Using Art to Teach Writing

1. Image-driven
revision strategies
sentence composition

2. voice

3. what makes each artist unique?

5. voice = writer’s use of diction + syntax
the words you choose
and how you arrange them

6. William Carlos Williams dictum about things being the life of
poetry holds true in creative nonfiction. . . The essay teeming with
“stuff” is much more memorable than one that floats in
abstraction. A piece about love doesn’t end up in our cells unless
it is grounded in the softness of your lover’s neck as it disappears
into the collar of his sweatshirt. Or what about that scab you
picked while you were crying on the phone to the man you knew
would leave you by spring? Just like the strong poem, the strong
piece of prose is rife with metaphorical power—from your mother’s
out-of-tune piano to the orphan sock that keeps showing up in
your tangled underwear drawer. When we turn to things, the truth
comes at us through the back door, and we are surprised by ideas
and emotions we didn’t know we possessed.
Now Write: Nonfiction by Sherry Ellis, Editor

7. Application/Implication:
What concrete details do you include in your essay to help
your reader “see” and “understand”?

8. Showing v. Telling
not just WHAT (concrete details, actions, imagery) but also
HOW

9. HOW does the artist/writer SHOW

13. LEADING LINES
show the viewer what’s important
emphasis

14. Writing Strategies
Periodic Sentence
Beginning and endings
(start & end points)

15. When you're sitting at your desk, working on your
essay, cursing at your teacher, wringing your
hands, wondering how to make your point stand
out, and you're ready to tear your hair out, use a
periodic sentence.
Because they withhold the main idea until the end
and force the reader to keep going, periodic
sentences build suspense.

18. CONTRAST

19. Writing Strategies
Sentence length
Sentence position
Imagery
Ideas

20. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against
the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts,
soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into
the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down,
just humping, one step and then the next and then another,
but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was
anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and
carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of
emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience
and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in
their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no
sense of strategy or mission.
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
Note sentence length and position

21. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against
the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts,
soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into
the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down,
just humping, one step and then the next and then another,
but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was
anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and
carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of
emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience
and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in
their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no
sense of strategy or mission.
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

22. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his
breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly
through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not
quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from
entering along with him.
1984, George Orwell
Note contrasts in imagery and idea

23. blah blah blah blah blah text text text text blah blah blah
blah blah text text text text blah blah blah blah blah text text
text text blah blah blah blah blah text text text text blah blah
blah blah blah text text text text blah blah blah blah blah
text text text text blah blah blah blah blah text text text text
blah blah blah blah blah text text text text.
And that’s when it happened.