nonfiction: The Craft of Tiny Truths appeared first on Writers.com.

Lest this all sound like a warning, take heart: learning how to write a book about your life is also a profound act of intimacy with yourself. It will teach you who you are. At times the process will ask more of you than you have, in terms of honesty, perseverance, communication, and acceptance. You will grow to meet those demands. Your life will expand from that growth.

Writing a book about your life is a profound act of intimacy with yourself.

Writing your autobiographical nonfiction book—whether you choose to write a memoir or an autobiography; see below—will be deeply fulfilling, and also very hard. To keep going during the hard spots, it is crucial to have a clear sense of why you are undertaking such a project. We’ll unpack how to “find your why,” and then we’ll get into the steps that come after, thinking at once about the nuts-and-bolts processes of how to build your memoir, the success of the project itself, and your mental health and mindset as you create it.

How to Write a Book About Your Life

Writing a book is a long and complex process, and, if this is your first time, you’ll likely need to learn new skills and build new capacities along the way. Some of these skills and capacities are practical craft elements (like writing nuanced characters) and questions (like using the present vs the past tense), while others are more abstract and ask you to dig deep into your creative and psychological background.

It’s always worth remembering that learning how to write the story of your life is challenging—and that a sense of overwhelm or confusion is very normal, even for experienced writers. Starting with the foundational question of why you want to learn how to write a book about your life, we’ll unpack the major steps in the process of writing your memoir. 

1. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Identify Your Why

In his book Start With Why, author and leadership coach Simon Sinek offers a simple framework for understanding exactly what inspires, motivates, and drives a person or organization. He calls this idea “The Golden Circle,” and it is represented by a circle with “why” in the center, “how” in the middle ring, and “what” in the outer ring.

As you consider how to write the story of your life, think carefully about your why. Your “what” is your completed memoir, and your “how” is all the steps we’re about to delve into. But only you can articulate your why. For many writers, particularly life writers, the “why” has something to do with legacy and truth telling. Spend some time writing in a stream-of-consciousness style, talking to your trusted people, and thinking deeply about your why. With it, you can weather a lot of challenge in the creative process. Without it, it can be difficult to maintain the perseverance and faith that it takes to write a book about your life

2. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Articulate the Scope of Your Project

To begin learning how to write your life story, the first step is to decide what goes in, and what does not. Unlike autobiography, which chronologically tracks a life from birth onward, a memoir has a specific focus—also known as its scope.

Memoir is an increasingly popular literary form, autobiography less so, so through most of this article we will discuss memoir. Learn more about the differences between memoir and autobiography—and choose the form right for you—here:

Memoir Vs Autobiography Vs Biography: The Craft of Nonfiction Books

Often, memoirs are scoped by particular time periods, which may be marked or defined by a job or career (Ted Conover’s Newjack, Melissa Febos’s Whip Smart), a relationship (Leslie Jamison’s Splinters, Kelly McMasters’ The Leaving Season), or a time-bound experience like early parenthood (Sarah Hoover’s The Motherload).

Other memoirs have thematic or conceptual scopes (Emily Maloney’s Cost of Living, Lilly Dancyger’s First Love).

Your scope does not need to be perfectly defined or set in stone to begin writing, but you do need to establish at least a tentative scope. Think about where the story you want to tell starts and where it ends. Crucially, this may not be the same thing as where the lived experience starts and ends—think about, say, education. Your education probably started in nursery school and perhaps extended to graduate school, but to write a memoir about your undergrad experience, you’ll want to start well after nursery school and end before grad school.

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3. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Research Craft Approaches

One of the first steps in learning how to write the story of your life is researching and considering the craft approach you want to take in your manuscript. Genre is a huge question here: when you think about how to write a book about your life, do you see it as a nonfiction project, or a fiction/autofiction project? And once you’ve decided on that, what do you think or know about how the book will be shaped and structured?

There are as many craft approaches as there are books on the Barnes & Noble shelves. Do you want to present your narrative to your reader in sections or chapters? Or do you want the read to be straight through without segmentation? Are there multimodal approaches like poetics or images that you want to incorporate? Will you write in the first person point of view? Third? Second? Will your book be narrated in present tense? Past? A hybrid?

As you’re making these choices, it is a great time to read widely, in and out of your typical genre and style. Read as a writer, noticing the craft choices the writer is making and how they land for you.

4. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Decide on An Approach

Once you’ve immersed yourself in all things craft and your head is swimming with literary terms, you’re in a great place to make some initial decisions about the craft approach you want to take in your manuscript. You can always make changes down the line, so it’s less about making a perfect choice and more about making any choice that allows you to get started. Because the work we do as writers is, in the thought phase, abstract and individual, it can be very useful to export our mental processes and decisions to an actual piece of paper.

Here are some questions that are useful to develop answers for as you learn how to write your life story:

• What genre are you writing in? (nonfiction/fiction/autofiction/poetics)
• Within that genre, what niche are you working in?
  • For example, if you’re writing nonfiction, you may be writing memoir, essay, autobiography, etc. If you’re writing fiction, you may be writing a novel, short stories, a novella, etc.
• Where does the scope of the story start on the page?
• Where does the scope of the story end on the page?
• How will the manuscript be structured?
• About how long do you want it to be?
• Who are the major characters?
• What are the major events?
• What are the major themes?

Once you can answer all or most of those questions (even if your answers change as you work), you’re ready to start the process of learning first-hand how to write the story of your life

5. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Gather Resources and Support

Depending on your experience level as a writer and your preference, you may need a lot of support with your literary craft, or not. That support can come in the form of classes, creative coaching, editing, mentorship, academic study, craft books, model texts, and creative partnerships. Let’s look at each of these resources and think about how to use them as you navigate how to write your life story.   

Creative Writing Classes

Classes in creative writing craft, artistic process, and publication strategy can be invaluable to writers of all experience levels. Depending on the mode and style of the course, you can find group and 1:1 feedback, thought partnership, accountability, deadlines, and solidarity.

Coaching

Creative coaching is a tremendous and underutilized service for writers. Coaches vary widely in their approaches, but any good creative writing coach will work with you on your craft, process, overall project architecture and timeline, workflow, and the hard-to-define “life stuff” (such as interpersonal relationships, past traumas, and emotions) that will absolutely come up as you are working through how to write the story of your life.

Professional Editing and Mentorship

A professional or peer editor typically works asynchronously on your manuscript. You can access paid or reciprocal editing at any project stage, but shop for an editor carefully—you don’t just need a good editor, you need an editor who is great for you and your project.

Mentorship is where you find it. There are formal mentorship opportunities in academia and through workshops and programs like Periplus Collective, and informal mentorship relationships that you can seek in your creative communities. Some established writers relish mentoring newer writers, others professionalize mentorship and charge for it, and others do not want to mentor. When you meet a writer who you look up to, consider asking them their thoughts and experiences on mentorship—and consider what you might bring to such a relationship.

MFAs and Ph.Ds 

The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and the PhD in Creative Writing degrees are pathways that some writers opt to pursue. They are rigorous, time consuming, and often expensive, but they can also provide an incredible concentration of resources to radically expand your skills and body of work.  

Craft Books

For a relatively minor investment, you can learn directly from some of the most illustrious working writers out there. John McPhee, Rick Rubin, Melissa Febos, Vivian Gornick, Ted Conover, Lee Gutkind, and many other celebrated writers have authored craft books that describe elements of their own writing processes.

Model Texts

A model text is simply a book that you read with an eye to how you might use elements of its craft in your own work. For example, if you read William Finnegan’s Pulitzer-winning memoir Barbarian Days, you might notice how he uses reporting within the narrative of his memoir. If you like it, you might try that in your own material. It’s worth noting that aspects you don’t like in any given text can be hugely instructive to your own work. Once you’re a writer, there really is no useless reading!

Creative Partnerships

Creative partnerships are friendships, collegial relationships, and collaborations with other writers and artists that include space for you to dialogue about your work and creative processes. Many times, a conversation can allow for different modes of thinking, which can offer reflection, inspiration, accountability, and can mitigate some of the loneliness of writing a book.

6. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Draft Your Manuscript

One of the least and most useful pieces of writing advice is “just write.” That call to action is often useless because, well, if you could, you already would be! But, viewed another way, it is the best and most useful note out there, because all the thinking, planning, researching, perseverating, and avoiding will never lead to a written book. Only writing will lead to a written book. That said, the advice works better with a little explanation: In the early phases of writing your book (and at any point when you feel stuck or unsure how to proceed), do two things:

• Remove the standard for quality. That’s right—remove it. You are allowed to write messy, illegible, objectively bad pages. And not only are you allowed to write bad, messy pages—you should celebrate writing them. Ann Lamott’s famous writing advice (from her craft book Bird By Bird) is to write a “shitty first draft.” No truer words on craft have been written. We all need permission to work something out in real time, and the expectation of perfection, or even legibility, on the first pass, is both unreasonable and ultimately self-defeating. So, “just write”—but do so with the freedom of a small child learning to finger paint. You have lots of time to make it beautiful later in the process.
• Articulate a formal writing goal and stick to it. This goal must be modest to be effective. It should ask of you about 40% of what you perceive as your capacity. You can measure your progress by word count (“I’ll write 300 words every day”), sessions (“I’ll sit down to write on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays”), or time (“I’ll set a timer and write for 30 minutes on 5 days this week).

This is how you draft your book. Learn more about setting goals for yourself here: 

How to Set SMART Writing Goals for 2024

7. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Take Care of Yourself

When you’re learning how to write the story of your life, it is important to remember that you are not a machine that makes words—you are a human person having a lived experience. Almost universally, writing about your life stirs up past hurts, trauma responses, and uncomfortable or embarrassing experiences. To write a good and honest book about your life, you’ll need to take a hard look at your own role in the experiences you’ve had, which is is a difficult and psychologically uncomfortable thing to do.

As you undertake the project of writing your memoir, consider what social, emotional, and lifestyle support you need. This can be simple, like making sure you’re eating nourishing food and drinking enough water. This can also be complex and involved, like entering therapy or engaging with a spiritual practice. Think about what buoys you during difficult times, and seek those supports for your creative process.

8. How To Write a Book About Your Life: Edit Your Manuscript

Once your book is drafted, you are at something of a crossroads. Every book needs rigorous editing. Will you take that on yourself, or work with an outside editor? Consider your skill set, your budget, and your desires for the book. If you want to self-publish a manuscript for your close friends and family, self-editing may be perfectly sufficient. If you are a debut writer seeking traditional publication with a Big 5 publisher, it’s worth considering bringing a more seasoned editor on board to help you get the manuscript in its best, most polished state.

Take an Online Creative Nonfiction Writing Course with Writers.com

If you want to learn how to write the story of your life, you’ve come to the right place. Join a trusted mentor and a crew of fellow Writers.com writers to delve into craft questions, work in accountability with others, and figure out how to write your life story without breaking yourself. Will this be your year to write your story? Take a look at our upcoming nonfiction classes!

The post How To Write a Book About Your Life: 8 Steps to Writing Your Memoir appeared first on Writers.com.

If you want your story told to the world, keep reading to learn about the craft techniques and differing approaches to memoir vs autobiography vs biography.

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: Definitions

Memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies are all book-length nonfiction projects that aim to tell the stories of your lives. They differ, however, in their scopes, approaches, and goals. Let’s first define each category of nonfiction book:

Memoir

A memoir is a book-length work of nonfiction that privileges the writer’s personal experiences. Memoirs intend to showcase, reflect upon, and uncover the author’s own experience.

Memoirs showcase, reflect upon, and uncover the author’s own experience.

Memoirs tend to be more personal and less objective: a good memoirist acknowledges their own biases and predispositions, but does not necessarily shy away from them. Memoirs also tend to be “zoomed in”—they explore key events in the author’s life story in detail, emphasizing themes and connected events rather than the author’s entire life story.

Learn more about memoir here:

https://writers.com/how-to-write-a-memoir

Some 21st century memoir examples include:

• My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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Autobiography

Where memoirs are about the author’s personal understanding of life events, autobiographies tend to emphasize the events themselves.

This is not to say that autobiographies are more objective; only, perhaps, that they’re a little less interior. Autobiographies tend to give the “bigger picture” of the author’s life story. The focus is maybe a little heavier on plot, a little lighter on character, to borrow from the craft of fiction.

Autobiographies tend to give the “bigger picture” of the author’s life story.

As such, autobiographies “zoom out” to explore the broader scope of an author’s life. Often, autobiographies are written by people who have already led successful careers, including careers outside of literature. Sometimes, autobiographies are “ghost written”, meaning the “author” pays someone else to do the writing but puts their own name on the byline.

Some examples of autobiography include:

• What Have I Done? by Ben Elton
• Hope in Action by Sanna Marin
• Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal by Robin Ince
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Autobiographical Fiction

You may have heard of autobiographical fiction before. Autobiographical fiction is fiction largely based on the author’s own life: certain details and plot points may change to enhance the story, and the names of the characters differ, but the author’s life informs every aspect of the work.

Autobiographical fiction is another approach to telling your life’s story. Despite its name, works of autobiographical fiction can be more “zoomed in” like a memoir. Learn more here:

• Autofiction as a Doorway into Truth
• How to Write Autobiographical Fiction

Biography

The key difference between a biography and an autobiography is that, where an author tells their own story in an autobiography, the author is telling someone else’s story in a biography.

Where an author tells their own story in an autobiography, the author is telling someone else’s story in a biography.

In other words, if I was trying to write my own life’s story, I would write an autobiography; if I wanted to write the life story of J. Edgar Hoover, it would be a biography. A biography is always written by someone other than the subject of the book.

As a result, biographies tend to be the least interior of nonfiction books. Many biographers interview their subjects, and even the families and social circles of those subjects. Nonetheless, biographers are exterior observers, beholden to what they see and what they are told about the topics of their books.

Biographies, of course, are not exempt from bias. Both the biographer’s slant and the slant of the biographer’s subject both influence the direction of the story.

Some examples of biography include:

• Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
• American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
• Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson
• Harriet Beecher Stowe – A Life by Joan D. Hedrick

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: A Look at Craft

If memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies differ in the ways described, what does the craft of each of them look like? Let’s zoom in on some of the ways an author’s approach changes in each of these modes of nonfiction writing.

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: Interiority

By interiority, we mean the writing’s ability to explore, excavate, and expand upon deeply private and personal experiences. Interiority includes a person’s thoughts, feelings, and inner world.

• Memoir: Tends to be the most interior, as it focuses closely on key thematic events in an author’s life, and the author is able to represent themselves authentically and deeply.
• Autobiography: Can contain a lot of interiority, though the book’s focus tends to be on more events over a greater span of time, which sometimes results in less interior representation.
• Biography: Tends to be the least interior, as the biographer must find and develop interiority through interviews and reportage. Some biographies, still, are highly interior and capable of unpacking the subject’s inner world.

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: Scope and Style

How does a writer approach the craft of a memoir vs autobiography vs biography? What are common differences in their styles?

• Memoir: Focus on personal experience and personal interpretations of lived experiences. As such, memoirs often have a narrower scope and a more personal style. They are more likely to use fiction-writing techniques, such as scene-setting and dialogue.
• Autobiography: Focus more on the formative events in the author’s life, most commonly across their entire life or else with regard to an important aspect of it (like a certain career or relationship). Put a different way, autobiographies are interested in the facts of one’s life, whereas memoirs are interested in the truth of one’s life.
• Biography: Similar in scope and style to autobiography, but with the difference that someone other than the subject is writing the story, and so the biographer’s own style impacts the storytelling.

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: Time Span and Structure

The way nonfiction book writers think about the structure and span of time in their books is as follows:

• Memoir: Tends to focus on a smaller span of time in which details and experiences can be heightened and thoroughly explored. Memoirs also tend to experiment more with time and structure: they are not necessarily told linearly or chronologically. Some memoirs are braided; others are written in essays.
• Autobiography: Tends to incorporate many different aspects of the author’s life, potentially from childhood to the author’s present age. Otherwise, an autobiography might span the topic of the book’s interest, like the start-to-finish of the author’s career.
• Biography: Similar to autobiography, biographies typically look at the whole of the author’s life, from childhood to the present or the end.

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: Philosophy

What do memoirists and (auto)biographers intend to accomplish in their books?

• Memoir: A memoir is a project of memory. While memoirists often conduct research and incorporate it into the stories they tell, memoirs themselves privilege the author’s memory—acknowledging its fallibilities and biases, yes, but also its emotional truths. Memoirists often question the accuracy of their own memories in the work itself.
• Autobiography: Where memoir is interested in memory, autobiography is typically more interested in verifiable fact. Autobiographers use memory as a doorway into telling their stories, but then focus on facts, reportage, and research to construct the story itself. Autobiographers often see their stories as legacies, where memoirs tend to be projects and experimentations of story and memory. Some autobiographies are also written with an eye towards life advice to the reader.
• Biography: Biographies are written by someone other than the subject, so they are often the most fact-based and objective. The subjects of biographies are typically famous or well-regarded people. Other than this, biographers and autobiographers often tell their stories with similar approaches and structures, though it depends on whether the biographer’s subject is living or dead.

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: Audience

Who are the intended readers of memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies?

• Memoir: Memoirists often tie their stories to specific themes and ideas, and so connect to readers who are similarly thinking about those ideas. A memoir about a relationship, for example, might be very different from a memoir about politics and protest. Of course, many readers of memoir will gravitate to both topics, as memoirs plumb the depths of our shared humanity. People are also drawn to memoir for having, on average, more artistic and literary writing.
• Autobiography: Readers of autobiographies are often interested in the authors themselves, and so are drawn to the book because they want to hear the author tell the story of their life. Some autobiographers are already writers, but many more come from other fields: business, politics, cinema, music, fashion, etc.
• Biography: Similar to autobiography, biography readers are often primarily interested in the subject of the book. Because biographies might be written about dead people, biographies also draw readers of history and historical subjects.

Memoir vs Autobiography vs Biography: Venn Diagram

The below Venn diagram illustrates the key differences between memoir vs autobiography vs biography.

Other Forms of Creative Nonfiction

If you’re interested in exploring other forms of creative nonfiction—or even writing a memoir or autobiography composed of other nonfiction forms—check out our resources below.

• 10 Types of Creative Nonfiction
• Speculative Nonfiction
• Braided Essays
• Lyric Essays

More Tips on Writing Creative Nonfiction

Here are some more tips for telling your story authentically.

• What is Creative Nonfiction?
• Fiction Vs Nonfiction
• Marrying Literature and Life
• How to Write a Book About Your Life

Write Your Nonfiction Book at Writers.com

Ready to write your nonfiction book? Whether you write memoir, autobiography, or biography, write it in one of our upcoming online creative nonfiction writing courses.

The post Memoir Vs Autobiography Vs Biography: The Craft of Nonfiction Books appeared first on Writers.com.

Our selves are collages of the people that impact us; we are products of every person we have met. To put this in familiar terms, no man is an island.

No woman, either. Barbara Henning’s recently published poetic memoir Girlfriend is a gorgeous homage to the women that have shaped, influenced, and informed Henning’s life. The subjects of these poems range from teachers and family members to friends, authors, and fictional characters. Through the stories of these women, Henning’s story emerges: an eldest daughter in working-class Detroit; a Bohemian, a yogi, an artist, a mother, and a lifelong lover of literature. Throughout Girlfriend, the death of Henning’s mother, which happens during her childhood, haunts many of the relationships and connections explored throughout the work.

Accompanying the prose poems that compose this collection are photos of the women, many of which were taken by Henning herself, and all of which act as windows into the times and places of Henning’s subjects. 

I loved reading Girlfriend. Despite knowing Barbara for several years as a phenomenal instructor at Writers.com, I learned a lot about her life and felt like I had actually just lived it myself—if only for a moment. I’m grateful for the chance to have read it, and for her willingness to do an interview about Girlfriend with Writers.com.

Below the interview is a recording of the Zoom reading we hosted with Barbara, as well as links to her books and other writing.

Interview: Girlfriend by Barbara Henning

Sean Glatch: Girlfriend is a poetic memoir, or a memoir written in poetry. This feels like a relatively contemporary approach to memoir, where the work is written in essays / vignettes / snippets, rather than attempting a longer, more coherent narrative (as in a novel). What did the format of this collection allow you to do as you approached this memoir project?

Barbara Henning: One of the ideas behind the book is that our stories are not just about us but about our relationships with others. I didn’t start with a form or genre in mind other than loosely planning at first to write prose poems about my childhood friends. Years ago, I wrote a few sketches and then a few years back I decided to pick it up again. For many years I had been writing poetry using collage, disjunctive breaks and interruptions in poetic prose/prose poems. These techniques eventually became almost second nature. So after a while I could fluidly think and/or construct the poem or prose with collage and interruptions, while still seeming like a stream of consciousness. I had these ideas in mind as I remembered my relationships with girl and women friends, as well as characters and authors.

Our stories are not just about us but about our relationships with others.

SG: Girlfriend is comprised of prose poems. I’ve taken your Poetic Prose: The Prose Poem course, and I remember in the epiphany section, I think you talked about accessing the unconscious to generate sudden epiphany. What did writing these poems in prose allow you to access?

BH: In that course, in one assignment we experimented with epiphanies that are so subtle you might call them “anti-epiphanies,” like James Joyce’s. We also worked with dreams and the unconscious in another unit on surrealism. I hope most of my endings are subtle, more like anti- epiphanies. I think you are asking why I wrote these particular prose poems in prose rather than using lines. I didn’t want the flow of words, images, ideas to be interrupted by line ends. I didn’t want to highlight the phrases and words. I wanted the reader to be swept up in the continuity from one thought to the next, and then notice the rhythm or repetition or disjunction. I intended each piece to be like a mind reminiscing about a particular friend.

SG: Girlfriend explores the women who have influenced you throughout your life, from childhood to present. What did you learn about your own life after having written the prose poems in this collection?

BH: Through my friend’s lives, I saw myself and who I was and how I related to others. I think I may have become more forgiving of myself and of others. I learned that often I have been attracted to friends who experienced similar losses or difficulties, especially in my youth—even in the books I was reading. When I gathered together the memories about a particular friend, I often realized how much we need each other, and I often felt a surge of gratitude. I was reaffirmed in something I had witnessed and learned as a child with my grandmother and aunts; it is usually, but not always, women who support each other during difficulties. Also, I learned that I could access memory through my imagination in the same way a dream revises memory but might catch the truth of it. It might not be identical to what happened, but still there is a truth revealed. Throughout my life, and even now, it is my women friends or my sisters who I can call up and talk through a difficulty, or just to ask for a recipe.

I learned that I could access memory through my imagination in the same way a dream revises memory but might catch the truth of it.

SG: A few ending lines in Girlfriend really stuck with me. For example, in “Virginia”, you end with: “…who now, without realizing it, carry along the stream of their familial consciousness.” And, in “Martine”: “I lost the child, or he lost me, but if you had not said these words, I might never have loved in the way I loved.” There is something here, the blending I think of the individual and collective, the conscious and unconscious, the personal and political.

BH: I think the blending you are speaking of is very present in “Virginia.” In the line you quote, I’m referring to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and I’m thinking about the way we pass along our language with each other through dialogue, from mother to child, friend to friend, ancestor to the next generation. Our consciousness is composed of our dialogue with others. The minds and lives of the characters in Woolf’s novel (based on her family) are forever shaped by her family’s way of talking. And my consciousness is shaped by the language exchange with my family and friends and the books I’ve read. We are all related. And maybe the link from one friend to another in Girlfriend is one way of charting that. With the last line in “Martine”, I’m dwelling on something Martine Bellen said to me that I took into my thinking, and it then influenced a decision I made. Her language and thought became intertwined with my language, and mine with the language of my mother and so forth and so on.

I tried not to dominate the poems with too much about myself.

SG: One thing that intrigues me about Girlfriend is that the “I” feels incidental to the work. Certainly, the “I” is present, but in all of these prose poems, you’re more the lens than the subject, and so a portrait of who you are emerges almost like an aperture. How did you situate yourself in this collection, and what did you learn about yourself through this approach?

BH: I tried not to dominate the poems with too much about myself. Some are more focused on me and some less, but I tried to stay mostly focused on the girl/woman friend and on our relationship, inserting something now and again about me—something we shared or something that drew me toward the friendship. I guess you’re right, part of remembering in this project involves seeing myself with the other, so maybe I’m kind of functioning as a writer-witness. In a way these are also like letters to the person I’m remembering. Maybe they are also a little like what Frank O’Hara referred to in his playful essay “Personism”: “one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the poet himself).” I hadn’t thought about that before. I’ve always been attracted to the New York School poetics: personal, intimate, and experimental.

SG: A somewhat obvious observation about the work is that the prose poems become much longer as the collection goes on—of course, because as you age, your stories grow more complex, and because you probably remember more about the women you knew as an adult, not as a child. Do you find that the speaker in these poems evolves in other ways as the work progresses?

BH: Well, as I got older, I read more books, became better educated and more situated in my life as a poet which entailed more complex friendships. I raised children and maneuvered my way through ordinary and extraordinary difficulties. That must come through in the length and complexity of the poems. Some of my friendships began when I was in my early twenties and have continued until today. So that’s a lot of time. But maybe the poems are longer because I have always been very talkative, and my mind is full of thoughts. The older I get, the more words I have . . .

SG: What role does memory play in this collection? Did you find yourself having to speculate or guess at details in any of these poems, especially the poems set in your childhood?

BH: My goal has been to tell truth, but if possible, not to cause harm to others. Therefore, I shared many of these stories with my friends. And there was always something, some minor error in memory pointed out. If my reaction was – Oh yeah, I remember that – then I made a change. If I felt it was more important to stay true to memory, I stayed with the error. When I couldn’t remember something and I didn’t know how to find the person or I didn’t want to find the person, I imagined what I couldn’t remember. As I explain above, I believe imagination holds a truth of its own. Possibly when we dream or imagine, we might even be more accurate. I encourage my students to use their imagination combined with memory to write their memoirs.

Imagination holds a truth of its own. Possibly when we dream or imagine, we might even be more accurate

SG: Most of Girlfriend is chronological, but you reserve the end of the collection to talk about your family, including your mother and daughter. Why did you situate family at the very end, rather than embedded in the work’s chronology as with the rest of the poems?

BH: My sisters have been with me most of my life. If I had put their stories (our stories) in the beginning section, I would have given away what happens later. The book wouldn’t be as engaging for readers. I wanted the conflict and difficulties to open up a little at a time. My mother stays present with me throughout—even though she died when I was eleven—so it also felt right to have her at the end. Also, there’s a way that the narrator (the author, me) is learning about herself as she writes. Maybe having family at the end is a little climactic.

SG: You are currently at work on a companion poetic memoir, tentatively titled Boys & Men. Does your approach to this collection differ from your approach to Girlfriend?

BH: The shape is the same, prose and photos. The collage-like structure of a mind reminiscing is similar. The point of view is the same, a first person speaking to the subject. I have had some very close friendships with men as well as women, and these poems may be similar to those in Girlfriend. One thing I realized today while working on “Boys and Men” is that many of them are less homage-like than those in Girlfriend. Maybe the reader will see something I don’t. One thing—when I’m writing about men with whom I’ve had passionate and intimate sexual relations, the tension and tone is different. In 2001, my teacher in India warned me away from further sexual relations except in marriage. If you want to meditate, you don’t want to be chasing along after your desires. I didn’t listen to him, however. I continued along that bumpy here-and-now path. When I’m finished with this book, perhaps I’ll have learned something about myself and men, something that I don’t yet know because I haven’t yet finished the book.

SG: What advice do you have for Writers.com students interested in the project of a poetic memoir?

Make lists of events/people/places, memories that return and return, moments that were important to your life.

BH: There are many ways to write memoir. An interesting book to read is Joe Brainard’s I Remember published by Granary Books. It’s poetry and its prose and it’s easy to read. It’s a beautiful book. He writes lists of memories, all starting with “I remember…” One sentence or one paragraph each and the catalogue builds, not chronologically, but following memory. I just remembered it today and I’m going use it in the memoir class I’m teaching in the spring.

Advice for students? Off the top of my head. Make lists of events/people/places, memories that return and return, moments that were important to your life. One by one, write the story. Write the sketch. Write the flash. Write the poem. Write the image. Write the analysis. Let them accumulate. You will have a draft.

Recording: Barbara Henning Reading from Girlfriend

We had the pleasure of hosting Barbara for a poetry reading with Writers.com. Watch the full recording here:

More About Girlfriend

Buy Girlfriend here, from Hanging Loose Press.

Read selections of Girlfriend from MER here.

Read MER‘s review of Girlfriend here.

Read The Arts Fuse‘s review of Girlfriend here.

Learn more about Barbara’s writing and teaching.

The post Interview: Barbara Henning on “Girlfriend” and the Craft of Poetic Memoir appeared first on Writers.com.

Research illuminates the connections between our personal experiences and their broader meanings.

Done well, research makes our writing deeper and more significant. It bolsters the connection between “what I experienced or observed” and “what this experience or observation means.” It offers readers not only new information, but also new ways of looking at the world.

How Research Can Inform a Nonfiction Piece: An Example

Each essay in Shelter and Storm arose from some striking incident or discovery. While living in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area, it seemed all I had to do was step out the door and I would stumble into another topic, whether a record-breaking flood, a tornado, a rare, blue-glowing firefly, or a battle with beavers who kept damming a creek and flooding the neighbor’s field. Since I was curious and didn’t know a lot about the topics, I turned to research.

I love interviewing people, not only to tap their expertise, but also to find out how they feel. For one essay, I went to Louisiana and Mississippi to commiserate with landowners who had lost hundreds of acres of trees in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita right after I’d lost forty acres in a tornado. I rode around with foresters for three days.

My days of research became maybe 200 words in my final essay, but I needed to get the full picture of what people were grappling with.

Those days are represented by maybe 200 words in that essay. I knew while sitting in the foresters’ trucks, viewing toppled trees and listening to descriptions of the storms, that I wouldn’t use most of what I was learning. But it felt important for me to get the full picture of what people were grappling with. I discovered that although those forests were plantations of pines destined for lumber mills, property owners still felt crushing grief over their loss.

How to Use Research in Your Piece

Research can be used strategically for:

• filling gaps
• connecting the personal with the universal
• complicating matters to add interest
• challenging claims to reinforce veracity
• offering a metaphor to support a theme
• raising tension or prolonging suspense
• mirroring structure

When you find the perfect fact or anecdote to add to your work, consider how it might support your material beyond simply adding background information.

Balancing Scene, Research, and Reflection

When I teach writing, I talk about three elements that make up narratives: scene (what happened?), research (what else?), and reflection (what of it?). Each element enhances the others. You will balance these three elements, and where and how they intersect, based on your aims for your piece.

In my teaching, I discuss three elements that make up narratives: scene (what happened?), research (what else?), and reflection (what of it?).

The Risk of Including Too Much Research

Beware! One danger of researching is that the author will feel compelled to include more of what they learned than the reader needs. That’s why I advise you, during revision, to highlight in different colors the material in your work belonging to scene, research, and reflection.

One danger of research is that you’ll feel compelled to include more of what you learned than the reader needs.

Then, in your word processor, zoom out until each page is the size of a playing card or smaller. You won’t be able to read the words, but you can see at a glance, by color, if you have a long section of research that’s likely bogging down the narrative. You can zoom in there and cut or redistribute those findings.

Drawing Out Reflection

Research and scene come more easily to me than reflection. It takes me a while to articulate what I understand and feel about experiences. If you struggle with that, too, in revision, try responding to prompts such as:

• Only after learning ___________ did I realize ______________

OR

• I used to think ____________, but now I know _____________

What you’ve learned from experts, archives, and other sources will complement your experiences and observations and lead to new insights.

About Tamara Dean

Tamara Dean’s latest book, Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless, is a collection of twelve true tales of discovery that inspire readers to live more mindfully in nature and community. Reviewers call it “luminous,” “fascinating,” and “a revelatory study of person and place, entwined.” Her stories and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, The Guardian, One Story, Orion, The Southern Review, and other publications. Her essay “Safer Than Childbirth” received a 2024 Pushcart Prize Special Mention and “Slow Blues” was named a 2021 National Magazine Award finalist.

Check out her upcoming courses with us:

• Writing with Consistency and Courage (Sep. 6)
• The Magic of Flash Nonfiction (Oct. 22)

The post What Else? – How Research Makes Meaning appeared first on Writers.com.

This is not to suggest that speculative nonfiction is a means of lying or fabricating: the speculative essayist makes it clear when the essay is veering into speculation. Rather, this genre unlocks a new means of truth seeking, generated from the writer’s imagination, unconscious mind, and lateral thinking. 

This article explores the exciting work being done in the world of speculative nonfiction, with examples, prompts, and doorways into developing a deeper understanding of the truth.

What is Speculative Nonfiction? Defining the Genre

Like many literary genres, speculative nonfiction is easier described than defined. Think of it more as a mode of literary production, rather than an all-encompassing type of writing: it is both a style of nonfiction writing and a tool for nonfiction writers to use.

At its most broad, speculative nonfiction is the incorporation of imagined or non-shared realities to explore the truth of real experiences.

Speculative nonfiction is any piece of nonfiction writing that uses speculation, wondering, or invention as tools for uncovering different truths.

Less abstractly, speculative nonfiction is any piece of nonfiction writing that uses speculation, wondering, or invention as tools for uncovering different truths. The speculative nonfiction writer might ponder or perhaps their way into information they don’t know, or else use forms of altered consciousness, including dreams, as doorways into understanding.

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What is Speculation?

Speculation is any form of wonder or inquiry towards what cannot be truly known.

This isn’t to say the speculative writer makes something up and assumes it to be true. Rather, speculation is a means of generating insight or understanding through inference and intuition.

Speculation is a means of generating insight or understanding through inference and intuition.

The speculating writer might:

• Consider different possible outcomes than what actually happened.
• Generate insight from dreams, hallucinations, or other forms of non-shared reality.
• Wonder at events of the past that are not documented or possible to research.
• Draw upon other forms of storytelling, such as folklore or mythology, to represent different forms of truth or truth-seeking.
• Fill in the gaps of memories that only partially exist or are notably imperfect in the writer’s mind.

The key idea here is that speculation acknowledges its own limitations. It does not try to present ideas as facts, or argue that this definitely happened, but rather uses imagination as a means of storytelling and inquiry, allowing the writer to use their intuition as a means of discovery.

Does Speculative Nonfiction Give Me Permission to Lie?

Absolutely not. In fact, good speculation requires the writer to make their speculating clear.

It is always obvious in a work of speculative nonfiction when the writer is veering from the facts of shared reality.

It is always obvious in a work of speculative nonfiction when the writer is veering from the facts of shared reality. Some common words and phrases you might see when entering the realm of the speculative are:

• Perhaps
• What if
• Maybe
• I wonder
• I imagine
• It is likely that
• It would follow that

And any synonyms or similar ideas to the ones above. So the reader will always know when the writer is speculating. Otherwise, the writer might present their inquiries as truths, which would be both dishonest and dangerous, depending on what the writer speculates about.

Besides, there is a lot of power to wondering. Readers of speculative nonfiction appreciate the genre’s ability to reveal the writer’s own mind and relationship to the world.

What Speculative Nonfiction Isn’t

As writers explore new avenues of storytelling, the lines between fiction and nonfiction seem to get blurrier. But, to be clear, speculative nonfiction is not:

• Autobiographical fiction. In this genre, the author acknowledges both that the story is informed by their lived experiences, and that their experiences have been modified (without the use of speculative language) to present a different or richer story.
• The use of magical, futurist, or non-realistic elements in fictional narratives. That would be speculative fiction, a genre that encompasses fantasy, horror, science fiction, and magical realism.
• Historical fiction. Historical fiction might also use speculation to tell aspects of the story that cannot be researched, but historical fiction is preoccupied with the broader aspects of history, including the politics, culture, and experiences of a certain time period. Speculative nonfiction, by contrast, is still very much rooted in the writer’s own lived experiences and personal histories.
• Any genre of fiction, really. Fiction requires the reader to suspend their disbelief and treat the story as something that did or could have happened, even though the reader and writer both know the story is invented. Speculative nonfiction is still nonfiction, so it explores things as they truly occurred.

Learn more about the contours of fiction vs nonfiction here:

https://writers.com/fiction-vs-nonfiction

Speculative Nonfiction Examples

The concept of “speculative nonfiction” is a very 21st century invention. It’s not that writers before now haven’t been speculating, because they have—but the idea that speculation deserves its own genre is new and promises a lot of literary innovation.

As such, the following examples are contemporary and showcase a lot of the new exciting work being done in this burgeoning style of creative nonfiction.

“‘Time’ is the Most Common Noun in the English Language” by Daniel Olivieri

Read it here, in Speculative Nonfiction.

This quirky essay was published in Speculative Nonfiction, a literary journal dedicated to this genre. I encourage you to read their archives for more inspiration—and maybe even submit to them yourself!

One benefit of speculation is its ability to suspend time: we freeze from the narrative to explore the past, the future, or even present-moment possibilities. Which is why Olivieri’s essay is all the more enjoyable: it’s about time, our relationship to it, and how societies and civilizations have grappled with this fluid and nebulous concept.

Olivieri invites the reader into his speculations and suspends time for us in the process. What does it mean that the Egyptians had a 5-day month, or the French tried to implement a 10-day week? How would our relationship to time change if we measured it differently? These questions both demand answers and refuse them, which make them all the more exciting.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Read this review of the memoir at Ploughshares.

I love Carmen Maria Machado’s fiction, but her nonfiction is just as daring and vibrant. In the Dream House is a speculative memoir about Machado’s experiences of domestic violence with a former partner, who is only named “the woman in the dream house.” The memoir is written in the second-person point of view, and often incorporates different narrative and stylistic experiments.

Machado is a speculative fiction writer, so it only makes sense that she would borrow tools from the genre to write speculative nonfiction. In the memoir, metaphor acts as a liminal realm between tangible reality and Machado’s own experiences—they are more than just elegant comparisons, they are feelings so raw and intense as to actually have happened. Here’s a brief excerpt:

The result is a memoir that does more than just communicate a tangible lived experience—it’s a searing inquiry into the nature and history of domestic abuse in lesbian communities, aided all the more by the incorporation of speculated, yet true, realities.

“Mary Ruefle Drives Me to the Dentist” by Kelly Luce

Read it here, in Craft Literary.

This funny, charming, imaginative flash essay showcases the blurred lines and liminal spaces of speculative nonfiction. In it, Luce ends up writing an ode to the poet Mary Ruefle (and her quirkiness) while navigating her own life’s struggles—and the route to the dentist.

Whether or not Mary Ruefle ever drove Kelly Luce to the dentist is less important than what is generated in this essay. The wisdom of Ruefle’s poetry interrupts each paragraph like an epiphany. The essay almost becomes a lesson in how to live your life, but without the preaching qualities of didacticism.

Through this conversation, Luce speculates through her own problems and decisions. “Mary, should we go back? Mary, should I leave my husband? Mary, give me answers.” While poets and poetry often resist direct, uncomplicated answers, Ruefle shows Luce a different way of living, one in which we scream when it snows during dinner, in which we are constantly surprised by beauty.

Bruja by Wendy C. Ortiz

Here’s an interview Ortiz did about Bruja with The Rumpus.

Bruja is what Ortiz calls a “dreamoir”—a memoir told entirely through dreams. It is such an interesting project. The writing operates through vivid, detached descriptions of Ortiz’s dreams, with no intervention to explain who the characters of these dreams are or how they relate to Ortiz in real life.

Nonetheless, the reader, over time, picks up on who in these dreams are friends, family, lovers, or strangers based on how they operate in Ortiz’s mind. This is, fundamentally, a project of selfhood through a charting of the unconscious mind, and Ortiz asks us to construct her through the ways her dreams showcase her psyche.

Here’s an excerpt, rich in the symbolism and strangeness of dreams:

When I found the right one, I got him into the truck cab while all the others continued brushing against my feet and calves.

While not “speculative” in the sense of perhaps and what if, Bruja accomplishes the project of speculation by inviting the reader into the singular consciousness that is a person’s dreamworld, further complicating what is fact and what is fiction, as a very real writer constructs herself through stories that (technically) never occurred.

Are Invented Truths Still True?

Speculative nonfiction remains nonfiction for its ability to ponder into truth. That said, the speculating writer is drawing upon hypotheticals, musings, and altered states of consciousness to inform their work, and those things are inherently singular to the individual, and thus only accessible through the writing itself.

This begs the question: are invented truths still true? In other words, can we trust that the writer is telling the truth? Can we trust the truths accessed through speculation?

First, it’s important to break down the difference between absolute truth versus relative truth.

• Relative truth: The idea that there is truth to be found in our singular experiences, and that our perceptions, though flawed, still contain truths about our feelings and lived realities. Relative truths are not universal, and can contradict one another. The lines, of course, get blurry, because someone can present a lie as being a relative truth.
• Absolute truth: The idea that there exists a truth that is universal and incontrovertible, yet inaccessible to us. Absolute truth is asymptotic, something to strive for though it can never be achieved, as the workings of human biases and our own perceptual limitations prevent us from fully accessing the truth of things.

If I say the sky is blue, for example, that might seem like an absolute truth—until we deconstruct it. The sky appears blue because of the refraction of light against nitrogen; it appears blue because of how that refracted light interacts with the cones in my eye, miles and miles below; it appears blue only because the sky is also cloudless and the sun is shining. The sky is not blue for everyone who can perceive it, and so this truth is only relative to my own point of view.

I go a little more in-depth in these concepts at this essay on the search for truth.

All types of creative writing, speculative nonfiction included, rely on the mechanisms of relative truth to search for something more absolute.

All types of creative writing, speculative nonfiction included, rely on the mechanisms of relative truth to search for something more absolute. So it is less about fabrication for the sake of fabrication, and more about having a set of inquiries that allow us to access truth in different ways.

In Bruja, for example, I have no way of knowing whether Ortiz is accurately reporting the events of her dreams. And, although she kept a rigorous dream journal, it’s very possible that the dreams as they occurred were still distorted simply in the act of transcribing them: the author made sense of what was inherently nonsensical, and thus assigned order to a disordered narrative.

But Bruja is a project of understanding selfhood through dreams, and that understanding occurs both through the symbolism of the dreamworld and through the act of transcribing those dreams to the real world. Neither method of inquiry contains the self-asserting truth of the scientific process, yet the reader comes to trust these dreams as intuitions into Ortiz’s life.

Another good example is the essay “What He Took” by Kelly Grey Carlisle, published in The Rumpus. Here’s an excerpt riddled with speculation:

What do we gain from this paragraph? It stays strictly in the realm of the perhaps, imagining a truth that cannot be known. What could possibly be true about these sentences that rely on invention to exist?

What we gain is understanding the writer’s own relationship to her mother, her desire to be similar to her in taste and fashion, and the resonance of imagining a person’s life soon before their unwitting death—how more alive it makes them seem. So the truth accessed here isn’t one of narrative, but of understanding the author’s own self, and of imagining a world whose likelihood is less relevant than its emotional honesty.

The point is that speculation serves a purpose in revealing—first to ourselves, and then to our readers—what we know, feel, and think.

The point is that speculation serves a purpose in revealing—first to ourselves, and then to our readers—what we know, feel, and think. This mode of inquiry offers writers freer access to their own intuitions. So long as we frame our speculation as just that—a set of perhapses, imaginings, and wonderings—we allow our invented truths to announce themselves as inventions, and our intuitions to discover something in the process.

Prompts for Writing Speculative Nonfiction

Want to try your hand at writing speculative nonfiction? Here are some doorways into writing this exciting genre.

1. Write an essay about a dream that you have had but do not understand. What was your subconscious trying to tell you? What images, symbols, or words stand out to you? Explore the dream world and let yourself be open to unexpected insight.
2. What is a memory you have where the details are fragmented or incomplete? Write an essay that speculates about those absences and tries to intuit its way into a more complete story.
3. What is an aspect of your personal or family history you have questions about, but cannot find any answers on? Orbit those answers by speculating through what you know about the people and places that populate this story, then let the essay’s centripetal force draw you into insight.
4. Write an essay in which your feelings are made tangible through metaphor.
5. What is an event, either in your own life or in history, that you wish had a different outcome? Write an essay that hews closely to the facts of that event, but speculates about how the present moment would be different had that event had a different outcome.
6. Write an essay in the form of a conversation between you and an important figure in your life—a conversation that has never actually occurred.

Check out Writing Beyond the Known with Joanna Penn Cooper

Want to learn more about how to write speculative nonfiction? Check out our on-demand self-guided course, which you can enroll in at any time: 

Speculative Nonfiction: Writing Beyond the Known

More Creative Nonfiction Resources

If you’re looking to further hone your creative nonfiction writing, here are some additional resources.

• How to write a personal narrative essay
• Writing about real people
• How to write a memoir
• Writing the lyric essay
• Types of nonfiction

Explore Speculative Nonfiction at Writers.com

Want to hone your skills in speculative nonfiction? The courses at Writers.com can help! Check out our upcoming creative nonfiction courses, where you will receive expert feedback on every piece of writing you submit.

The post Truth in Possibility: Writing Speculative Nonfiction appeared first on Writers.com.

Sound devices help make writing memorable and engaging, while also building the mood and atmosphere of a work, helping it evoke stronger reactions from the readers. While the bulk of this article dissects sound devices in poetry, these same devices often appear in prose, and good storytellers know how to imbue their work with sound and musicality.

What literary devices are sound devices, and how do they aid your writing? Let’s define sound devices first before looking at great examples of sound devices in literature.

Sound Devices Definition

Sound devices are literary devices in which the sounds of words themselves impact the meaning and interpretation of the work.

Sound devices are literary devices in which the sounds of words themselves impact the meaning and interpretation of the work.

Take this literally—we mean that the use of certain vowels, consonants, and sonic qualities in words, as well as how the words sound next to one another, are sound devices that impact the writing as a whole.

There are plenty of reasons to employ sound devices in literature. They help build the mood and atmosphere of a work, they create formal restraints that improve the work’s resonance, and sometimes, they simply make a passage of writing more memorable. After all, it’s hard to forget the phrase “Sally sells seashells by the seashore,” even if that sibilance makes it hard to speak out loud.

Sound Devices Vs. Sonic Imagery

The one thing sound devices are not is sonic imagery. By this, we mean imagery of sound: descriptions of sounds intended to convey an experience we can hear in our minds.

An example of sonic imagery comes from Robert Hass’ poem “Picking Blackberries with a Friend Who Has Been Reading Jacques Lacan”:

I can hear this moment in the poem, but it’s not because of the sounds of the words themselves, but what they evoke in the mind’s ear. Ears being stoppered by bee-hums transports me directly to the field where this poem is happening, and there’s a charming quality of Charlie “laughing wonderfully” that I can also imagine.

Admittedly, the word hum in “bee-hum” has an onomatopoeic quality to it, and one could argue that “hum” is being used as a sound device. But, this passage on the whole is evoking a sound-image without replicating that sound in the sounds of the words.

Sound Devices in Poetry Vs. Prose

Most discussions of sound devices revolve around poetry. Indeed, poetry is a sonic art form, and good poetry is enhanced by its attention to sound and musicality.

That said, the sound devices in this article can apply to both poetry and prose. While it’s true that prose is rarely, if ever, metered and rhyming, good prose can be enhanced by the intentional use of rhythm and rhyme. The best prose writers will also be poets—or, at the very least, be readers and admirers of poetry, as poetry pushes the limits of what language can accomplish.

Here’s a passage of prose I’ve always found particularly poetic—the opening paragraph from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston:

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

What makes this passage poetic isn’t its loftiness, though it certainly has a heightened quality to it, but rather the passage’s attention to musicality. Speak the words aloud and feel how they flow, both the words themselves and the lengths of sentences. Notice, also, how each word is carefully chosen and essential: there’s no excess, and the words that are abstract are still necessary. This stands in stark contrast to something like purple prose, which attempts to be poetic and lofty but is ultimately elaborate, overwritten, and communicates little.

Prose writers, like poets, will do well to understand how these sound devices can be implemented in their work. When prose is a joy to read, it invites the reader into worlds more richly built and real.

Learn more about poetry vs prose here:

https://writers.com/prose-vs-poetry

Sound Devices in Literature: Examples and Analysis

Let’s take a look at some actual sound devices in literature. In addition to defining each device, we also provide examples in published works of writing, and an analysis of what that sound device does for the writing as well.

1. Alliteration

Alliteration is the use of the same sound at the start of successive or closely placed words. It is specific to the beginning letters of words; two other devices, assonance and consonance, describe recurring sounds more generally.

It’s worth noting that the alliterating words need to be different. For example “bells, bells, bells” wouldn’t be noteworthy alliteration, since the words are just being repeated—but that would be an example of epizeuxis, a repetition device.

Alliteration, when employed effectively, makes a passage of writing more musical and memorable. Take Tracy Brimhall’s poem “Lullaby at 102º”. Words in alliteration with one another have been bolded and italicized:

This gorgeous, mystical poem has more going for it than just its alliteration, but those moments of repeated sounds create a textured, sonic experience for the reader. There are also moments of consonance, which we’ll define shortly, that work in tandem with the poem’s alliterations.

2. Assonance

Assonance is the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in closely placed words. These vowel sounds can occur anywhere in the words themselves—beginning, middle, or end—but must be repeated in such a way that their repetition is resonant or echoic.

Different vowel sounds can emulate different feelings and moods. So, too, can the frequency of their repetition. Quick, successive, tall vowels might add a sense of energy or urgency; long and low vowels might create a sense of depth or somberness.

There are a few lovely examples from Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays”:

This poem aches, and that ache can be felt in the poem’s vowels and consonants. (We’ll look at consonance next.) There are a lot of tall vowels in the first stanza, and in my experience reading it, those vowels lift the language up, but in a spiked and urgent way. This stands in contrast to the poem’s melancholy ending, whose low, long vowels draw out that sense of loneliness and regret. Assonance, here, creates a feeling that echoes in the body, that lasts long after it’s read in the mind.

3. Consonance

Consonance is assonance, but with consonants. Specifically, it’s an echoing of similar consonant sounds in closely placed words. This, like assonance, can impact the mood and feeling of a poem.

Also like assonance, there are no hard and fast rules for how different sounds will replicate different feelings. But let’s look again at Robert Hayden’s delightfully sonic poem, this time with attention towards repeated consonant sounds:

What do you notice in this poem, now that you’ve paid attention to its consonance? This poem nearly runs the alphabet, but there’s a recurrence of “b”, “k”, and “w” sounds that each offer a different emotional texture to the work. K’s and hard C’s feel sharp and percussive; “B’s” and, to a lesser extent in this piece, “D’s” are also percussive, but duller and more spread out, melancholic; and those soft, ruminant “W’s” seem to stretch this poem’s melancholy even further. I also notice that “cold” recurs in each stanza, though each use of the word feels new somehow.

4. Dissonance and Cacophony

Dissonance and cacophony are essentially the same thing, so we’ll include them as one device. There is a slight difference between the two, in that cacophony is an instance of dissonance; if cacophony is a singular use of sound, dissonance describes a work that is artfully replete with cacophony.

Both words describe writing whose sound is intentionally unpleasant or harsh to the ear. The key word, of course, is intentional: it’s not writing that’s accidentally rough, but writing whose harsh sound is resonant with the writing’s subject matter.

A rather obvious example of dissonance comes from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

The language is musical, but has a sense of discordance, and though the vowels are somewhat assonant, there are a lot of different, cacophonous percussive consonants mirroring the speaker’s harsh cry.

Sometimes, dissonance simply helps call attention to a single stand-out word. For example, the poem “Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper” by Richard Siken has a lot of beauty and craft in it, but I’ll call your attention to the word “compartmentalization”, which occurs a little more than halfway into the poem. It’s an ungainly word, hideous in its context and hideous to pronounce, but essential to understanding the psychology of this poem’s speaker.

Retrieved here.

5. Elision or Syncope

Elision is a useful sound device, especially for poets trying to fit their language into the rhythm and meter of a formal poem. What elision refers to is the intentional erasure of a sound or syllable.

A lot of old-timey poetic words are the products of elision. For example:

These forms of elision rarely occur in contemporary poetry, as contemporary poetry is more interested in replicating how people think and speak in the 21st century.

However, elision is common in a lot of everyday speech. Taking the g off of a gerund word, for example—you might say you’re “goin’” to the store, not going. Contractions like “can’t” and “won’t” are also elisions in their own way, since they elide sounds by conjoining words together. (Some of the above examples, like t’other and ‘tis, are also contractions.)

6. Euphony

Euphony is cacophony’s opposite. It is the use of musical, melodic sound to enhance the beauty or quality of a poem’s language. It is, put simply, the lyricism and musicality often found in poetry.

Euphony is not a singular device—it is something achieved in the gestalt of sound devices, and so any example of euphony may contain various iterations of alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, meter, sibilance, repetition, etc.

Consider this poem:

We Have Not Long to Love
By: Tennessee Williams

Pay attention to what makes this poem flow off the tongue—you should even read it out loud to fully feel the language. The poem’s movement and rhythm, its odd but wise syntax, and its noticeable but not-annoying rhyme scheme all combine to make a poem as delightful and interesting as its choice of words.

7. Homophony

Homophony is the use of homophones, which are words that sound similar to one another but have different definitions. Think: bear/bare, there/their, wear/where/ware, etc.

Sometimes, writers use homophones as puns or forms of word play. I could say that the bear bares its face, or I could give someone a box of powdered grains and call it a “bouquet of flours.”

But homophony can also be used to simulate the sound and feeling of language in new and surprising ways. Some contemporary poets write poems that are “homophonic translations,” or poems written to emulate the sound of a source text, but use different words to create wonderful accidents of language.

Here’s an example of a homophonic translation, which attempts to sound like the opening of the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot.

By taking the sound and feeling of a poem but using different words, poems like these call into question how language can communicate through sound instead of meaning, and what happens when words say what they don’t mean.

8. Meter

Meter refers to the rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a piece of writing—almost always poetry. Contemporary poets do sometimes utilize meter in their work, but it is far more present in classical poetry.

If you’ve read any poetry from before the 20th century, you have almost certainly encountered iambic meter, which is a pattern of unstressed-stressed syllables. The motion of an iambic poem is often compared to that of a heartbeat. You can see it in action from these lines of Shakespeare, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

Again, read these lines out loud, and you’ll get a feel for iambic meter, including where the stresses are placed in the syllables.

You can read our in-depth guide on poetic meter here:

https://writers.com/rhythm-and-meter-in-poetry

9. Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeias are words that sound like the sounds they refer to. They are words made to emulate what they describe. Think bark, honk, meow, vroom, boom, or yackety-yack.

Onomatopoeias are rarely the central feature of any piece of writing, but they do add a kind of sonic texture to the work, and they’re useful for making a piece of writing feel more real and alive.

This excerpt from the poem “Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio” by Carl Sandburg demonstrates the value of onomatopoeias nicely:

Read the full poem here.

Notice how the poem feels livelier and more interesting, especially as those onomatopoeia words are bumping up against one another, practically in conversation.

Learn more about onomatopoeias here:

https://writers.com/onomatopoeia-definition-and-examples

10. Repetition

Repetition is the artful, intentional duplication of sounds and words to highlight or amplify a certain effect on the reader. Like euphony, repetition is not a singular device, but a set of strategies authors use for literary effect.

One type of repetition is called epizeuxis, which is the rapid, immediate repetition of a word. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells” gives us a great example:

The almost obnoxious, incessant chime of the word feels like there are bells actually jingling and tinkling around me. Repetition is more than just a sound device, but here, I think Poe is using the device in a sonic and interesting way.

Discover more repetition devices here:

https://writers.com/repetition-definition

11. Rhyme

You’re probably acquainted with rhyme, which is when words mirror each other’s assonance, or else have corresponding sounds. Examples of this:

• Score / store
• Whether / heather
• Interior / inferior
• Scarecrow / hair grow

There also exist such a thing as slant rhymes, which are rhymes that almost mirror one another, but the length or intonation of a vowel differs enough that the two rhymes slightly misalign. Examples of this:

• Boarish / boorish
• Worm / swarm
• Immigrant / monument
• Tall / toll

Rhymes can occur in both poetry and prose. They make writing more musical and can also call attention to the rhymed words themselves. In poetry, certain forms like villanelles and traditional sonnets require the end words of lines to be rhymed. A line can also have an internal rhyme, or rhyming words occurring in the middle of lines.

Edgar Allan Poe also gives us some great examples of rhyme in poetry. Here’s the opening stanza of The Raven, with internal rhymes italicized, and end rhymes bolded:

12. Sibilance

Sibilance is consonance with “s” sounds, so it’s delightful that sibilance is itself a sibilant word. This sound device gets its own shoutout because it has a unique impact on the feeling of a passage of writing. Sibilance can make writing seem sinister, slippery, tense, or eerie, particularly if the writing is complete with only “s” sounds.

However, repeated hushing and shushing “sh” sounds are also sibilance. If a piece of writing has a lot of “sh” in it, the passage might feel calming, soft, quiet, or windswept.

To be clear, sibilance is just as intentional as the other sound devices in this article. While plenty of words have s’es in them, and most plural words end in s, sibilance requires a certain amount of frequency and intensity in other to impact the mood, tone, and feeling of a piece of writing.

You can find many examples of sibilance in John Clare’s poem “The Wind”:

Why do writers use sound devices in literature?

Sound devices make writing musical, memorable, interesting, and atmospheric. A writer can control the mood and energy of a piece based on how they utilize sound.

Sound devices might enhance a piece of writing by:

• Generating a mood, tone, or atmosphere that enhances the subject of the work.
• Imbuing the work with a sense of musicality that’s pleasing to read and hear.
• Building a textured, sonic experience that the reader can hear and feel.
• Creating doorways into new ideas by attending to the accidents off language.

Really, sound devices are tools that help elevate a piece of writing from merely transmitting information to creating an artistic and intentional experience. The dullest writing thuds for its disinterest in sound. Think long, technical passages of prose with convoluted, abstract language.

Reading bad writing is like trying to drill through a prison wall—and finding that the other side of the wall is just as boring. Musical writing, on the other hand, has a gravity that you don’t want to escape from, and these sound devices help create that gravity.

For more on creating musical, stylistic writing, check out our article on the topic:

https://writers.com/writing-styles

Hone Sound Devices in Your Work at Writers.com

Want to make music out of meaning? The courses at Writers.com will help you take your first ideas to polished, sonic pieces of art. Take a look at our upcoming creative writing courses, where you’ll receive expert guidance on every piece of writing you share.

The post Sound Devices in Poetry and Literature appeared first on Writers.com.

Sometimes writers decide a work’s motifs in advance. Just as often, however, a work’s motifs are emergent—they happen unconsciously, or else are discovered and refined through revision.

Nonetheless, whether you’re a writer looking to develop a work of literature, or a reader trying to grasp Macbeth, understanding literary motifs will help you understand the literary process as a whole.

First, the essentials: what is a motif in literature?

Literary Motif Definition: What is a Motif?

A motif is simply an important feature of a work of literature that gets repeated across that work. A repeated image, symbol, metaphor, idea, or phrase can all constitute a motif, as that repetition likely impacts the meaning and interpretation of the work.

Motif Definition: an important feature of a work of literature that gets repeated across that work.

The idea of a motif transcends literature. Motifs can be found in art, music, film—really, any form of artistic expression. Perhaps you notice a recurring image in a movie, or a recurring sound in a piece of classical music. Those are motifs, and if you pay close attention to them, you’ll notice how they lend structure and complexity to their respective works.

But what defines a literary motif is simply that repetition in language of an image or idea. Once you notice those repetitions, you can start to notice how a motif’s meaning changes over the course of a text, or how the text expands and complicates that motif.

Literary Motif Vs. Leitmotif

Literary motifs are sometimes confused with leitmotifs, but leitmotifs have no relation to literature. A leitmotif is a form of motif specifically found in music: it is a recurring sound or movement in a work of music that corresponds to a character or idea in the piece. In other words, if you hear a leitmotif, it will accompany the same character, theme, or even situation in a musical work, such as an opera. But, leitmotifs are strictly musical, not literary.

Literary Motif Vs. Theme

Motifs often get mistaken for themes, but the two are importantly distinct.

A theme is a central, organizing idea of a piece of literature. A poem or story explores, expands upon, or challenges a theme: it is the “aboutness” of a piece of writing, beyond simple facts about “what happened.” Some examples of themes include family, man versus nature, war, justice, or love.

Motifs are interrelated to themes, but are ultimately unique. A motif advances a theme by being repeated across a piece of literature. Because motifs often explore the same ideas from different angles, a motif expands the thematic possibilities of the work, broadening the work’s scope and insight.

A theme is a central, organizing idea of a piece of literature. A motif advances a theme by being repeated across a piece of literature.

To put things more clearly:

A theme is an abstract idea explored in a piece of literature. Motifs are concrete explorations of those ideas: they embody thematic elements so that the theme can be explored concretely.

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To learn more about theme, read our article here:

https://writers.com/common-themes-in-literature

Literary Motif Vs Symbol

Motifs are also occasionally mistaken for symbols, and for good reason, since both are concrete manifestations of abstract ideas.

A symbol is a concrete image that represents an abstract idea. A heart represents love; scales represent justice; and so on and so forth.

A symbol is just one concrete representation of an idea, but a motif is both the instance and the repetition: it needs to be repeated to be a motif.

A symbol can also be a singular iteration of a motif. Motifs are repeated throughout a work of literature, so if an idea or symbol recurs throughout the work, then that recurrence as a whole is the motif. But the two are distinct in that a symbol is just one concrete representation of an idea, but a motif is both the instance and the repetition: it needs to be repeated to be a motif.

Literary Motif in Poetry

Throughout this article, we describe motifs as being repeated across a work of literature. Is that still true in a work of poetry, which typically has fewer words to contain a lot of repetitions?

Poems don’t need motifs to be effective. But poems can certainly have motifs, particularly long poems or narrative poems in which an image or action recurs throughout the work. For example, in the epic poem The Iliad, Zeus has to decide multiple times between accepting fate (the death of a son) or challenging it, each instance bringing the poem back to ruminations about the nature of fate itself.

Short poems are typically too short to have motifs by way of their concision. It’s not that short poetry is less thematically complex, necessarily, only that a motif spans a work of literature, and its repetitions expand upon the poem’s thematic elements.

Here’s a poem that has repetition, but not motifs:

Poem
By: Langston Hughes

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend.

The first and last lines are repeated, but we can’t call those repetitions a motif. Yes, the line is thematically essential to the poem, and yes, its repetition carries with it new meaning; but a motif needs to be repeated more than just once to be a motif, and the repeated line isn’t trying to expand the poem’s complexity. Rather, it’s the poem’s simplicity that makes it such an effective piece.

Motif Examples in Literature

Because motifs extend across the totality of a work of literature, we can’t meaningfully comment on every instance of a motif in a novel or play. So, we’ll look at a few motifs in commonly read works of literature—and, in case you haven’t read them, we’ll include links to the work that can be read freely in the public domain.

Literary Motifs in Macbeth by William Shakespeare

You can find the full text at Gutenberg here.

Like many of Shakespeare’s works, Macbeth has a lot of different motifs that play off of and suggest each other. The most prominent ones, and the ones the audience is most likely to remember, are the motifs of blood, light/dark, and sleep.

Blood

The imagery of blood recurs throughout the play: Macbeth hallucinates a blood-smeared dagger, sees a bloody child in the visions of the three witches, and, most saliently, Lady Macbeth cannot wash the imaginary blood off of her hands.

Blood acts primarily, though not exclusively, as a symbol for guilt in the play. As Macbeth becomes obsessed with both accruing and maintaining his power, blood becomes a stark reminder of his own forsaken humanity. It also, arguably, foreshadows his own death: the image of a bloody child is like an image of tainted innocence, of new life and death happening in tandem, much like his own newfound power is quickly deceased.

Light/Dark

While the idea of light representing goodness and dark representing evil is a tad overdone, this motif is employed effectively in Macbeth, as both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth find themselves torn between light and darkness. The play’s sinister events happen primarily in the dark of night, including the murders of King Duncan and Banquo. Moreover, Banquo’s torchlight is extinguished at his murder. Finally, the witches themselves are described as “secret, black, and midnight hags”—though they are, more than anything else, soothsayers of evil.

Despite this descent into darkness, Lady Macbeth, consumed with guilt and paranoia, reaches for candlelight for fear of this evil enveloping both her and Macbeth. Malcolm, moreover, is associated with light and order, and his eventual kingship is foreshadowed when he says “Angels are bright still through the brightest fell.”

Sleep

Sleep, of course, happens in tandem with night/day and light/darkness, but sleep itself is its own motif in the play. Duncan, for example, is murdered in his sleep; when Macbeth hears in his head “Macbeth does murder sleep,” he is not just murdering Duncan, but also what sleep represents: peace of mind and innocence.

It is no wonder, then, that Lady Macbeth sleepwalks: her sleep is not peaceful, as she is no longer innocent, having encouraged Macbeth towards murder. Macbeth, in tandem, has frequent nightmares. Given that the sleep/wake cycle is part of the natural order of things, the disruption of sleep thus occurs with the disruption of the natural order—a disruption further hinted at by the play’s repeating motif of storms, and the play’s eventual return to goodness and order via Malcolm and Macduff.

Literary Motifs in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

You can find the full text at Gutenberg here.

Jane Eyre is a novel steeped in the Gothic literary tradition. As such, many of its motifs are Gothic in nature, and they help tell a story about a woman’s freedom and confidence in a culture that’s repressively patriarchal.

(Caged) Birds

Birds recur throughout the novel as reminders of and aspirations towards freedom. A central plight of Jane Eyre’s is her inability to find freedom in the society she lives in: both her austere childhood and her status as a woman in Victorian England restrain and shackle her.

At times, the bird is described as caged—a somewhat obvious symbol for repressed freedom. Many more times, birds are free, wild creatures, and Jane often shows particular kindness towards them, whether feeding them or observing them or simply reading about them. Her close attention to these symbols of freedom, not coincidentally, occur at times when she is herself struggling against the confines of her own societal cage.

Fire and Ice

Fire and ice—or, more broadly, warmth and coldness—show up frequently as opposing motifs. Jane Eyre is typically the fiery one: warm, passionate, even at times hot-headed. Many of her oppressors, on the other hand, are icy or chilling. Mr. Reed has cold and stony eyes; Mr. Rochester is at times cold towards Jane’s and others’ feelings; the novel itself begins on a cold winter’s day in Jane’s cold, loveless childhood. St. John, later in the novel, is himself associated with snow.

However, the novel is not without warmth. Though the cold tries to trim Jane’s fire, her desire for freedom burns throughout the work. It’s not a coincidence, either, that Bertha tries to burn Mr. Rochester’s house down: her act of arson is the result of a fire constrained and jailed, but never diminished. The novel’s conclusion, of course, ends in warmth: not the brilliance and danger of fire, but the comfort of the hearth, a fire controlled.

Haunting

Gothic novels like Jane Eyre often have a sense of haunting associated with them, both literal and supernatural. Jane herself has many ghosts. The ghost of the Red Room (a motif in its own right) often haunts Jane in her adulthood: the room itself is believed to be haunted, and it also sneaks up in Jane’s memory in moments of emotional intensity.

Moreover, Bertha, Rochester’s secret wife, haunts his mansion both literally and figuratively. Literally, she is the cause of great unrest, causing unexplainable sounds and events within the novel (before her ultimate arson). Figuratively, her presence is a psychological chill on the household, including as something that haunts Mr. Rochester’s present. Bertha is also a kind of Gothic Double, in that she, as a sort of doppelgänger, mirrors Jane’s desire for freedom, and demonstrates what happens when that freedom isn’t won.

Literary Motifs in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

You can find the full text at Gutenberg here.

The Great Gatsby is a richly symbolic work that explores the limits of the American Dream. There are plenty of recurring images and symbols in the novel, each with their own thematic relevance, so this list is certainly not exhaustive. But some of the most salient motifs are that of the green light, eyes, and driving.

The Green Light

The green light on Daisy’s dock is the novel’s poignant symbol for longing and aspiration. Gatsby knows that Daisy is unattainable, yet is unable to detach himself from his desire for her. This image is one of the enduring symbols of the novel, and is perhaps the image it is most known for.

Gatsby’s desire for Daisy is also a desire for the American Dream: if anything, the American Dream is displaced onto Daisy, who becomes a sort of aspirational possession for Gatsby. It’s no coincidence that the light is green, given that green is a color associated with wealth. In fact, other colors in the novel also recur as motifs in The Great Gatsby: gold also appears around Gatsby as reminders of his wealth and superficiality; white suggests Daisy’s seeming innocence and purity (and actual moral bankruptcy); blue, like Gatsby’s blue garden, reminds the reader of the novel’s enduring loneliness.

Eyes

The other prominent image of the novel is eyes, particularly those of Dr. T. J. Eckelburg, whose image shows up on many of the book’s covers. More importantly, Eckelburg’s eyes appear on a billboard in the Valley of Ashes, a desolate area of Long Island whose setting itself represents the moral decay and wealth inequality of America. Eckelburg’s eyes judge the landscape and remind Nick of the disillusionment coursing throughout the novel.

This stands in contrast to Owl Eyes who, at Gatsby’s party, appreciates the beauty cultivated at Gatsby’s estate—in fact, appreciates it better than Gatsby himself does. His aesthetic approval runs much deeper, and his depth is a kind of foil to the superficial realities of the novel. Throughout the novel, the eyes of characters bear witness to the quiet decay of a society obsessed with money and status.

Driving

Driving carries a symbolic meaning and interacts with some of the other motifs in The Great Gatsby. Cars themselves are associated with an American sense of freedom—in a way, they perpetuate the illusion of freedom within the American Dream. Driving is also present in much of the novel’s important scenes, including the drive through the Valley of Ashes, Jordan Baker’s effortless driving skills, and Daisy’s ultimate murder of Myrtle.

In essence, the illusion of freedom under the American Dream is what drives each character to act the way they act, to the point that Daisy, who exists within the fold of the Dream, bears no consequences, and Gatsby is ultimately killed. It’s also noteworthy that Gatsby’s car is yellow—another example of the color motifs in the novel, this time displaying Gatsby’s superficial wealth.

How Writers Should Think About Motifs in Their Work

Did Fitzgerald really pay that much attention to cars in his novel? Was Brontë being artful, or was she just obsessed with birds? And isn’t Shakespeare just generally obsessed with good and evil?

Indeed, the relationship between an author and their motifs is complicated. Some emerge unconsciously and are then refined through the revision process; but an author might decide what recurring symbols and images will be written into the text before it’s even written.

So, what’s the best way to think about motifs? How do you write them? Does a long work of literature need them?

Here are a few thoughts about literary motifs in contemporary writing.

1. Let Motifs Arise Organically

It’s possible to think of a good motif before you’ve written the first word of a story. Indeed, motifs can also integrate themselves into the structure of a novel.

However, don’t expect every motif in your writing to be planned in advance. They are often effective because the arise from the writer’s unconscious, and thus the relationship between a symbol and what it represents forms more naturally in your writing.

You are also more likely to generate motifs that are original and compelling, as you’re imbuing the work with your own mind’s way of thinking, rather than planning in advance what you think will make for good literature. This kind of planning often leads, counterintuitively, to cliché forms of symbolism. It’s easy to plan for ravens to represent intelligence or witchcraft—but, in a first draft, you might accidentally represent those things through something less obvious, more unique, like a cup of tea or a lizard.

2. Pay Attention to Your Own Mind

The point is, your mind has its own symbolic relationship to things, and a good writer imbues that into their work. We all know a heart represents love, but that doesn’t make it a good motif.

Even if you plot your novel out in advance, pay close attention to your use of imagery when you write and reread your first draft. What recurs that you didn’t expect it to? What could it represent? What are your own associations with that image or idea?

Motifs make for good literature not only because they communicate something at a deeper level, but also because they’re true to life. The stories of our lives are often filled with repetitions that are too good to seem coincidental. Good literature merely mirrors life, while amplifying certain elements to discover deeper meanings.

3. Make Sure Every Iteration of a Motif Says Something New and Interesting

Every employment of a motif should convey something new about it. It doesn’t need a new message, necessarily, but it should show up in new contexts or after different plot points, reminding the reader of what it symbolizes and making that symbol more complex.

If every car in The Great Gatsby was yellow, that would just be overkill. Similarly, birds show up a lot in Jane Eyre, but they show up in different iterations: in the sky, in a cage, in a picture book, and during or after the most important events regarding Jane’s sense of freedom. Ditto the blood motif in Macbeth: sure, every character has blood inside of them at any given time, but blood only occurs when what it represents is being complicated or amplified in the story itself.

The point is to be intentional with motifs, and to utilize them only when something new, essential, or interesting is actually happening.

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