Writing in the Wild

This final project really felt like it pushed me more than the previous two, and I really felt like this format was more true to the radio essays I had heard in the past. The other projects felt like they were in familiar territory, albeit with different technology, but the final project felt very foreign and challenging to me. I really had to change how I approached the writing process when I made this project.

Writing the first two essays was what I was  used to more or less. Just dealing with text I had written and revising that based on feedback wasn't too far from other classes aside from revising for sound. The last project forced me to write around the organic conversations I had recorded. I felt like I had to give up a lot of control of the final project and just try to write for the needs of the piece rather than writing to achieve some goal I had in mind before the interviews. I'm planning on revising this piece for my portfolio because I think I can improve my narrative writing for these clips to give a better sense of story.

The sense of adapting my writing process to the genre I think made me more sensitive to the world of genre. I really had to think about what the writing situation needed and adapt to that rather than force what I was comfortable with into a genre mold. The reading touched on the differences between simply following a formula and adapting to genre, and I think this final project forced me to think about the radio essay in a way that was more than just checking of stylistic boxes. It was a way for me to think about the needs of the piece as a whole, which is something I should probably be doing more often in all genres (and especially new genres)!

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 22, 2018 at 1:46 PM

    I think you make an interesting point, that we didn't fully change genre until this last project.

    The first two exercises were almost transitional work, to get us from the creative nonfiction genre to the radio genre essay in the final project, which--like you said--is most like the stuff we hear on the radio.

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