{"id":272,"date":"2022-10-07T15:16:56","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T22:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/?p=272"},"modified":"2022-10-07T15:16:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T22:16:58","slug":"a-day-in-the-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/?p=272","title":{"rendered":"A Day in the Life"},"content":{"rendered":"Somewhere around the middle of the semester, I set my undergraduate fiction\nwriters a task: write 1-2 pages about someone engaged in a job you&#8217;ve never\ndone. Make it feel very real&#8211;and to do that, you\u2019ll have to do research.\n\n<!-- \/wp:post-content --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n\nEvery semester I get pages about doctors and archaeologists, baristas,\ncashiers, butchers, mortuary workers. Some of the sketches read flatly, and I\nknow before skimming down to the bottom of the page that the student hasn&#8217;t\nwritten the paragraph I asked for about their research because they didn\u2019t do\nany, or that instead they were hoping that a sort of research-by-osmosis would\nbe good enough. I know what they were thinking, because afterwards some of them\nhave told me: My parent is a doctor (or engineer, or teacher), so I already know\nenough to write a convincing scene of a character doing their work. But most of\nthe time, that isn\u2019t enough&#8211;you can get the general outlines of a job by hearing\nabout it over the dinner table (or by watching television portrayals), but\noften that isn\u2019t enough.\n\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n\nWhat\u2019s missing from these unresearched sketches is the cold touch of picking\nup a metal instrument, the hiss a cadaver drawer opening, the meaty smell that\ncomes when a body is cut open. It&#8217;s these details that make a fictional world\ncome alive. If we can feel what a character touches, and hear what they hear\n(not just speech, which so many beginning writers focus on, but the smaller\nsounds too), and smell what they smell, then we are right there with them&#8211;in\nthe morgue, or the archaeological dig, or the coffee stand.\n\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n\nWhen my students have written a draft of their research assignment, I have them\ndo a very different piece of writing. I send them out of the classroom with the\ninstructions to find a spot, close their eyes, and simply pay attention for\nfive minutes. What do they hear? What do they smell? Or feel? When they come\nback, they must write capture their experience in a paragraph or so. Then&#8211;when\nwe&#8217;ve read these experiences, and we&#8217;ve come to the understanding that there is\nso very much more to our human experience of the world than sight&#8211;<i>then<\/i>\nI have them read back over their work assignment to weave in the details that\nwill make it come alive. Of course, for those who haven&#8217;t done the research,\nthey have nothing but their imagination to inspire them, though that can help;\nfor those who&#8217;ve done the research, their writing comes to glorious life, like\nDorothy stepping out of her house and into Oz.\n\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere around the middle of the semester, I set my undergraduate fiction writers a task: write 1-2 pages about someone engaged in a job you&#8217;ve never done. Make it feel very real&#8211;and to do that, you\u2019ll have to do research. Every semester I get pages about doctors and archaeologists, baristas, cashiers, butchers, mortuary workers. Some&hellip; <br \/> <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/?p=272\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}