5 Ways Into Your Lyric Essay
When we think of “structure” in writing, we often imagine rigid rules, like a throwback to high school English. But creative nonfiction (the practice of telling true stories using conventions of fiction such as plot and character development) invites us to think outside the box. A lyric essay is a type of creative nonfiction that fuses personal essay with poetry to tell a powerful story or reinforce a primary message.
The beauty of the lyric essay is that its structure can look many different ways. The structure is important, but it isn’t always straightforward. The malleability of the lyric essay allows us as writers to examine our subjects from various layers and angles as we seek to effectively tell our stories.
Here are five ways to craft your lyric essay, along with examples of each:
1. Meditative Essay
A meditative essay encourages contemplation, wonder, and curiosity. It is not bound by form and carries no expectations of formality. The writer is free to take time to explore. There is never pressure in a meditative essay to reach a resolution.
In the words of writer Robert Vivian, the meditative essay has no real axe to grind.
“It’s too intent on paying attention to what bids it keenest focus and delight, be it a button, a homeless woman, the changing of the seasons, or the prevalence of roadkill,” Vivian writes.
In Virginia Woolf’s meditative essay “The Death of the Moth,” the narrator is watching a moth fly at the window while the world, big and wide and oblivious, drones on outside.
Woolf describes the moth this way: “It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life.”
In the end (spoiler alert), the moth dies. Woolf ultimately holds up the strangeness of death to the strangeness of life.
2. Collage Essay
Also known as a patchwork or discontinuous essay, a collage essay mimics the collage art form. It is a collection or patchwork of thoughts, of found things, that together point to a greater whole. The writer casts light on a subject or a story gradually, piece by piece.
Peter Elbow, in Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process, offers this example of when a collage essay might be appropriate: “You might make a collage essay on the causes of the French Revolution that consists entirely of stories, portraits, and scenes … [arranging] your fragments in such a way that they tell why the French Revolution happened as it did.”
Susan Allen Toth’s collage essay “Going to the Movies” offers glimpses of Toth’s experiences in the theater with various men. The essay is not about the movies; rather, it’s about the men she goes to the movies with. We meet each of her dates in their own fragments of the larger story. Little by little, we come to understand Toth’s perspective on her own dating life, even as she seems to come to that realization herself. In the end, we learn that, when she goes to the movies by herself, she feels most at home.
“The beauty of the lyric essay is that its structure can look many different ways. The structure is important, but it isn’t always straightforward.” —Kate Meadows
Writer’s Digest
3. Braided Essay
Just as it sounds, a braided essay weaves multiple strands together, with an end goal of creating a work that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. According to essayist Brenda Miller, the writer can explore highly emotional experiences or questions in a circuitous way, rather than head-on.
The threads might be various angles on a single topic, differing points of view of an event, or distinct time periods. The connection between the threads does not have to be immediately obvious, but eventually, the writer should bring the strands together to show how each contributes to the greater whole of the story.
Miller’s “A Braided Heart” is itself a lesson about the braided essay, even as Miller weaves a powerful story about the Jewish challah bread. The essay contains 15 “strands,” some of which repeat. Strand 2, “The Challah,” begins with nostalgia for the writer: “I loved challah when I was a child. It had to be bought from a special kosher bakery, the ‘Delicious Bakery’ in the Hughes Shopping Center, and we had to get there at just the right time on Friday afternoons …” Another strand, “Braiding the Challah,” is the beginning of the actual recipe for challah bread. On their own, the threads are disparate, almost random. But when braided together, they convey a larger, more complete story that considers the complexities of life, of teaching, of making and breaking bread.
4. Hermit Crab Essay
Similar to how a hermit crab “borrows” the discarded shells of other crabs as it grows, a hermit crab essay takes on the form of the content type it inhabits. Examples are a story written as a job application, a recipe, or an obituary. Writer and English professor Vivian Wagner writes that the forms that hermit crab essays can take are as endless and ever-changing as human culture itself. Laurie Easter wrote “Solving My Way to Grandma” as a crossword puzzle. Dinty W. Moore wrote “Son of Mr. Green Jeans” as a glossary. Nancy Willard’s “The Friendship Tarot” is written as a collection of tarot cards.
A hermit crab essay allows the writer to tell a complex story in a format that suits it best.
In their book, Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, authors Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola tell those interested in writing hermit crab essays to look around and see what’s out there: “The world is brimming with forms that await transformation. See how the world constantly orders itself in structures that can be shrewdly turned to your own purposes.”
5. Counterpoint Essay
Sometimes, the reader needs to see opposite sides of a story to fully appreciate the story’s greater meaning. In a counterpoint essay, the writer alternates between two narrative strands to convey a larger truth. The back-and-forth shifting from one “side” to another offers a unique rhetoric where the reader can better appreciate the complexities or layers of the story being told. The back-and-forth does not have to be tit-for-tat, but the writer uses both sides to convey an overarching message.
John McPhee’s essay “The Search for Marvin Gardens” sheds light on the history of the Monopoly game in two ways. First, McPhee traces the progress of a best-of-seven Monopoly game tournament in which the narrator is pitted against a “tall, shadowy figure,” a Harvard Law School graduate who is quick and ruthless on the gameboard. After gaining an early advantage, the narrator ultimately loses to his opponent.
But on another level, McPhee offers a striking socio-economic and historical commentary: the narrative arc takes us through Atlantic City, New Jersey’s early development, its golden era, and its subsequent decline. The street names of the original Monopoly game, we come to learn, are based on street names in Atlantic City, and no one knows where Marvin Gardens is.
*****
There is more than one way to tell a true story. Ashley Anderson writes in Assay Literary Journal that “the possibilities are only as endless as the writer’s imagination.”
Whether meditative, collage, braided, hermit crab, counterpoint, or another form, your lyric essay can take its time. It can open a surprising space for contemplation—for both the writer and the reader.
This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of “so what?” and “I guess you had to be there” by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision.
Writer’s Digest University