Tip
A lot of fun can be had from writing creative nonfiction, and putting an imaginary angle on the facts of your life. One lovely expression of this is the lyric essay (click here for some examples). This is the most poetic of the different essay structures, because it’s the most visceral – often led by an image or a feeling, an emotional tone rather than a literal fact or theme. As the name suggests, it’s more like a song than anything that represents an essay. It’s also the form where you can be most playful with your use of language.
Exercise
Here’s a prompt for writing a lyric essay. Start with a title like ‘brown’. And write a list of all the things you can think of from your life that resemble the colour brown. Now link those things together in a lyric essay by their association with the colour. Once you’ve done that, see how differently an essay might turn out if you follow a different colour like ‘yellow’.
This tip is from Lily Dunn, who teaches our online course Creative Nonfiction: Compelling Memoir.