Matt Taflinger
Research
Reflective Writing
The least useful piece out of the three narratives was Lewin’s Diary of the Great Deportation. I thought the narrative was bland and boring to read. Although the piece was very descriptive, the use of imagery was lacking. Octavia Butler’s Kindred opened a whole new door to the possibilities of historical research narrative. The piece offered a totally different way to write a historical narrative. Although the piece didn’t directly affect the writing of my narrative, it did make me think of how I should approach my historical event. Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers gave me an example of how to incorporate pictures and art into a historical narrative. Again, I didn’t use this technique in my narrative, but the graphics made it clear that imagery is important when it comes to writing a historical narrative.
When deciding on the point of view I was to write from, I thought about all the different types of people that were involved in the Haitian hurricane. After writing down each kind of person that I thought was involved, I began to think about how I could relate to each one. I picked the one I could relate to the most, a relief worker. Although I never worked as a relief worker, I thought it would be easy for me to write in the perspective of an American in Haiti helping the ravaged citizens. This point of view interested me because of how I could develop my character from the start of the narrative to the end. I really only struggled with this point of view when trying to establish the characters basic traits and attributes.
Since the event I chose happened so recently, it was difficult to find information in places other than the Internet. Even the Internet information on the event was minimal and consistently the same from source to source. Researching and writing about this event really made me feel very sympathetic about the Haitian earthquake and hurricane. To have two awful tragedies occur in such a small time period is horrible. I guess the scale of the Haitian earthquake wasn’t as clear to me before as it is now.
My knowledge of researching before the project began was very good. The library catalog at Western Michigan University is much larger but similar to the one at my high school. I always knew that most the sources on the Internet were not credible, and finding reliable sources usually consisted of searching the library catalog. I learned how much of the Internet isn’t suitable for a formal research project, and just how much you need to rely on the library. Since my event took place not so long ago I had to find all of my information on the Internet. There wasn’t any useful information in print that I could have used. This obviously presented a problem for me. The only thing I could really do was try and find as much valid information on the library that I needed. For the most part I integrated the footnotes when I wrote about facts from the Hurricane that was relevant to my piece. I found this process rather easy because it was clear to me when I used a fact or a thought that needed to be footnoted.
I started my first draft with thinking about the life of my character and how I could incorporate his life into the narrative in a clear way. I took all the information I had on the event and put it in front of me to see which facts I should use and when. After I started to write the piece started to develop nicely. I came to my characters voice by thinking about his life and how this disaster would be seen through his eyes. Since I created this character it was my job to know him well enough so that his feelings about the disaster were believable to me. In order to do this I thought about all of the events in my characters life, and how they would impact his feelings throughout the relief work that he did. I struggled in finding a consistent flow to my piece. At times I felt that my piece was really jumbled and not very easy to read. Establishing my characters feelings and thoughts was also difficult in the beginning. I found it easy to write towards the middle of the piece, after my character was established.
Going from rough draft to final draft was the most difficult part. I had to remove things that didn’t fit in to the piece as a whole. I added much more background information on my character. I did this because after reading my peers narratives I felt that I had a better feeling for their character from the start than I did after reading mine. I also tried to change the tone of my piece, mostly because I thought that at first my tone wasn’t easily identifiable.
