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| Week Four
The linear narrative The Event Rather than get into a complicated discussion, let's give an
example
of a linear event. Here is a simple folk tale from the
Brother's
Grimm.
The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean
In a village dwelt a poor old woman, who had gathered together a dish of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and that it might burn the quicker, she lighted it with a handful of straw. When she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped without her observing it, and lay on the ground beside a straw, and soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire leapt down to the two. Then the straw began and said, dear friends, from whence do you come here. The coal replied, I fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if I had not escaped by sheer force, my death would have been certain, I should have been burnt to ashes. continue to read the rest of the story granted, this is fiction, not nonfiction. But as you can easily see, the event is told in strict chronological order. First this happens, then that happens. There are no flashbacks, no summaries. Hence a linear event.
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Week Five
The nonlinear narrative The Event Rather than get into a complicated discussion, let's give an
example
of a non-linear event. Here is a personal essay by Paul Pekin
(published
in the New York Press).
Chicago? Agin?
They left the apostrophe out of Howards Grove; it's the Cheesehead way. Come back to Chicago, I begged her. Come back to civilization. Come back to art, music, culture, literature. Come marry me. continue
to read the rest of the story
This piece is a short personal essay I wrote as a kind of a "Letter From Chicago" to the New York Press. This may not be the best example of the nonlinear structure I could give, but at least I don't have to worry about any copyright violations. The point is, the non-linear structure does not follow strict chronological order. It jumps around, summarizes, speaks in generalities. When I discuss the traffic on the Kennedy Expressway, I an not referring to a single time, or a single place. That's what I mean by non-linear. Many of the sample essay readings I have linked to the other
pages in
this sequence, follow this form, and do a lot better job than I do.
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Therefore:
A Linear event. An individual event told in chronological order.
Non -linear event.
An event
that is not told in any particular order.
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Linear Event First Day on the Job The Night the Garage Burned Down What Happened When the Cat Got Out The First Time I Did It The Last Time I Did It The Time I Got Caught And so on . . .
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Nonlinear Event The Worst Job I Ever Had--and held for more that a week. The Worst Girlfriend/Boyfriend I Even Had--and kept for more
than a
week. (see notes on fictionalizing!
A Creature That Lived Too Long The Old Family Home A School I Attended The Winter it Snowed a Lot |
| Consider the above your warm-ups. You don't have to
write them,
just go down the list and try them on for size. Imagine yourself
writing them.
Then choose one from each column. That will give you your assignment for week four and week five. How to do it. Linear. Start in a certain
time and
a certain. place.
From there your proceed forward chronologically. You can summarize, but try to summarize in a forward direction. And of course, if nothing worth writing about took place on that first day on the job, you choose something else to write about. But move forward. When the event is finished, you are finished.
Unless! You
have something to add. But do finish the event.
Nonlinear: The Family Home Deliberately start with a declarative sentence that is not focused upon a certain time or place. Example: The Old House on Western Avenue had a wooden false front that caught the wind and sometimes made things very interesting for people sitting in the upstairs living room. "Every good house has to give a little," my father would always say. He would even say this when the water in the gold fish bowl was slopping over the sides. . . " Now see how it works for you. Of course if you go more than a few hundred words, every nonlinear narrative will contain passages that are linear. The same will be true of most linear narratives; they often will have passages that break the pattern. What you want to do, however, in order to get this thing
straight in
your head, is to really try to make each assignment a recognizable
attempt
to follow the instructions. Only by doing this can you actually
experience
the opportunities each structure offers. |
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