LAI Craft Talk | Literary Arts Institute Writer in Residence, Jill Talbot

Summary

Highlights

• Jill Talbot emphasizes the dynamic nature of writing by sharing how she frames her feedback in questions, allowing students the agency to explore their narratives freely. 🌟
• Talbot illustrates the power of detailed portraiture in writing, advising writers to weave in physical descriptions like height, clothing, and unique traits for a lasting impression. ✍️
• She discusses the importance of integrating habits and gestures into character portraits, turning simple narratives into engaging, relatable stories. 😊
• Talbot suggests that writers use verbs effectively to convey the nuances of a persona, thus enhancing the narrative's authenticity and emotion. 📝
• The talk also covers juxtaposing characters’ attitudes through vivid imagery and setting, providing audiences with a lively mental picture. 🌄

Key Takeaways

• Writing is an experimental process. Embrace the journey and learn from your trials and errors! 🤓
• Pay attention to recurring questions in your feedback. They're clues to what you might be missing. 🕵️‍♀️
• Portraiture in writing isn't just about visuals; it's creating a feel of the person. 🎨
• Details like habits, environment, and even gestures tell a huge story! 🤔
• Don't be afraid to balance portraiture with persona. Both are crucial for a full, engaging story. 📚

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Welcome The chapter introduces Jill Thomas, who has been actively engaging with students through classroom visits and one-on-one interactions throughout the week. She delivered an impressive reading on Tuesday night and has been commendably adaptable despite challenging weather conditions.
• 01:00 - 05:00: Jill's Teaching Philosophy The chapter 'Jill's Teaching Philosophy' likely discusses Jill's approach to education and her beliefs about teaching. The transcript snippet suggests that Jill has been welcomed and appreciated in a particular setting, possibly a school or educational institution in central Minnesota. It implies that her presence has been considered a valuable addition to the community.
• 05:00 - 10:00: The Importance of Portraiture in Writing The chapter introduces the subject of portraiture in writing, emphasizing its significance.
• 10:00 - 18:40: Creating Character in Writing The chapter 'Creating Character in Writing' opens with an instructor sharing an anecdote about responding to student writing exercises, which she refers to as 'experiments'. These weekly exercises are a core part of her teaching strategy, emphasizing continuous experimentation and writing. The anecdote likely serves to illustrate techniques or insights into character creation in writing through practical, iterative learning experiences.
• 18:40 - 30:00: Film Techniques for Character Description The chapter discusses how to use film techniques as a tool for character description. It emphasizes the importance of providing students feedback in the form of questions, which grants them the agency to make their own creative decisions rather than merely following prescriptive advice. This questioning method encourages students to pay attention to recurring issues in their work and identify details they consistently overlook. This approach fosters self-awareness and critical engagement with their creative process.
• 30:00 - 60:00: Examples from Literature and Personal Work The chapter emphasizes the importance of creating vivid descriptions and images in writing, particularly focusing on portraiture. Although aimed at essay writing, the principles apply across various genres. The author encourages writers to consider whether they have effectively made their characters or subjects visible and relatable to the reader.

LAI Craft Talk | Literary Arts Institute Writer in Residence, Jill Talbot Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 It's good to see you here. It's good to be here for Jill Thomas craft talk. Um Jill's been here with us all week. She's been uh visiting the classroom. She's been working oneonone with students. Uh she gave us a tremendous reading on Tuesday night that was fantastic. Um, she's even been really good naturatured about the rather impressive snow event
• 00:30 - 01:00 we arranged for her here in central Minnesota. Um, it's been a great gift to have her here with us. And um, would you please join me in welcoming
• 01:00 - 01:30 First of all, thank you for being here. Let me get my do not disturb on my phone. There we go. Okay, perfect. Yeah. All right. So,
• 01:30 - 02:00 um what I want to talk about today is um kind of a twoparter, but I'll start with a anecdote about when I'm responding to um student experiments and that's what I call them for the weekly experiments that my students do because I do emphasize that we are experimenting um and writing consistently. And one of the things that I often all of my uh
• 02:00 - 02:30 comments for my students are in the form of questions um to provide them with agency about making decisions in their own work and avoiding being prescriptive in my feedback. Um letting them make their own choices. Um, but then asking them to pay attention if there are certain questions that keep showing up in your experiments. Recognize that this is something that you keep failing to include, right? Things, details, um,
• 02:30 - 03:00 description, images that are important for the reader. And one of those has to do with portraiture in how we write. Um, and while this is geared toward writing essays, it's also applicable to all genres, right? But, um, sometimes I'll write a margin, can we see this person, right? Or I want to know this person, right? And that means giving readers
• 03:00 - 03:30 enough details in various ways in which I'm going to um share with you today. But um in thinking about how we create portraiture in writing. Um but then also particularly with a um there are different terms for the I capital I letter I in um essay writing
• 03:30 - 04:00 the I character. I use the term persona. Um, but we're going to do a balance today of portraiture and persona. And any element that I am including here about using certain elements to describe other people is also applicable when you turn that lens around to the self, right? Um, and thinking about what the reader needs to know about the persona on the page.
• 04:00 - 04:30 Um, so without uh further preamble, I will begin. And I want to begin since I have Joan Diddian up here, who I um referenced in my reading on Tuesday night. I want to start with this excerpt which is actually portraiture but in why I write she explains that when she had the idea for play it as it lays two images came
• 04:30 - 05:00 to her. One was um just white space and the other was this description. So, I'm going to continue with some excerpts from essays that offer um very clear and inviting portraiture. And then I'm going to break
• 05:00 - 05:30 it down into elements. And then we're going to go back to some examples and you're going to tell me what elements are in those examples.
• 05:30 - 06:00 in terms of accommodation and accessibility. Um, would anybody prefer if I read um the quotes? I just want to make sure everybody Okay, I I'll do it from now on. I I just um I don't want to Yeah. Okay. I just I I don't want to bother people if they'd rather read it by themselves. Okay. So, I'm just going
• 06:00 - 06:30 to move on to the next one. Brandon had a snaggle tooth and brown eyes that lit up whenever he joked around. He was always pulling faces, crossing his eyes, tugging at his ears, hiking his shorts up to his belly button. I responded to his antics and kind. The two of us would set each other off screaming with laughter until we gasped for air. All right. So, I'm going to begin with the common elements. Um, and um,
• 06:30 - 07:00 I'm going to go beyond what's listed here, but when we're talking about physicality, we're talking about the the physical being. So, the physique, the build, um, height. For example, I've had a graduate student who's been writing about um a ex um that she lost to cancer for 2 years. And when she was in my office um about two weeks ago, she said, "Well, you know, Nathan was
• 07:00 - 07:30 6'5." And I said, "I I never knew that. That seems important to me." Right? Um so height um hair that can mean you know the color or the texture right long or curly or short. Um and then when we're talking about age and age range um it can be you know a 20some right or he was in his early 40s or um when she was in
• 07:30 - 08:00 sixth grade right or two years after graduating high school. So there are, you know, an infinite number of ways to do these. Now, I want to point out as we're going through them. I've started with the most common ones that are used in writing and then kind of moving on to some other options. Um, but these are all options, right? So, I'm giving you a a wealth of elements to pick and choose
• 08:00 - 08:30 from um in your in your own writing. So clothing um when I read about clothing items in any genre um thinking about a unique piece of clothing right that would stand out in the reader's mind versus someone's uniform something that they wore all the time right um or a particular um style of clothing that would help
• 08:30 - 09:00 define the person. And then accessories, um, belts, for example, or earrings or the kind of purse or bag or backpack thumb that someone's wearing, um, and then race or ethnicity as well. Um, to clarify that. And at any point um that if you want me to go into more um detail or ask a question,
• 09:00 - 09:30 if you can make yourself a note to come back to a particular slide at the end, that would be great. Um gestures. So a gesture that someone does often, right? if someone um always um like waves wildly, right? Um or if someone, you know, I I often think of gestures and habits as kind of intertwined, right? Because someone can
• 09:30 - 10:00 have a gesture that is a habit, right? So if someone, you know, um talks with their hands, right? That's that's a gesture, but it's also a habit, right? But um in thinking about habits too, we can talk about good habits, we can talk about less healthy habits, right? Um or a habit that has ceased, right? So I'm kind of making all these illusions because we're going to see examples of
• 10:00 - 10:30 all of these eventually. Um but the next one is talents. And this can be something that is related to a musical ability or um a pension for drawing. Um but it could also be if you are familiar with the film The Breakfast Club, there is a scene in which everybody in detention that morning goes around talking about their unique talent and Claire's played by Molly
• 10:30 - 11:00 Greenwald. Anybody remember what it is? Oh yeah, she knows. Sorry, I had a minute. I had that chill and I'm away. Anybody else in your room? Putting on lipstick. She can put on lipstick. Yeah, she puts the lipstick in her in her cleavage, right? Puts on the lipstick, right? Yeah. Um, so it can, um, it can be something that is more profound, like
• 11:00 - 11:30 I mentioned, like a musical prodigy, but it could also be, um, a unique talent, right? Because what we're after is portraiture that stays with the reader, right? So that they have an image that they can access and it invites them into the to the writing more with dialogue. Um, this can be an an expression that the person used or uses often, right? Or
• 11:30 - 12:00 an expression they use in a particular situation or context. Um, but it can also be memorable, right? Like a particular word of advice or a response at some point um or you know a parting um sentiment, right? So, um, and with dialogue, I want to add something that's not there, but it's so important is any kind of inflection, accents, intonations
• 12:00 - 12:30 that someone has in in the way that they talk, right? That can either reveal where they are from or um can allow sensory detail, right? so that the reader can actually hear um them speaking. Um this one, the next one, how others see the person is actually from a
• 12:30 - 13:00 former student, um who once asked me, could we use the way other people view or think about that person as an element of portraiture? Of course. Right. Absolutely. Um because if we take a an attitude or an assumption or let's say somebody who has a certain mythology to them, right, that that can certainly help create the aura of that person. Um
• 13:00 - 13:30 comparing and contrast the persona, the self with the person, right? So I'm going to shift to fiction real quick. So thinking about um particularly with the um Nick Carowway and Jay Gatsby, right? Often that contrast between the two of them through the perspective, right, of Carowway. So we understand and and you can see like how others see that person, how that factors into Gatsby's mystique,
• 13:30 - 14:00 right? But in setting oneself either apart and distinct or setting that person right apart and distinct from the from the character the narrator or or the persona and the environment. This can be um all of these things, right? The the the region, I'll add the country, the particular state. Um you know, when for a state like Texas, for
• 14:00 - 14:30 example, you know, it's often needs to be more specific, right? Because it's so large and and the the regions are so diverse. Um and when I say home, I mean the kind of home, right? So, I have another student um who has been writing essays about growing up in a double life trailer um and how that impacted um her upbringing um how it was endemic
• 14:30 - 15:00 to the particular region of Pennsylvania where she was growing up, but also how that impacted the ways in which her stu like fellow students when she was growing up her classmates like thought about her just based on that one fact of environment. Okay. Um occupation is always a good one I think particularly when um I mean it's an effective
• 15:00 - 15:30 one when the person no longer has that occupation. So, writing about, let's say, you know, a grandfather, like if I'm writing about my grandfather and I'm writing about how he was a Methodist minister, right, in the North Texas region, and then using that to kind of shade everything else that I might talk or describe about him, right, about the occupation.
• 15:30 - 16:00 Okay, so let's look at to me this is one of the finest examples in all of personal essay land from Ryan Dre meter who is with each essay that he writes he offers a master class in portraiture. It is one of his many strengths as a writer but you're going to see many examples from him and that's why Ben is the first browneyed boy I will fall for but will not be the last. His hair is also brown and always needs
• 16:00 - 16:30 scraping off his forehead, which he does about every 5 minutes. All his jeans have dark squares stuck over the knees, where he is worn through the denim. His shoelaces are perpetually undone, and he has a magic way of tying them with a quick weird loop that I study and try myself, but can never match. His fingernails are ragged because he rips them off with his teeth and spits out the pieces when our moms aren't watching. Somebody always has to fix his shirt collars. Okay. Which elements of
• 16:30 - 17:00 portraiture? Um I mean, is it okay if I just disappear from the camera for a while? You going to follow me? I don't want to mess you up. Okay. I when I'm in class, I go to the back of the room. So, which elements of portraiture do you uh recognize there? Clothing. Clothing. Absolutely. Habits. The fingernails. Yes. Absolutely. Habits, right?
• 17:00 - 17:30 The perception of the external perception by another viewpoint. Yes. The first one. Yes. Physicality. Yeah. It's very strong in the in the in physicality, right? But there are also lots of details about the hair always needs scraping off
• 17:30 - 18:00 the forehead. So there's a gesture that's a habit, right? Which he does about every five minutes. If we learn that his jeans have dark squares stuck over the knees because he's worn to the denim and somebody always has to fix his shirt collars, what what might we say about young Ben here? And by the way, Ben is five. That's um earlier established earlier in the essay that Ben is five. What kind of kid is Ben?
• 18:00 - 18:30 Active not interested in his clothes. The colors are just He takes He also takes pleasure in evading his mother's gaze. Yes. He also needs help with light breathing. Is there is there an adjective that we could could use to for all of that?
• 18:30 - 19:00 Let's see. Carous. What more a ch adjective for a child? Spontaneous. Um perhaps not. um not well supervised in some way. I mean my mother would have never let me go. So I'm not sure if that's or just
• 19:00 - 19:30 distracted. It's not I'm not thinking of the word I mean I'm thinking of of I had it in my head before I got here but not disheveled but it's another D word. Um but let's just stay with distract. So
• 19:30 - 20:00 if if you are writing character, line of poem, right? And this and this falls into the category of showing and not I mean telling and not showing, right? But my friend Ben was always distracted period, right? When I get a line like that in an experiment, I write how so, right? And so elements of portraiture can answer those kinds of questions because what's in your mind
• 20:00 - 20:30 about that distraction, that word might mean something very different to a reader, right? So if we have these details, right? But to me, the the the dart squares, the knees, and the warmth of the denim is that um and I have an advantage because I have the um like the context, but later um we learned that Ben has a te
• 20:30 - 21:00 ball. Ben is probably sliding into bases, right? or that kid on the playground, right, who's running around and and um flying around, right? Yeah. Okay, let's look at another one. Oh, sorry, forgot Q. He was my father's father, a farmer for many decades, a
• 21:00 - 21:30 mandolin player in a bluegrass band, a leader in his basement church, a tiny town, a lonely spot in the otherwise blank northeastern corner of Missouri's map, and the man with the largest hands I've ever seen. What do we have here? Lots of apossition. Good. Yeah. Physicality. Physicality location right region
• 21:30 - 22:00 location right good balance balance right and a leader in his basement church in tiny town reveals how he is perceived by members of the community by other people right and then In a minute, we're going to get to another element of
• 22:00 - 22:30 portraiture with which is a unique aspect of the person, right? And so, Van Mer ending here, the man with the largest hands I've ever seen, right? That this is something unique to his grandfather. This is from the same essay, but this is the opening to the essay. My brother Garrett owns three cell phones and he's talking on two of them as he speeds down a rural highway in the middle of winter. I'm older than him by
• 22:30 - 23:00 four years and sit beside him with a plastic container of cookies balanced on my lap. I keep telling him to slow down his giant truck because he's not really paying attention to the road. He hangs up phones and tosses them across his dashboard. And in the first moment of silence we've had in about 30 miles, I asked again if he was sure he remembered to pack the new shoes we bought him the night before. He remembered the new coat. I'm certain I can see it hanging back there, but the shoe box isn't visible. yes. I already told you,
• 23:00 - 23:30 he shouts. So before um you tell me the elements that are here, I want to add two more. Um one is possessions, right? So his giant truck, right, is is a possession, right? But the other that is so effective is the
• 23:30 - 24:00 verbs that we apply to people we're describing. So what verbs is Van Weer assigning to brother Garrett here? Speeds, right? Tosses, tosses, shouts, shouts, right? And um by the way, I'm happy to send links to any of these
• 24:00 - 24:30 essays. Um I in my classes and in presentations, I choose selections that are available online. So if you just Google them, you can find them. But what I want to say is that um beyond the uh I forgot to mention, I'm sure you saw it, but u owning three cell phones, right? Possession starting starting there, right? But um the essay is about them driving to um
• 24:30 - 25:00 the grandfather's funeral. And if let's go back to the idea of telling versus showing. If Van Mater had written um my brother Garrett is aggressive and loud, right? Um or my brother Garrett um is careless, right? But the verbs that are assigned to Garrett throughout the essay remain
• 25:00 - 25:30 consistent until one moment when Garrett says something really beautiful about a flock of g a flock of ducks. He's telling a story to the men from town. Um, and the persona takes a moment to realize that his brother has done something beautiful with language and he's not even aware of it.
• 25:30 - 26:00 And there's that moment of instead of frustration with the brother, it's admiration. The rest of the essay, all the verbs are much softer. Pauses, smiles, right? um weights, right? Give me the ideas. So, even in the verbs, right, there's a shift to help create that um shift in persona perspective. Yeah. Okay. See where we are here. My glasses out.
• 26:00 - 26:30 Okay. Okay. I mentioned um the unique one that we would get to. Another is attitude. And this can be um mostly through stance or how someone carries themsel, right? Um so for example, the way someone moves across a room can convey their attitude, right? Um or the way someone, you know, stands or leans
• 26:30 - 27:00 against a wall. Um that can also convey an attitude. And then um also resemblance to a celebrity or a a work of art. And so, um, I think this is our last Van Meter example. Um, this is from another one of his essays. The man in the Hawaiian shirt actually lived in Hawaii. He was on his way to an antique clock convention. The dome of his head was bald, but a horseshoe of white hair encircled the sides. He wore glasses and
• 27:00 - 27:30 a giant beard. He resembled Santa Claus on vacation. So, what elements do we have here? the famous person. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Recognizable cultural figure, right? Yeah. Clothing. Clothing. The place where he's from, right?
• 27:30 - 28:00 Actually lived in Hawaii. Where he's heading to. Yeah. Potentially a hobby. Yeah. Yeah. could be a hobby or could be he owns an antique clock. You know, preserve a could be an occupation. One of the one of the other, right? And then we have the physicality, right? Yeah. Okay. So, I want to stick with the theme
• 28:00 - 28:30 of the men from town. Um and part of my um or one of my specializations for my PhD um and literature is in film and um so I have found that using film language and this is not going to be a big film lecture and we're going to look at three different kinds of angles. That's what we're going to do. Um but does anybody recognize the measel? What film is this? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, an adaptation
• 28:30 - 29:00 of lyric novel, Horseman Pass By, um, 1961 Western, I think, starring the man in the, um, tit hat there, Paul Newman. Um, so this is for any Paul Newman fan, but it's also in hopes to create new Paul Newman fans, cuz get ready for some
• 29:00 - 29:30 close shots of Paul Newman's face. Okay. Okay. So, this was the original film poster for HUD. And when we're talking about a long shot in film, we're talking about a full body, right? So if we can think about elements of portraiture that we have here
• 29:30 - 30:00 in in the film poster and the character, what do we have? Attitude. I mean that Yeah, that's it. Mhm. Right. So, in thinking about stance, it's it's also physicality, right? The tip, right? And and Hoodie is very cocky, right? How other people's.
• 30:00 - 30:30 Yeah. No, I mean that's that's fantastic, right? Right. What what habit does HUD have? Smoking. Smoking. Okay. I mean, most people did at the time, but still back to the the smoking. Also leaving women in awe. Absolutely. Nutrition meal. Yes. I mean, the man with the barbed wire soul,
• 30:30 - 31:00 right? That's um I mean that's fantastic description, right? Um but we also have in the background there a possession of HUDs, right? is convertible. That is very important in the film, right? Um, okay. So, let's look at some other um stills from the film. Uh, let's look at another um I would still consider this a long shot.
• 31:00 - 31:30 Gesturing towards something important. So, if you were writing this, right, and and this is something else that I would recommend is um scrolling through your phone for photos of people that you're writing about to um spark your memory or to get an image. Um, I meant to look this up earlier, but one of my students told me just this
• 31:30 - 32:00 week that she has a condition in which if someone says, "Close your eyes and imagine an apple, there's nothing. She doesn't she doesn't see that." So, she uses photographs a lot when she is photographs of places, photographs of people, right? When she's writing. So she has those images that she can access. But if you were writing a brief description, let's say three elements of
• 32:00 - 32:30 portraiture to introduce HUD with just this image. What might we say? Cowboy hat. Cowboy hat. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, physical cowboy hat. Um, leaning the elbow, right? The belt. He's posing as a
• 32:30 - 33:00 self-possessed figure, but he wants it's a kind of come like, you know, let other people be attracted to me and me, right? Notice his posture. Well, yeah. his back. He's got his elbows out. Right. Right. Yeah. Also like the the belt is prominent, right? The belt belt buckle. There's going to be different belt buckles throughout the film. But yeah,
• 33:00 - 33:30 so we have, you know, it can be as specific, you know, as the buttons of the western shirt, you know, leaning an elbow on his convertible with, you know, the the cowboy hat cocked just a little back, right? Sunlight. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. And I mean, and how the sunlight almost kind of cuts in diagonally, right? We can use those types of details in writing,
• 33:30 - 34:00 right? And yeah, I just almost went and and took you all on a long digression about oblique angles in film, but I'm not going to do that today. Okay. Um, here's the medium shot, which is the waist up. So, this is the most common shot used in films um because you you can have people shot like um dinner
• 34:00 - 34:30 conversations, right? Moving back and forth between two um shots of people in cars is often medium shot. But if you haven't picked that up yet, we're going to get closer and closer and closer to HUD. So, um, what do we see here that we might not have been able to see in the previous shot? What elements of portraiture? Yeah. Like Hud's thinking about
• 34:30 - 35:00 something, right? And I'm saying like we can we can say that, right? Hud's thinking about something as he leans a little leaning for here, right? What else do you notice? more in physicality like how ve are your best. Yeah, the veins in his hands prominent. Good. My cheekbones.
• 35:00 - 35:30 Mhm. Mhm. Where's that? How's the hat this time? So, just Yeah. See more of his face, but it's still like half shadow. Mhm. You can see the crown there. Yeah. The widow's peak, right? There's a there's a brand sign post. Mhm. I'm also struck because you kind of see this in the last one, but about I've been trying to think about how to describe it, but the way this mouth is
• 35:30 - 36:00 set because it's not a crown, but it's absolutely not a small. disturbedness with that too or something and just a habit of staring very very staring. Yeah. And the intensity of the stare, right? He's not as impermeable as he was in the earlier one. Um, it seems as though he's making some kind of
• 36:00 - 36:30 implicit eye contact with an object of desire perhaps, certainly arousal of curiosity. And while we we do want to always create a we want to create a balance, right, of showing and telling and not just um outlaw telling, right?
• 36:30 - 37:00 But I would also say that Hud is very comfortable in his body, right? Um, he doesn't seem to be self-conscious, right? More confident than self-conscious, right? At ease in his body and the way he moves, including the way he lets a cigarette, right?
• 37:00 - 37:30 What's a good verb for the way that cigarette is hanging in his mouth or the way he's carrying it through his lips? Dangling. Yeah. I don't know. It feels like it's more like or think about like the the other time when he just had like the cigarette. He's in control of that cigarette. Yeah. Like the way he was holding it. It's like I mean he's not a nervous smoker, you know.
• 37:30 - 38:00 Also used to thinking about the cigarette is something you keep in your fingers, right? And then you should bring it up temporarily. But he's comfortable with the burning ember just the um again the hand in the pocket. Right. Uhoh. Uhoh. Okay. Now we've got not just a close shot, but this is really an extreme close shot. So is this the
• 38:00 - 38:30 hustler or is it No, it's HUD. It's after a very it's it's a it's okay. The context for those of you who haven't seen it is Hud is so drunk that um tries to sober him up by dunking him into a water barrel. Hud has a drinking problem in every other scene that he's drinking. So there's another habit, right? But
• 38:30 - 39:00 what what would we focus on here beyond just the perfection of the speech? He's still got an intense stare. Yeah. Right. And so it it could be that could be also a habit, right? It never seemed that Hud lost the intensity of his stare no matter what he was looking at. There's a clenched uh quality to his face though. It's almost as though he's
• 39:00 - 39:30 bolstering himself in some kind of defensiveness perhaps, defending some kind of vulnerability. But how would we describe that to the reader? Um yeah, how would you describe it? the the fixity of the eyes, the little clenching of the jaw. Clenching of the jaw, clenching of the jaw, it's kind of simmering or smoldering.
• 39:30 - 40:00 Sorry. There's there's also I mean there's a defiance too, right? Like a dare I dare you quality. Yeah, it's definitely sultry. It's more it's it's not drainy either. a little bit of I would say anger plans or something like and there's and there's there's the water or not knowing it's water but water is running down his face in different places and he's not wiping it
• 40:00 - 40:30 yeah so you know thinking about I mean we could describe the um what we haven't seen before is like the curl right? The curl of the dark hair. But um I Yeah, I I like the the um the detail of the water dripping down the face and not Yeah. and not wiping it away because most of this wood, right?
• 40:30 - 41:00 Yeah. Okay. Now, we're going to shift to look at some examples from literature. Um, so this is from William Lee Heat Moon's Blue Highways. Fantastic uh non-fiction road narrative or traalog, but here is this is also a master class in portraiture this entire book um as he travels around different parts of the country
• 41:00 - 41:30 um meeting people and talking to them. All right. A woman with a butter almond smile sat down across from me. Her hair fresh from the curling wand dropped in loose coils the color of polished pecan. And her breast casting shadows to her waist pressed full against a glossy dress that looked wet. A golden cross swung gently between and high on her long throat was a small Pisces amulet. Her dark musky scent
• 41:30 - 42:00 brought to mind the swamp. We nodded and she said in soft Mississippian, "You were very interested in Jerry's pancakes." Sorry, I don't know a Mississippi accent, but um Okay. Wow. Is this description full of elements of portraiture? What do we have? Must be sent. I guess it's a Well, list, right? The way the way
• 42:00 - 42:30 someone smells, right? Um, you know that can you we can use simileies there if someone smells like something or a particular not particular a specific cologne or um perfume. It was a previous encounter because of the pancakes. Okay. What other elements do we have? Clothing
• 42:30 - 43:00 and accessories. Yes, absolutely. Clothing, accessories, their accent. We get we get dialogue and accent. We get region, right? Soft Mississippian. My favorite is the polished pecan. Polished pecan. Right. The physicality of not only the hair texture of loose coils, but its color. Yeah. Right. Fresh from the
• 43:00 - 43:30 curling wand. Fresh from the curling wand. And what about that? Butter almond smile, right? Which I admire because it's not it's not a like heat didn't take the easy descriptor for smile, but is tiring it into like butter almond with pancakes and breakfast food, right? But butter almond smile, right? Really unique
• 43:30 - 44:00 description there, right? Physicality with the her dress casting shadows to her waist, press full, the glossy dress that looks wet. Pretty fancy for a a morning uh roadside cafe, right? Must find her appetizer. Mhm. Yeah. I was thinking about that like we looked at verbs earlier said like the adjectives describing her describing her art food related. Yeah.
• 44:00 - 44:30 Yeah. Okay. Let's let's look at another one. And this is something that um uh Pete Moon does in his writing. Um I I really like it as a way to list a lot of things at once. So this is just an example of two, but oftent times in the the work he'll have like six there. Item item item item. Okay.
• 44:30 - 45:00 Item a woman face as blank as a nickel slug pulling beautifully on the slot handles. She had stood before the gear so many times she herself had become a mechanism for reaching, dropping, pulling. Her eyes were dark and unmoving as if unplugged. The periodic jangle of change in the winner's cup moved her only to reach into the blue coffer without looking and deposit the coins again. Item a man mosing in wearing leather from head to toe attempting cow puncher macho. He looked more like a
• 45:00 - 45:30 two-legged first baseman's knitted blonde. I'm a very competitive person. I'm in it to win, he said. And the blonde yawned again. It's really Whitman with all those jerks. How other people see something? Yes. The blonde yawns again, right? Well, if he looked more like, you know, obviously
• 45:30 - 46:00 he's attempting. He's trying to he's trying this attitude, right? But really, it's it's coming across, right? And that great verb mosy, right? the physicality leather from head to toe, right? And the and the woman, right? How so instead of saying um a woman uh sat panatonic at the
• 46:00 - 46:30 slots, right? But here we get more like we get the idea of how long. Well, and it's physicality through actions which we haven't seen in quite the same motion of it. It's actually occurring because of the ger the So words we are literally not only identifying with objected sight but we're participating in some way in in a moment.
• 46:30 - 47:00 And so we can assume this is one of her habits, right? But we're also getting gestures, right? Well, especially that way like that she can she knows that she can reach to get the for the coins without having to look at it anymore without looking deposit the coins again. Right? The gear so many times itself become a mechanism.
• 47:00 - 47:30 Okay. Um, I want to shift now to self-portraiture and I crossed it off because I want to shift to persona and I want to clarify the the distinction. Um, but I want to stay with self-portraiture for a minute and look at a wonderful example. I'm going to keep going for a second because I see we're um closing in on time, but um so yeah, I think we might just end with portraiture. um and self literature but okay this is from um
• 47:30 - 48:00 the voice of my youth and a brief essay out here. So this is thinking about taking all of those elements and using it to describe the eye. Little convenience store stuck out in the middle of nothing. A stain on the carpet. I'm gassing it up getting some coffee. My white shirt is gaping open and I have nothing on it. But who cares? I'll never see these people again. But you might hear what Alabama thinks
• 48:00 - 48:30 about me. This is a new and unusual attitude for me. I'm practicing being snotty in anticipation of being dumped by my husband when I get back to Iowa. I swagger from the gas pumps from the store. I didn't care if my boobs are running around inside my shirt. If my hair is a freaky snarl, if I look defiant and upy. There's nothing to be embarrassed of. I bring my coffee cup along and fill it at the counter. Very thin, oldish, and grungy. sit at tables eating eggs wanted up to stare at me
• 48:30 - 49:00 carefully while they chew. I ignore them and pay the woman at the counter. She's smoking a cigarette so I envy her. Great day, huh? I ask her. She counts out my change. It is honey, she says. She reaches for her cigarette and takes a puff, blows it up above my head. Wish I wasn't in here. Well, it's getting on right, I tell her. I've adopted an accent in just four weeks, an intermittent draw that makes me think I'm not who everyone thinks I
• 49:00 - 49:30 am. One of the things that I left off the list is context. Um, and so I'm looking in particular at in anticipation of being dumped by my husband when I get back to Iowa that even though we have a swagger, a shirt gaping open, boobs roaming around, we also have a tinge of vulnerability,
• 49:30 - 50:00 right? Trying to steal herself for what she knows is coming, right? Um, what else is helpful here to help you like see this woman as she's gassing it up and walking into the store? The adopted accent. I still can't quite process that. And you're going to draw the rest of that. So, thinking about all the permutations of that that makes me think I'm
• 50:00 - 50:30 not everyone. students. The region the what? The region is really helpful in establishing context like Alabama and Iowa. You have ideas. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. She's asking about
• 50:30 - 51:00 and it's all and we have some very specific moments and sentences where we have we're moving into her telling and her thinking which also I think adds right like this is a new and unusual attitude for me and then the assertion there's nothing to be embarrassed stuff, right? Because this is speaking to the self that establishes that like that vulnerability. Yeah.
• 51:00 - 51:30 We don't necessarily see how other people see her, but she's imagining how other people she wants another life, another identity. The last The wooden is priceless. The what is the Mhm. wooden. Yeah. The presumed familiarity. Right. Yeah. Right.
• 51:30 - 52:00 Practicing in front of people that she'll never see again. Yeah. Yeah. This one unfortunately is not um online but one of the ways in which this is a important moment with this bravado right that's happening here and kind
• 52:00 - 52:30 of who who cares right and um I also love the the choice to say boobs right instead of breasts um but has anybody read this and can tell us what happens after this scene Did she like almost get driven off the road or something? Yeah. Very very frightening. She she leaves and um a a car follows her, speeds up behind
• 52:30 - 53:00 her and and like is like telling her what like he wants to kill her. And she knows at some point like if she goes into this like one exit that's it. like he's got her trapped, right? So, there's this, you know, kind of at ease moment here before everything gets really tense, um, and scary and her vulnerability, right? Um, but then, um,
• 53:00 - 53:30 don't worry, the husband comes back. Um, and we want him to dump her because he could care less when she tells him about this story. He's like not even a interested in none of her cares that she had this year assault or worse. Um I wanted to I have that we're at like five we're 5:30 we end right? Yeah. Okay. Take a couple extra minutes if you feel like it. It's up to you. I just I
• 53:30 - 54:00 just thought that um I would uh end with some of some examples of portraiture in my own work. Um, and so, um, I have a just a little preface, I have a a draft that I've been working on for a really long time. Um, the working title is the grandmother archives. So, I I grew up in Texas and um, I grew up with two very different grand sets of
• 54:00 - 54:30 grandparents. Um, I had my grandfather who I mentioned before, Methodist minister um married um to my grandmother uh the preachers's wife um the one who um directed the United Methodist Youth um in Gainesville, Texas uh the last on 35 before you hit the Oklahoma border. And then my mother's
• 54:30 - 55:00 parents in East Texas. Um my other grandfather was a cattle farmer. Um he did not allow my grandmother to work once they were married. He told me this. I did not know this until years and years later when I was growing up, but um um she was also an alcoholic. Um, and so I'm working to write about
• 55:00 - 55:30 that distinct difference, but also thinking about inheritance of what I carry from from both of them. So this is the first one. Um, oh wait, hold on. Back there's my selfie again. Um, okay. Okay, so this is well sure you can guess. Just inside the glass screen
• 55:30 - 56:00 door, my grandmother carves a turkey with the hum of an electric knife before pulling a chocolate pie from the oven. An apron tied around her waist, bright lipstick, her welcome, a soprano of singong bowels. So I have my grandmother with um her for the actions that I associate most with her. And also I'm one of two
• 56:00 - 56:30 people, living people, well my daughter too, so that's three who have that chocolate pie recipe. But the the apron, right, the lipstick while cooking. And this was Thanksgiving dinner, right? So, and she, you know, was doing everything but still had the bright lipstick, right? She was the the um the grandmother who went to the salon every
• 56:30 - 57:00 Friday for the perm, right? And she she slept with um a roll of not a roll, a piece of toilet paper around with the um bobby pins to keep it in place as she slept. So, that's just still portraiture, right? Trying to create image for her. Okay, this is my other grandmother. Sometimes my grandmother, her hair are frizz and her shoulders a soup, be perched on one of the browser stools at the counter, cartons of palm mold on hundreds by the
• 57:00 - 57:30 fridge. Sometimes she'd be in the living room in a gold velvet chair, the drapes on the windows drawn, the room dark, the smoke billowing from a standup ashtray beside her. And other times I'd hear a loud clink from the back bedroom before the door opened and my grandmother shuffled down the hallway long after we arrived. She wore muted colors, browns mostly, her reddish hair permed, her lips a sharp coral, her voice an outdraw, the east Texas of her vows
• 57:30 - 58:00 disgruntled dragging. a little bit draw versus the soprano song. And the loud clink makes makes us want to know what's going on behind the closet door. Mhm.
• 58:00 - 58:30 But also sometimes sometimes other times this idea that these were recurring justlessness. I know a lot from environment like the the smoke billing around the curtains are all down like the darkness atmosphere falling down the hall. [Music]
• 58:30 - 59:00 And so what I'm trying to do without like in the in the essay draft is juxtapose the two of them and let the reader figure out the differences. So like if I if I go through the the back door that opens to my Gainesville grandmother's kitchen, she's there in action helping like preparing things. She's doing things for others, right? Whereas sometimes my grandmother
• 59:00 - 59:30 shuffled down the hallway long after we arrived, right? So it was always those awkward like, well, is she going to come out or not? But possessions um in her bedroom, she always had this I always thought it was so magical until I realized what it was. I was magical to her in some ways, but a crystal decanter and crystal glasses. So, that's what the clinks always were was she's pouring herself another glass of Jim Beam. Um, but I think that's all I have
• 59:30 - 60:00 for today and I don't want to um take up your time. Well, let's end like as a full circle thing about my dad because I talked about him on Tuesday. Um, so this is the last part I'll do and then um then when at 81, dad looks about 65 and moves like he's 30. He still works as administrator for the school district, scoffing at anyone who asks when he plans to retire. Every weekday
• 60:00 - 60:30 morning, he leaves for his office in a different sport coat and tie accommodation. My mother often snapping photos in the kitchen before he heads out the back door and drives the mile to his office. My mother keeps one of those photos on top of her secretary desk in the room where I sleep. In the frame, dad smiles and a gray blue jacket, a yellow, orange, and blue tie. Another photo in the living room, dad in a charcoal gray sport coat, a pink and silver tie, his gray silver hair trimmed
• 60:30 - 61:00 close. And in the essay layer, um I say that the photo of the charcoal gray sport coat is the photo for um the obituary. So it comes in later. Um but my father, I'm not going to say was a bit of a close horse. Even close horse um he really likes ties. Um he had so many that my mother had a quilt made of
• 61:00 - 61:30 some of his favorite ties after he died. and I have it and I'm so grateful. Um, it's just absolutely gorgeous. And she had his favorite tie put in the um, center, a Casablanca tie. It was his favorite movie. But everything I just said was portraiture, right? But when you went awe like that, when you do things like that and you let your reader know who you're writing about, they become just as
• 61:30 - 62:00 invested as you are, right? And you know, I've given mostly positive ones, right? But but we can't write people as one dimensional like our flat characters in fiction, right? There's got to be ways. So, while there are certain descriptions, right, like my grandmother, for example, there are other scenes in which she and I are laughing so hard at the kitchen table, right, that she goes into a coughing fit
• 62:00 - 62:30 um because we're we're having like she's telling stories, you know, about about growing up or about my mother growing up. And so there's, you know, there's this balance. I always tell my students when you're writing about someone else, take two disperate qualities of them and focus on those two. Well, I see here the kinetic kinetic energy of your father in the first uh sort of segment and then the second segment photographs are nerd. So I was already sensing the
• 62:30 - 63:00 farial just like the jition and then the This isn't it's kind of not about your dad particularly, but your mother often sent me photos. I mean, it's a picture portraiture of the two of them together. I mean, almost every like cuz she would once she had smartphones, she would text me or before smartphones, she would email me the photos. But um
• 63:00 - 63:30 yeah, and I keep saying Lesie, I promise. Um, one of her habits was when they would go out to restaurants, which they did all the time because like after I left home for college, that was a big part of their life was going to restaurants in the Dallas in Fort Worth area. But she would take pictures of him sitting across from her um at the table and like and he would often be like elbows on the table and smiling at her. But she those were around too. But she
• 63:30 - 64:00 told me once because he was 12 years older than she was, she took those pictures in case he died and she could always feel like he was sitting across from her at the restaurant looking at her lovingly. Isn't that sweet? And then after he died, I mean, it was it I realized what a gift it was because
• 64:00 - 64:30 I could walk in the living room and there he was. Spider-Man. You still have this? I do. Thank you so much for being here. [Applause]