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Reblogged from: Wesconnect News. (Go to the original post…)

July 25, 2012 / Friendly URL: wesconnect.wesleyan.edu/news-20120725-laura-fraser

A video supplements the blog that writing teacher and author Laura Fraser ’82 offers on scenes and summary, and it features Oscar the dog.

“I made a little video to supplement a lecture on scene, summary and musing–featuring Oscar the dog.

“Here’s more on scene and summary in memoir:

“In a memoir, you’re telling a story, stitching together vivid moments from your life into a plot. Telling a story from your life means slowing down at times to show the reader the important moments and turning points, the key conversations and experiences—almost as if they were in real time. But it also means summarizing swaths of time and experience because the reader would be bored if we tried to show too many moments. It would be like watching a real-time Andy Warhol movie—interesting experiment, boring to watch for hours on end. So we have to move the story along with summary (and we don’t have to summarize everything). Storytelling in memoir also involves reflection, or musing, about what those experiences meant to the narrator, the dawning realizations.

“There are two types of writing in most fiction: scene and summary. Judith Barrington, in her Writing the Memoir, adds another in memoir: musing. It’s helpful to think of scene and summary in cinematic terms.”

Read the full story (and watch the video)…

Image: Laura Fraser.

Related links

• Journalist and author Laura Fraser ’82: Her favorite books of 2011 – Wesconnect
• Laura Fraser ’82: ‘Our way of saying goodbye’ – WesLive
• Modern love: Our way of saying goodbye – NYT

follow @LauraFraserSF on Twitter ➞

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