Abstract
The essay genre differs from other forms of writing by focusing on a specific topic that is discussed through personal experiences. Philip Lopate’s To Show and Tell explains the different ways authors portray their message in these creative nonfiction essays on a specific issue dear to them. However, the author still needs to establish why they are credible enough to discuss the issue. The most prevalent strategies used by authors to establish credibility are utilizing the flow of consciousness to go from experience to experience, building a character, and using style to create a setting that shows they know what they are talking about. After explaining Lopate’s reasoning on why these strategies are so powerful, an analysis is done on two cultural commentaries on how the authors use the strategies. The two cultural commentaries are “The Wild, Sublime Body” by Melissa Febos and “The Broken Country” by Molly McCully Brown.
The Aristotelian appeals are a cornerstone of writing instruction. This essay focuses specifically on ethos, or, how the author establishes credibility. In current traditional writing pieces, this includes listing the writers’ credentials and articulating their experience with the topic. However, in the creative nonfiction essay, this shifts a bit. Phillip Lopate is a key figure in the field of creative nonfiction. After reading different excerpts from Lopate’s To Show and Tell, I have determined that the best way to establish ethos/credibility in creative nonfiction essays is through utilizing three different strategies: utilizing the flow of consciousness to go from experience to experience, building a character, and using style to create a setting that shows they know what they are talking about.
Before unpacking these strategies, let us define the essay genre and discuss why building credibility is important. There is one thing that holds all essays together: the topic. While they do not all share the same topic, each has a central topic that the author introduces and anchors their thoughts. The topic never changes, and the topic could be broad, like how Melissa Febos writes about body image in “The Wild, Sublime Body,” or narrow, like how Molly McCully Brown writes about disabled persons having sex in “The Broken Country.” Due to these essays being grounded in a central topic, the author needs to establish why their voice and their opinions matter on this topic. This is where the establishment of ethos is important. An author’s credibility is their response to someone asking, “Why should we listen to what you have to say about this topic?” Before moving on to analyzing the two essays previously mentioned, let us define and explain the three strategies for establishing ethos previously mentioned
The first strategy of establishing ethos comes through following the flow of consciousness. Lopate writes about how nonfiction thrives off of following the author’s “unpredictable mind as it struggles to entangle and disentangle itself in a thorny problem” (Lopate 6). This is seen as the consciousness of the author. The author follows their mind, leading them towards understanding a specific problem. In creative nonfiction, this is seen more often as the author talks about several personal experiences that relate to the topic at large. The personal experiences give the author credibility towards the topic since they prove they have experience with it and are part of the community being discussed.
Along with personal experiences, Lopate also mentions how turning oneself into a character can enhance the credibility of the piece. Lopate advocates for using first-person pronouns in essays because it makes the essay more engaging, but the problem is that the reader does not know who the author is. Essays thrive off of connection, and the author cannot set up how credible they are about the topic if they come off as a disembodied voice. So, Lopate suggests establishing a character by setting up a way to see “habits and actions” (Lopate 18) occur, as those give insight into the character. Character creation enhances an author’s credibility by giving the readers someone to connect with. If the reader can connect with the author, the reader is more likely to view the author as a credible source for this topic. So, when looking for how an author characterizes themselves, we want to see them providing the necessary details to picture the character and provide a set of actions and habits that help us visualize how this character may feel and act.
However, the emphasis of the author’s words does not come from just talking about personal experiences or creating a character. The style that the author uses helps emphasize their points. Lopate quotes Donna Seaman’s definition to emphasize the importance of stylistic writing in essays: “Creative nonfiction allows the nonfiction writer to use literary techniques usually used by fiction writers, such as scene-setting, description, dialogue, action, suspense, plot. All those things that make terrific short stories and novels allow the nonfiction writer to tell the stories in the most cinematic and dramatic way possible. That’s creative nonfiction” (Lopate 5). The stories are told dramatically, and the author can emphasize the parts of their story that they believe are the most important. The stylistic writing enhances the reception of the personal experiences and the character-building, which helps solidify the author’s credibility.
The first essay, “The Wild, Sublime Body,” by Melissa Febos, comments on body image, ranging from the human body, her body, and society’s expectations of her body. Her piece flows through the different experiences she highlights. For example, Febos laments the fact that her “man hands,” the same hands that her mother had, do not fit the ideal body image. Additionally, she comments on society and her experiences after mentioning them to establish her credibility and create a character. Her personal experiences tie into one another to create this character that has body image issues: a character that hid her body; one that became self-conscious; one that broke out of society’s chains by connecting with other people, such as her previous girlfriends. By creating a character through her personal experiences, Febos aids in establishing her credibility to discuss this topic because it provides relatability for the readers to connect to. If the readers find her more relatable, they are more likely to find her more credible.
Throughout her essay, Febos utilizes descriptive writing, different fonts and sizes, and punctuation to emphasize her points. Descriptive writing is the most obvious form of stylistic writing, and there are tons of examples of her using that, like when she mentions how “the trees hummed with insects [and] the air [was] hazy with pollen” (Febos). However, Febos thrives through using different fonts/sizes and messing with punctuation/forms of emphasis. For example, she uses a different font to pace her essay and indicate when she moves from one experience to another. She also uses a different-sized font that is isolated from the rest of the essay by two lines to emphasize points that she wants to get across, like the line “My body, though fickle, was starvable, concealable, subject to the reconfiguration of desire” (Febos). She only does this twice in the essay, which helps because she finds a balance of utilizing style to emphasize points without overdoing it and making the piece busy. Additionally, she utilizes punctuation when she wants to emphasize quotes/dialogue that mean a lot to her. She also uses italics when explaining her innermost thoughts, like telling her body, “I love you” (Febos). Her different uses of stylistic writing enhance her personal experiences and the character she creates. Those, in turn, help the readers connect with her, which aids in building her credibility. On top of that, her use of different forms of punctuation, fonts, and sizes mimics how every person’s body varies, so her style of writing mimics the diversity of human bodies. This adds an extra layer to her essay, making it more credible.
Similarly, in “The Broken Country,” an essay about how disabled people can have sex and should not be infantilized, Molly McCully Brown utilizes personal experiences and flow of consciousness to drive her sentiment forward. Every experience she mentions is related to how disabled people are viewed in and out of the bedroom and details her experiences with emotion. As she delivers her innermost thoughts, she enhances her experiences and credibility by building a character: a that is sick of being infantilized; a character that can have sex and is also disabled; a character that knows disability does not take away from her experiences. The character and personal experiences provide real experiences for readers to connect to, which helps them to trust Brown’s credibility.
Brown enhances her credibility through her style. Unlike Febos, she does not use different fonts or sizes. However, like Febos, she uses punctuation and forms of emphasis to drive her essay forward. Brown separates her experiences using two small lines, helping the readers know when they are moving to another experience and ensuring everything flows smoothly. Brown uses dashes to interrupt her flow of thoughts, embodying through text the unpredictability of being disabled and enhancing the character she builds. She utilizes the dashes to provide context and explain herself. In messing with the flow, she showcases how disabled people have to constantly add more context and explain themselves to be understood. For example, Brown explains how she “playacted at desire often,” and she interrupts it with a dash to give examples, which is then interrupted with another dash following feelings of shame since she “couldn’t afford” to love and lust like that. Brown also uses italics when she mentions dialogue and her innermost thoughts to differentiate them from the rest of the essay. Unlike Febos, who only used italics for her thoughts, Brown uses them for other people’s words and her thoughts. She does this to put her thoughts on equal footing with what people say, even if she struggles with speaking up. She wanted to establish that she was equal to “normal” people. The essay is about how disabled people can have sex, but the undertone of it all is that disabled people are just like everyone else, and Brown does an amazing job of showcasing that through her stylistic writing.
Febos and Brown do an excellent job of establishing credibility through the three strategies discussed. Their essays thrive when they connect the strategies to one another and enhance their experiences and character through stylistic writing. Febos uses stylistic writing to mimic the diversity of human bodies while Brown uses style to mimic the unpredictability and chaos that come with being disabled. Both essays are beautiful pieces that showcase the intricacies of creative nonfiction writing and how credibility can be established through three strategies: utilizing the flow of conciseness to go from experience to experience, building a character, and using style to create a setting that shows they know what they are talking about.