Genre in the Wild Blog post

At the beginning of the semester, I would have been hard pressed to call the Radio Essay a separate genre from Creative Non-Fiction. However, at the beginning of the semester, I also would have been hard pressed to actually describe a radio essay. Such was my ignorance coming into this class. 
I have come to think of the radio essay not so much as a separate genre entirely, but rather as a distinct sub-genre of creative non-fiction, complete with its own rules and conventions. Much the same as Fiction, Non-fiction and Poetry have their own sub-genres of their own. This understanding has given me a greater appreciation for genre thinking and has shown me that no genre is exactly as cut and dried as some would have us believe. 
Working in within the medium of the radio essay has definitely broadened my understanding of the author/audience relationship, as well as the emphasized need to be as concise as possible in my writing. These ideas are not new to me, but the nature of the radio essay places greater demands upon the skills of the writer to exercise these lessons.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Documentary Pitch

This pitch is more of a proof of concept than anything else, but I think it would be fun. I asked Bruce whether or not a 'mockumentary' was a valid interpretation of this assignment, to which the response was a semi-enthusiastic "pitch it!" So here is the pitch. A parody of the audio series 'Serial', the investigation into the murder of a teenage girl that went viral a few years ago. Uncreatively, the title of this parody would be 'Cereal' and it would chronical the investigation into who ate my box of Strawberry Honey Bunches of Oats. I would 'interview' my family and friends with a ridiculous amount of production and decoration, acting like I was trying to get to the bottom of a murder, but in reality just trying to find out who ate my damn cereal. This may be too narrative-y, but the climax I image would be a removal of the façade and me attacking my little brother for eating my cereal. Trust me, it's really funny in my he...
Read more

Pitchin' the Story

What is the trouble? In my family there is a letter that has gained quite a bit of infamy. The letter is from one of my relatives directed at his father in law, and is really quite a gem. It contains a poorly spelled indictment of the author's own father in law for such grievous offenses as lying about height and being an all around ass hole. The letter calls the subject, "the littlest man in the biggest way." I don't even know the author very well, but this letter has circulated to the whole extended family and has become a joke among everyone who reads it. While I was thinking of this letter I got to thinking about writing letters to people in general, and angry or regretful letters in particular. I might want to do a story about the letters, messages, or texts that can't be taken back but we wish could! Just recently my brother tried to text me a message telling me to, "suck on deez nutz," but he accidentally sent to it to a woman who he was going...
Read more
I discovered two different areas of the genre while working on this piece. While I knew the concept of jumping right into the fire I didn't understand how powerful it was until I heard it. The vocal element adds even more emotional punch to strong first lines. As I read it I found myself stumbling over formal words and slipping into more contractions and slang. I edited as I was reading it to make it flow more naturally. Fragments can work in your favor here as there is no long written twisting sentence for the reader to get lost in and instead a natural way of speaking.
Read more