Container Essay: How to Write about Big Topics in 1,000 Words or Less

Have you ever heard the saying: “See the forest before the trees?” My professors in grad school used it to describe how people often see the BIG picture before they see details. My brain works the opposite.

I see all the trees long before I see the forest they create. This is a problem because it means I write with too much detail.

Friend Saves the Day

In August, a friend urged me to take “Short Essay, Big Topic: Tackling Major Themes in 1,000 Words or Less,” a workshop taught by Nadine Kenney-Johnstone. I had a really BIG topic that I needed to write about for the Journal of the American Revolution: The historical significance of the Treaty of Paris 1763.

My friend’s suggestion felt like kismet. I signed up.

The Container Essay

Kenney-Johnstone introduced me to the Container Essay, a tool writers use to convey large, complex ideas to readers without overwhelming them with information. Container essays use objects, emotions, songs, events, textures, or sounds to stand in for a large, complex idea. All container essays are reflective.

In class, we studied two examples: Ann Hood’s “Now I Need a Place to Hide Away” and Joyce Maynard’s “My Mother’s Chutney.”  In these essays, Hood used the Beatles’ music and Maynard her mother’s chutney to convey profound grief.

Container Essay Formula

Container essays are formulaic and have eight components.

1.     First paragraph introduces topic, lay of the land, character, or question of the essay. ("Why" questions serve as great hooks.)

2.     Second paragraph/section reveals the stakes of the essay or creates connections with the stakes. (Does the character want something that they must overcome obstacles to get? Does the character possess something that they will lose?)

3.     Essay must show a passage of time because it should be reflective.

4.     Essay must raise stakes with oncoming obstacles or scarcity.

5.     Essay must give readers a chance to breathe about halfway through.

6.     Essay must deepen in complexity and conflict about 2/3rds of the way through.

7.     Essay must deliver a punch line, which should stand alone.

8.     Essay must wrap-up quickly after the punch line by showing what the author learned about herself, or the subject, upon reflection.

My Outline

After showing us what a container essay looked like, Kenney-Johnstone encouraged the class to create an outline or start writing their essays.

I drafted the following outline:

Container: Treaty of Paris 1763: it represented hope for a peaceful future as well as the boundaries and limitations of that hope.

Conflict or Obstacle: Lasting peace brought forth by treaty seemed too good to be true.

Climax of Essay: The Treaty of Paris 1763 dashed the hope for the lasting peace it promised by causing the American Revolution and its War for Independence.

Paragraph 1: Open with celebration of August 10, 1763 in Boston when Governor Francis Bernard declared the “Definitive Peace.” 

• Why Question: “Why were Bostonians so excited about the Treaty, so excited they celebrated with fireworks?

Section 2: Treaty ended war by bringing a seemingly definitive peace to North America

• Discuss physicality of Treaty
• Discuss war related objects such as Phips Proclamation

Section 3: Treaty redrew map of North America

• Discuss 1763 Map on display

Section 4: Treaty needed to span cultural maps/landscapes

• Discuss Pontiac’s Rebellion
• Discuss wampum belt and peace medals

Section 5: Treaty’s relationship to the Council Chamber in the Old State House where it is on display

•  Discuss the situation of the room and balcony

Section 6: Treaty redrew political landscape—what did it do for Massachusetts and governance, London’s treatment of Colonies?

Section 7: Limitations of Treaty of Paris

• Deliver Punch line: The Revolution
• Discuss how peace breaks down with violent protests and how war returned to North America—the Boston Massacre happened just outside Council Chamber window, the Boston Tea Party nearby, Lexington & Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill

Section 8: Treaty of Paris 1783 and the lessons learned from 1763

Lesson 1: Boundaries are fluid, not fixed

• Map of North America and Great Britain redrawn again
• Problems re-occur during the War of 1812

 Lesson 2: “Lessons” learned from Native American negotiations.

• Continue to exclude Native Americans from formal Treaty
• Make peace after treaty by exiling the British-allied Native peoples and dispossess the majority of Native Americans from their land, as seen in New York

Lesson 3: Treaty of Paris 1783 brings more representation to the United States but less to other British colonies

Results

On Tuesday September 3, the Journal of the American Revolution published my first container essay, “1763: A Revolutionary Peace Exhibit.” I am happy with how the essay came out. I also see room for improvement.

In my next attempt, I would like to be closer to 1,000 words; “1763: A Revolutionary Peace Exhibit” came it at 1,630. I would also like my container to be more specific and concrete; sometimes the Treaty served as my container, other times it was the peace terms contained within the Treaty, and sometimes it was the hope contained in the peace terms of the Treaty.

I plan to use the container essay formula as I continue my quest to present academic-quality history to a broad audience. The blueprint of the essay provides me with a way to focus my BIG topics into concepts that non-specialists can understand. I also find that I am better able to limit detail when I focus on a container.

What Do You Think?

How do you focus your BIG topics or ideas to write short essays? Have you ever written a container essay? If so, how did it turn out?

Thinking About My Readers: How I Will Use One Ideal Reader to Write My Book

Last Sunday, I had the luxury of being able to read all afternoon. I dug into my magazine pile and pulled out the latest issue of [amazon_link id="B0047VIALE" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Writer’s Digest[/amazon_link]. I like the magazine because it gives me ideas for how to improve my writing and how to expand my readership. In the latest issue (September 2013), Writing Coach Kip Langello had a front-of-the-book piece called “One in a Million.” Its tagline: “Here’s why you should be crafting your book with one specific reader in mind—and that reader isn’t you.” This idea made me think about the advice Michelle Seaton gave me: “Think about how readers want to learn what it is you have to say.” I read on.

The point of the article: Ask yourself who is going to read your book, use that answer to visualize one, specific reader, and then write your book for that reader.

Langello created his ideal reader: a thirty-four year-old woman named Peggy. She works in the medical records department at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. She has a blue-collar husband and both are avid fans of the Miami Dolphins.

Langello uses Peggy as a tool. He crafts his stories around Peggy’s likes and dislikes. When he has a question about his plotline or character, Langello thinks about what Peggy would want to happen or how she would respond to his character. This exercise has supposedly helped him publish 5 novels.

Langello tailored his piece for fiction writers. Yet, I thought his advice might help me too. Who is my ideal reader? I took out my pad and pen to find out.

Meet Janet Watkins, age 20. Watkins is a pre-med student at University at Buffalo. She is African-American. Her lower-middle class family lives in Colorado. She decided to attend UB because they offered her a couple of scholarships, a good work study job in the student health clinic, and the promise of admission to its medical school if she keeps her grades up.

Janet is a conscientious student and a hard worker. She is not interested in history and she could care less about the history of New York State. So why will Janet’s supervisor at the health clinic have to reprimand her for reading my book at work? Because I will write the book so that Janet will find it too interesting to put down.

I crafted Janet to keep the target audience for my book and the deficiencies of my dissertation in the forefront of my mind. As a westerner Janet is sick of the East Coast-centered view of early American history. Why should she care about colonial and early Republic Albany, New York? She will care because I will do a great job explaining how Albany stood as the first gateway to the American West and the important role it played in the large-scale westward expansion of the United States.

Janet loves science but dislikes history. How will I grab her attention and keep it? I will write about my real-life characters in a way that seems present and identifiable, not distant.

Janet doesn’t want to read another history about dead, white men. If I am going to write a book that she won’t be able to put down, I will need to expand my cast of characters to include more women, Native Americans, and African Americans. All of whom lived in and around Albany and helped shape the culture of the community.

Additionally, Janet has never wanted for food, clothing, or shelter, but she has not had a lot of luxuries in her life. Each year her family took one, week-long camping trip to a nearby state park and called it “vacation.” Therefore, Janet won’t find the cast of characters in my dissertation very fascinating or relatable because they are mostly dead, white, rich people.

In order to grab Janet’s attention I need to expand my narrative to include more than just the occasional anecdote of middling and poor persons. I need to try and give these people faces and integrate them as fully into my narrative as they were in the community. This won’t be an easy task because they left few records for posterity. I need to be more creative in how I find and interpret their stories.

The list of what I must include seems like a tall order. However, if I want undergraduate students (especially those in New York State) and every-day people to embrace the history of Albany, and my book, I need to write a more relatable narrative than I did in my dissertation. This doesn’t mean I have to scrap my dissertation and start over, but I do need to reframe what I have written, expand it in some places, and contract it in others.

It remains to be seen whether my contrived reader, Janet Watkins, will lead me to write a best-selling history book. However, her presence in my mind will help me remember who I am writing for, which will help me better understand how it is my readers want to learn what it is I have to say.

What Do You Think?

Who is your ideal reader? Do you write solely for them? Or, do you write for your bigger, target audience?

How to Write Scholarly Articles: Tips from the William and Mary Quarterly

Last week, I attended a talk given by Chris Grasso and Karin Wulf about how to publish articles in academic journal. Grasso and Wulf serve respectively as the Editor and Book Review Editor for The William and Mary Quarterly. Their helpful presentation really shed light on what goes on behind the scenes at a peer-reviewed journal. In this post I will recap Grasso's advice for submitting a scholarly journal article.

Grasso outlined the general procedure for publishing in a scholarly journal and specified when the process at the WMQ differed from other journals. In general, the author submits an article to a journal. The journal editor then reads the submission and considers whether or not their journal would publish on the proposed topic.

If the editor believes that the proffered topic could be a good fit for their journal they arrange to send the submission on to the next round: peer review.

Editors ask scholars with expertise in the tendered subject matter to review the piece. The number of reviewers depends on the journal. The WMQ uses 3-5 referees and asks them to complete their review within 6-8 weeks.

Grasso mentioned that all referees take their job seriously and spend hours looking over and commenting on a piece; journals do not pay referees for their time. With that said, he mentioned that some scholars can be severe critics, but if authors can take the criticism, they will find that they can use even the harshest feedback to their advantage as they revise and resubmit their work.

Once the editor receives feedback from all the referees, they decide whether or not to publish the article, reject it, or offer the author the opportunity to revise and resubmit. Grasso stressed that referees do not "cast a vote" as to whether or not an article should be published, that decision lies solely with the editor. Editors base their decision on whether or not they agree with the referees' feedback.

Before giving the article and his decision back to the author, Grasso reads and distills the referees' feedback so he can tell the author exactly what they need to revise in order to publish in the WMQ. He feels that this guidance is important, especially as the WMQ allows authors to revise and resubmit only once.

Grasso mentioned that The William and Mary Quarterly receives about 100 submissions a year, that 50-75 percent of the submissions move on to the peer review process, and of those he publishes about 12 percent. Of course, this last number depends on how many authors revise and resubmit their pieces to the journal.

Grasso aims to keep the initial review process to 3 months, but it can take up to 4 or 5 months. Once accepted, The William and Mary Quarterly moves fast and authors can expect to see their work in print within about 6 months.

Grasso also provided useful advice for submitting scholarly articles.

First, authors need to read and conform to the submission guidelines for their chosen journal.

Second, if authors receive a revise and resubmit decision and remain unclear about what they need to revise for publication, they should email the editor and ask for clarification. Grasso warned that asking for clarification does not mean that authors should ask editors to review their revision plan; most editors have too much to do to read revision proposals.

How to Write and Publish Scholarly Book Reviews

Please note that Karin Wulf now serves as the Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and Brett Rushforth as book review editor for the William and Mary Quarterly. At a recent talk, Chris Grasso and Karin Wulf discussed how to publish scholarly articles and book reviews. Wulf serves as the Book Review Editor for The William and Mary Quarterly. From this position, she offered an enlightening perspective on how to publish scholarly book reviews.

Wulf encouraged the audience to look at book reviews as opportunities rather than as obligations.

Book reviews give scholars the chance to get noticed. Through a review, readers become acquainted with both the reviewed book and the book reviewer. Book reviews serve as the last step in the peer review process; they offer the last formal piece of scholarly conversation about the contribution of a particular scholar.

Wulf mentioned that book reviews are read more often than journal articles because they allow scholars to access the most recent scholarship in a matter of minutes. Moreover, book reviews have longevity.

Scholars read reviews long after publishers release a book. For example, Wulf mentioned that Richard Dunn's October 1999 review of Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone is the most frequently accessed piece for the WMQ. For published pieces after 1999, the distinction goes to Peter Coclanis's review of Ira Berlin's The Captivity of a Generation. Wulf recommended the latter piece as an example of a great book review.

Wulf spent some time addressing the ethics of reviewing.

First, scholars should review books only when they think they can be fair.

Everyone understands that reviewing is not an impartial business, but scholars should avoid reviewing books that are too closely related to their work; these reviews often become essays about why the reviewed book is not as good as the reviewer's book.

Scholars should also avoid reviewing the work of close colleagues and friends.

Wulf suggested that reviewers consult the American Historical Association website for the ethical standards of the profession; H-Net Reviews offers a summarized version here. Someone in the audience offered the National Book Critics Circle as another resource with useful guidelines for reviewing.

Wulf also discussed how book reviews in The William and Mary Quarterly differ from other journals. The WMQ publishes lengthy reviews of at least 1200 words for a single book, many of the reviews run 1500-1700 words. The WMQ only considers reviews written by scholars with a doctorate.

Wulf encouraged junior scholars to be proactive and seek out book review editors at journals and on-line forums like H-Net Reviews. In their e-mails, scholars should provide the editor with a brief introductory note about who they are and the kinds of books they would like to review. Scholars should also attach a CV to their e-mail.

For those content to wait until book reviewers discover them, Wulf mentioned that she knows several book review editors who keep an eye out for savvy reviewers on H-Net Reviews and by reading book reviews in other journals.

Descriptive Writing: Detail in Word Choice

How would Abraham C. Cuyler, an 18^th-century loyalist from Albany, describe Sarah Palin?

On Tuesday night I attended a writing seminar called “Eye of the Beholder: Crafting Character through Description.” The course synopsis advertised that participants would focus “on using description in a selective manner to develop characterization.” I took this class to improve on how I use detail and words to paint vivid images of the past.

Instructor Kim Freeman led her 6 course participants in a discussion of First- and Third-Person narration. We paid particular attention to the 3 different types of Third-Person narrators:

• Close: Tells a story in the Third Person, but with a First-Person perspective.
• Omniscient: The narrator stands outside of the story & they know everything that will happen. (Charles Dickens preferred Third-Person omniscient narrators.)
• Limited: The narrator does not know everything. They stick with one character for a while and then linger around another character. (Virginia Woolf often used Third-Person limited narrators.)

With a better understanding of narration, my 5 classmates and I spent 20 minutes writing about a character we like and a character we dislike. I chose to write about Abraham C. Cuyler as a character I like. A man of principle, Cuyler supported the British Crown during the Revolution and in the process lost his community, property, and political office (Mayor of Albany). As a historian, I try to stay objective about the people I study. It felt wrong to write negatively about one of my historical characters, so I chose Sarah Palin, a present-day figure who drives me crazy. (With hindsight I realize that I should have had the same cautious reaction about writing positively about one of my historical subjects.)

After our descriptive writing exercise, Kim had us set aside our work while she led us through a literary analysis of snippets from Henry James’ [amazon_link id="B0084AY3UG" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]The American[/amazon_link] (1877), Paul Fox’s [amazon_link id="039331894X" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Desperate Characters[/amazon_link] (1970), Diane Ackerman’s [amazon_link id="0679735666" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]A Natural History of the Senses[/amazon_link] (1990), Jhumpa Lahiri’s [amazon_link id="039592720X" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Interpreter of Maladies[/amazon_link] (1999), William Faulkner’s [amazon_link id="0393931382" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]As I Lay Dying[/amazon_link] (1930), Audre Lourde’s [amazon_link id="0895941228" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Zami: A New Spelling of My Name[/amazon_link] (1982), and Patricia Hampl’s “The Dark Art of Description” in The Iowa Review (Spring 2008).

Our analysis revealed that narrators have character and that everyone (author, narrator, and characters) has a filter. We filter the world we see through the attributes that make us who we are. To reinforce this point, Kim asked us to have the character we like describe the character we dislike. Hence: How would Abraham C. Cuyler describe Sarah Palin?

If I had been an omniscient narrator, I would have known that Kim planned to have us do this exercise. As I did not, I struggled to find a way to make it work. Cuyler spoke English, Dutch, & French. He loved his King and country and he participated in the fur trade. Using this information, I tried to describe Palin.

Cuyler would have found Palin out of place, an outspoken woman. From Cuyler’s point of view she could not be trusted; Palin lived in Alaska where she might have made “bons amis” with the Imperial Court of Russia. Moreover, Cuyler would have disliked Palin’s talk of “liberty” and “freedom” from government intervention. In Cuyler’s eyes the British were the freest people in the world; the English Constitution, history, and their “most gracious sovereign” made sure of that. I also scrawled a line about how Palin’s Alaskan experiences made her rustic—Cuyler may have lived in the frontier, but he would have viewed himself as refined.

Kim’s technique of using characters to describe other characters helped me to select great descriptive words. The best descriptive words multi-task; I don't have to tell you what Cuyler wore because I used the word “refined.” As a descriptive word, "refined" evokes the image of well-dressed. My use of “bons amis" conveyed the knowledge that Cuyler spoke French. Along with “refined” my readers should infer that Cuyler possessed education.

I love details and I will admit that I use a lot of them in my writing. However, “Character through Description” taught me that I can reveal many details just by choosing the right descriptive words. Writing about characters from another character’s perspective, or about scenes from the perspective of a character, helps place authors in the mindset they need to discover the right descriptive words.

Even historians can take advantage of this technique. We read letters and journals; we know what newspapers and books the people we study read. We often know about our subjects' occupations and education. Historians learn the details that shape character. We may not know exactly how a person would have described another person or interpreted a scene, but we can extrapolate and infuse what we do know to get into a subject's mindset. This will help us create a representational example of how they might have interpreted the people and places around them and in the process we will use approximately the same descriptive words they would have used.

What Do You Think?

Details make great stories, but details can be more than just facts. Words create detail.

Have you ever tried a similar technique to improve your writing? Did it work? Please share by leaving a comment.

*Photo of Sarah Palin courtesy of Therealbs2002