Creative Nonfiction: Write from Life
The Situation and the Story
A course by Julia Bell , Writer and Teacher
About the video: The Situation and the Story
Overview
“Building on what you've learned about detail, memory, and the unreliability of memory, we'll move on and consider how to structure a piece. I will explain how to distinguish the situation and the story. ”
In this video lesson Julia Bell addresses the topic: The Situation and the Story, which is part of the Domestika online course: Creative Nonfiction: Write from Life. Learn creative writing and storytelling techniques to craft engaging nonfiction pieces for publication or personal enjoyment.
Partial transcription of the video
“The Situation and the Story In this lesson, building on what we've already learned about detail and memory and the unreliability of memory, we're going to think about how to structure a story. In writing from life, I think it's always useful to try and distinguish the difference between a situation and a story. The situation being the surroundings, and the story being the things that happen. In her fantastic book, "The Situation and the Story," the writer Vivian Gornick explains this really clearly, and she says, "Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is t...”
This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.
Course summary for: Creative Nonfiction: Write from Life
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Category
Writing -
Areas
Creative Writing, Narrative, Non-Fiction Writing, Storytelling
Julia Bell
A course by Julia Bell
Julia Bell is a writer and a professor at Birkbeck, University of London.
She loved writing growing up, and by the age of 12, she knew she wanted to do it for a living, thanks to a school-sponsored poetry workshop. She went on to hone her craft with a master’s degree before launching her career in the world of the written word. For her, this creative activity is not only a profession but a lifestyle, and her surroundings are an endless source of inspiration.
Since she got her start, Julia has published three young adult novels—Massive, Dirty Work, and The Dark Light—which have been translated into multiple languages. She has also written several nonfiction books including Radical Attention and the bestseller Creative Writing Coursebook. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have been broadcast on the BBC and featured in publications like The Paris Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The White Review, Comma Press, and Mal Journal.
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