Is the Radio Essay a Genre?
Initially, I bristled whenever I heard the radio essay described as a genre. At best, I thought, it is a subcategory of creative nonfiction. When I sat down to write my first two projects for this class, the writing process felt no different than the work I've done before, even though it has the additional technical bells and whistles. Despite the amount of time we talked about genre in class, I didn't start to think about it seriously until this last documentary piece.
Part of this new level of understanding has to do with what the radio essay isn't. While the same reflective voice is the well for a lot of creative nonfiction, writing that is intended for reading can be experimental, and eschew a natural structure. I'd argue that the best of it still has a clear SOFT, well defined trouble, and--while you need to get to it faster on the radio--a compelling hook. But it's a lot muddier.
That is to say, I found that I had to be a lot more precise when working on these projects. The three act structure is found in all kinds of writing, because we've intuitively put together that those three elements define what a story is. But this is the only genre I've worked in where energy was put into make sure those were consciously defined.
The radio essay may still be strongly related to normal creative nonfiction, but I'd say that it isn't so much a subcategory, but a form of creative nonfiction in the wild, an evolution of form. How do you put the emotional punch of memoir or the scope of documentary into something you can speak aloud in no longer than it takes someone to drive to the store? It's almost like translating fiction into poetry, in that need for control of language.
Part of this new level of understanding has to do with what the radio essay isn't. While the same reflective voice is the well for a lot of creative nonfiction, writing that is intended for reading can be experimental, and eschew a natural structure. I'd argue that the best of it still has a clear SOFT, well defined trouble, and--while you need to get to it faster on the radio--a compelling hook. But it's a lot muddier.
That is to say, I found that I had to be a lot more precise when working on these projects. The three act structure is found in all kinds of writing, because we've intuitively put together that those three elements define what a story is. But this is the only genre I've worked in where energy was put into make sure those were consciously defined.
The radio essay may still be strongly related to normal creative nonfiction, but I'd say that it isn't so much a subcategory, but a form of creative nonfiction in the wild, an evolution of form. How do you put the emotional punch of memoir or the scope of documentary into something you can speak aloud in no longer than it takes someone to drive to the store? It's almost like translating fiction into poetry, in that need for control of language.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHi John,
ReplyDeleteI think we're pretty fast-and-loose with the word genre, and arguably the radio essay is what some theorists call a "metagenre"--a secondary genre that embeds lots of other genres. In this case, memoir, personal essay, and oral story. But it's easy to get into the weeds over such definitions. More interesting is your observation that the documentary piece, in particular, prompted you to think in new ways about the radio essay as "a wild, evolution of the form." I hope you write more about that in your portfolio. For example, why is the "need for control of language" so important? How does your prior knowledge of poetry apply to this new situation? How does "sonic" forms seem similar?