Master Class: How to Improve Your Memoir or Personal Essays by Balancing Scene and Exposition with David McLoghlin
Master Class: How to Improve Your Memoir or Personal Essays by Balancing Scene and Exposition with David McLoghlin
2 Sessions: Saturdays, May 3 + 10
11:00am-1:00pm ET
David McLoghlin
David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet, and a writer of memoir and personal essay. His third book, Crash Centre, was published in May 2024 and hailed by senior Irish poet Thomas McCarthy as "a work unquestionably triumphant with poetic victories." His poems have been broadcast on WNYC’s Radioloab and anthologized on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably in Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing (Beacon Press, 2020). He has taught memoir at The Center for Fiction and the Hudson Valley Writers Center and The Irish Writers Centre.
We have an instinctive sense that time slows in scenes, giving us immersive sensory detail, conflict and dialogue, but what about exposition (also known as reflection, “glide,” or summary)? In fact, exposition is just as important as scenes, as it’s where the writer explains, and comments on scenes. Here is where the writer provides essential, non-immersive information that moves the story forward and links scenes together. Scenes are where we “show,” whereas in exposition, we “tell.” Both are essential. Learning how to identify your principal story points (or scenes) will help you to structure your story. As you develop your scenes and improve them, you will also develop a better sense of what they mean for you, and how to link them together. This knowledge in turn will help you to develop and improve your narrative voice, which is what well-employed exposition does. Scenes often tell the core story of the past, whereas exposition is in the voice of the adult narrator located in the “narrative present,” reflecting on the past.
This masterclass is structured around reading short extracts from memoir and personal essay for examples of how many writers write scenes and exposition; practical tips for how to execute scenes and exposition in our own work; and, in-class prompts and writing exercises to improve our own learning around these important elements of craft. Students can expect to come away with a greater understanding of important craft elements in creative nonfiction, having had ample opportunity to practice what they are learning. This class is for all levels. While attendees may be at the beginning or end of a project, all that is required is an interest in writing memoir or personal essay.
Workshop Highlights:
You’ll learn to identify scenes and exposition as you read the work of others as well as your own writing
You’ll learn how to write better scenes and exposition
As a result you will get a better sense of the story you are trying to tell, which will help you improve your narrative voice as a whole.
This class has 1 full scholarship and 3 partial scholarships available. To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Friday, April 25.
David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet and an exciting creative writing facilitator in memoir and poetry whose writing has been broadcast on WYNC’s Radiolab, appeared in film and published in journals of note on both sides of the Atlantic. His three books are Crash Centre (May 2024), Waiting for Saint Brendan and Other Poems (2012) and Santiago Sketches (2017), all with Salmon Poetry. In 2023 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and was one of two poets to represent Ireland on the Versopolis European poetry platform. He won the Open category of the Voices of War International Poetry Competition in 2018 and was a finalist in the 2015 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize (now The Moth International Poetry Prize). His translation of Sign Tongue by Chilean poet Enrique Winter won the inaugural Good Morning Menagerie Chapbook-in-Translation Prize in 2014. In 2008, he received second prize in The Patrick Kavanagh Awards, and received a major Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Literature Bursary in 2006.
McLoghlin has taught creative writing and literature at University College, Dublin, New York University, The American College, Dublin, Coler Specialty Hospital, and Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx, where he was Resident Writer. Most recently, he has facilitated creative writing with Munster Literature Centre, Poetry as Commemoration, The Center for Fiction, The Irish Writers Centre and Hudson Valley Writers Center, as well as many other organisations. He holds an MLitt in Spanish literature (first-class honours) from University College, Dublin, and an MFA from New York University’s Creative Writing Program and lives in Cork with his family.
