Plato argued that the material world was only a reflection of the "real" world, the world of ideas or forms. Whether or not his view of reality is right, there is something to the idea that there is some sort of ideal we should aspire to, an ideal we often fall short of. But was in the the "form" of a book chapter, an ideal which we should aspire to?
Your Zinnser book has some great suggestions as to what what might be ideal in various types of writing. Please take a look at Part III of Zinnser. Read Section 1, Section 19, and any other section that looks appropriate to your book chapter.
What did you learn from this chapter that you might apply to your book and help you make your good chapter (it is good, right?) even better--closer to the ideal.
Zinsser states that "humor is often their best tool and sometimes their only tool for making an important point" (207). Humor can be used to makes points that some might not get. Humor allows a way for people to engage in your writing. Using it in our chapters can allow us to give some insight on things especially as students. And get our readers to engage more in the book.
ReplyDeleteThrough my book chapter humor was something I added to make the chapter less dull for readers. Using humor is a great way to make sure the student, parent, or whoever stays engaged. According to the author if you try to write humor into your books to hard then it just becomes to serious. Flow your humor into your book without trying to hard and it will feel very natural. Humor is the key to make your readers more engaged and more willing to read on.
ReplyDeleteThroughout my chapter I tried to implement stories from Northern Students and faculty to try and liven up my paper a little bit and make it an enjoyable read. Chapter 19 in Writing Well focuses on Humor and how you can implement that into your work. One thing that stuck out to me in this section was this quote, "Humor is the secret weapon of the nonfiction writer. It's secret because so few writers realize that humor is often their best tool - and sometimes their only tool - for making an important point."
ReplyDeleteI think often times, when writers are writing a nonfiction piece, they tend to forget how to make it interesting and the reading can be very bland to someone who is not interested in the topic. But if you can implement humor, this might catch the readers attention and keep them engaged throughout the piece.
Reading through this chapter I looked at one section titled, “Writing About Places.” This section applies a little bit to my paper as I am specifically detailing the construction, renovations, and new buildings that have sprouted up around NSU in the past 20 years. The most useful piece of advice I found was that when writing about a place, make sure to include only the most important details. Zinsser says, “don’t tell us that the sea had waves and the sand was white” (Zinsser 118-119). Going to into details about a location can lead people to elaborate on unnecessary information. Another piece of advice included when the author discussed how humor and truth go hand in hand. Humor not only livens and brings attention to an otherwise more bland document, but can also exaggerate and bring attention to some truths regarding their absurdity.
ReplyDeleteOverall, detailing your writing can be efficient as long as you do not go overboard, and humor is useful to bring attention towards your subject.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated the advice Zinsser gives in chap 16 about business writing. I often feel that the first draft of my writing is too informal and unclear so I usually end up opening up thesarus.com and switching out a loot of my original words and phrases for something that sounds more “professional.” However, thanks to Zinsser advice I feel like I’m able to have a more conversional tone in my writing, especially in the chapter I’m working on now. My favorite lines form this section are “If you work for an institution, whatever your job, whatever your level, be yourself when you write. You will stand out as a real person among robots, . . .” (178) I feel like this advice is even more relevant now than when Zinsser first wrote it thanks to the rise of computer generated writing programs like ChatGPT. I also really appreciated the advice presented in chapter 19 about humor. I feel like humor and humanity go hand in hand so I hope that I can showcase both of these elements in my writing in the future.
The chapter I chose which I think that would benefit me the most was chapter 12. The title is called "Writing about People: The interview" in this chapter I have a new way to look at how to give people interviews as well as how to write about these interviews. A quote I chose which interested me was "His own words will always be better than your words" (Zinsser, p. 100). This quote is so true because other words can easily be better than yours. Having multiple voices can make something have more meaning and impact. My chapter is all about interviews because its asking teachers as well as students how covid has affected them in what capacity and how has schools changed because of COVID-19.
ReplyDeleteI thought the chapter about writing with humor was informative. One thing that concerned me about the paper assignment was that 20 pages might come off boring and that it wasn't going to be that fun to write. However, once I learned that my paper could have some humor in it, I really enjoyed writing it. I guess whenever I read history books or papers, I have this idea that they are supposed to be so professional and there can't be anything funny in them. Although without at least a little humor, I think a long paper would be very a boring thing to read.
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