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Recommendation Report for Inklings

Juliana Nagliati, Gina Stephens, Katie Camire

J. Travis Washburn, Author

June 2013

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Table of Contents

Our goal 4

Audience 4

Appealing to audience 5

Step 1: Appealing to audience through applicability 9

Step 2:Appealing to audience through structure 12

Final Result 15

Summary 17

Tables and Graphics

Table 1 – Break down of pieces into style groups 5

Graphic 1 – Basic plot structure 6

Graphic 2 – Compound plot structure 6

Graphic 3 – Travis plot structure 7

Graphic 4 – Compound Travis plot structure 7

Table 2 – Pieces cut 11

Graphic 5 – Fragile Things table of contents 13

Table 3 – Inklings new order of contents 15

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Abstract

In this report, we examine Inklings and how it could appeal to an audience more. We define the work’s

audience as late young adult (about 17 to 25 years old). We chose this audience because we felt that

most of the pieces appealed to this age group. In order to appeal even more to the audience, we

present that the work of Inklings overall should be structured with the same tension building plot as an

individual piece is expected to be structured. In order to achieve this structure we determined the

ultimate goal of Inklings is to answer the question “Why am I writing?” The answer being: “To convey

understanding.” Following this theme we cut pieces that don’t appeal directly to audience, cut pieces

that counteract the rising tension of the plot structure, and reorganize the remaining pieces. These

remaining pieces are organized not only according to tension, but also according to the sub-categories,

“I am writing to preserve memories and tell a story” and “I am writing to convey my knowledge, ideas,

and understanding.” In conclusion, we suggest that making the defined changes will increase Inklings’

appeal to the late young adult audience by giving the book a clear, specific purpose.

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Our goal

While reading your manuscript, we really identified with this quote from a creative nonfiction style

guide, "For many writers, writers in all genres, clarity falls victim to a desire to achieve other things, to

dazzle with style or to bombard with information.” We loved so many of your individual pieces, but

overall, we felt overwhelmed by the different ideas and complexities of thought.

So, our goal is to achieve the next part of the same quote, “With good writing the reader enjoys a

doubleness of experience, succumbing to the story or the ideas while also enjoying the writer's

artfulness" (Kidder and Todd 157). Our goal is to take your work and transform it into something new,

exciting, and less overbearing. Imagine: Lord J Travis Washburn’s next great masterpiece.

Audience

While there are several other directions we could take this review, your audience became our main

concern after speaking to you on the phone. As we spoke with you, we got the impression you were

unsure of who you expected to read your book. From what you said, we noticed three possible

audiences.

1. The “avid reader” or individuals who enjoy thinking and reading complex works.

2. Readers who have read Ecksdots and want more of J Travis Washburn. (We imagine this

audience as being the younger side of Young Adult readers.)

3. The adult “avid reader” audience interested in the English world.

The conflict we find within these audiences as a whole is that the demands or needs of each audience

varies, especially in their reading levels and cognitive thinking.

In our search to determine which audience we envisioned reading your book, we went through Inklings

and categorized your pieces in two ways:

1. By genre of writing

2. Level of complexity

*In the key we also mention theme. Stay tuned. We’ll expand on this idea.*

From reviewing the following table, we decided that the majority of your work targets an older Young

Adult audience (about 17 to 25 years old). This audience will allow us to include some of your more

complex pieces, your easier reads, and many of your short poems.

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KEY:

Red pieces are advanced pieces that we thought the average person would have a hard time understanding or would lose interest in as they read. Blue pieces were one-liners or picture-based pieces that we thought may distract your audience from your overall theme. Green pieces were things that didn’t belong to you or distracted from your overall theme.

NOTE: These were our initial impressions as we reviewed your book after we read through it completely. We LOVED so many of your pieces, and still kept many of them in this version of your manuscript. This exercise is simply to show you our first impressions.

Essays Poetry Faction

1. On Understanding 2. Adventure in DC 3. On the Cloud, perhaps 4. Sharing the light 5. The Broken Hallelujah 6. On the Demise…paper book 7. What it takes to write a novel 8. Silence amplifies the Light 9. My first 911 call 10. CS Lewis and Philip Pullman 11. The Way, The Truth, The Light 12. The Blanketed Messenger 13. Four sublime words 14. To my students 15. MNMLST Emotions 16. Dad’s Kemo Stories 17. How to structure a Novel’s plot 18. Dialogue on RR 19. Atypicalgojiday 20. Sieve, Empathy, & how to… 21. A summary of Mimesis… 22. On abstract language 23. Why Write 24. Summary of RR criticism 25. Asteroid 26. Summary of Author-centric

cr… 27. Renovating… literary paradigm 28. On things you never say 29. Elementary school memory 30. Bleeding from the head 31. No other smile 32. Still and small 33. Lois Lowry

34. Distaste of vegetarians 35. Mindful 36. Intentionally-left-blank 37. Ph D 38. Lucid waker 39. Turtle years 40. Riddle 41. Forehead Scrimshaw 42. Lots of poems 43. Poetry 44. Thesaurus Rex 45. Untitled 1 46. The No-Crumb Rule 47. Smithy 48. Aspire 49. Bazalel 50. Hyde 51. Untitled 2 52. Co-mes-ti-ble 53. Untitled 3 54. I don’t even write poetry 55. Intravenous 56. J 57. Le Letterateur… 58. Poor Greenland 59. --gress 60. Slaughtehouse five 61. Wordsmith 62. A Eulogy for a paper 63. Tenure 64. Titled 65. Some People think 66. Chi Ro 67. Rich young Ruler 68. Pet Peeves 69. Ever notice your feet are…? 70. Untitled 4

71. This is a Funny Story 72. Prophetic Dream 73. Vinny C 74. Dog Food 75. Love Haley

Creative Nonfiction Fiction Others

76. One fateful phone call 77. A trip. To the dentist.

78. First Expedition of Vistar and..

79. Apocalypse Man

80. Sir Isaac Newton 81. Abraham 2:16 82. showering with an

Author 83. Email from Bentley 84. We are only half

awake 85. Compliments 86. Chile peppers

Table 1 – Break down of pieces into style groups

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Appealing To Audience

In your words, our goal is to “maximize the value [of your book] to the reader” aka your young adult

audience. So, to increase audience appeal, we will be reconstructing the organization of your

manuscript, cutting pieces out, and focusing on a central theme.

While talking with Brother Allen, he explained to us that even within an anthology of short works there

needs to be an overall structure, as well as structure within the individual pieces. He drew the following

diagram on the board:

Graphic 1 is a diagram that you’ve seen before. The basic structure has an introduction, rising action,

climax, and resolution. After reviewing this structure, he introduced this modified structure:

In Graphic 2, the overall structure of the text remains in force, but because your work is an anthology of

shorter pieces, each individual piece also needs that structure in order to hold your audience.

Simultaneously, each piece will also be contributing to the rising tension of the overall theme. In the

words of William Zinsser, “All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. … Whatever it is, it

has to be confronted and solved” (49).

Graphic 1 – Basic plot structure

Graphic 2 – Compound plot structure

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Or, an alternative way of thinking uses the plot structure you presented in your piece “How to Structure

a Novel’s Plot”. We need to present each piece in a way that the reader can recognize, confront, and

solve the core theme. Using your own ideas on plot structure, we need your readers to work through

your entire book using this structure—beginning with the hook, and working through the Pledge,

pinchpoint, Turn, pinchpoint, prestige, climax, and finally the Resolution.

However, again, this book is an anthology. So, the overall structure will include mini acts to build the

tension until we reach the grand finale. It will look something like this:

Graphic 3 – Travis plot structure

Graphic 4 – Compound Travis structure

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AN EXAMPLE FROM NEIL GAIMAN’S FRAGILE THINGS

In our research for your manuscript, we read Neil Gaiman’s anthology of short works, called

Fragile Things. We imagine the end result of your manuscript will be similar to Gaiman’s book,

as both are collections of short stories, essays, and works of poetry from a single author.

After reading his book, we went back to find his theme and compare the structure Brother Allen

gave us to Gaiman’s structure.

His theme was to get readers to reflect upon the supernatural and what the writer’s role is in

telling stories., Gaiman defamiliarizes old tales to help us consider his role as the story teller

reinventing the idea of the supernatural. We have to stop and think about his new ideas and

how our views have been altered.

AN EXAMPLE FROM INKLINGS

One of our research books, On Writing Well, stated the following to explain the importance of

having only one thought to focus your book on. It said:

As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction should leave

the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two

thoughts, or five—just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the

reader’s mind. It will not only give you a better idea of what route you should follow and

what destination you hope to reach; it will affect your decision about tone and attitude.

(53)

As we reviewed Inklings, we decided to refer to your two favorite pieces that you mentioned

you wanted to keep—“On Understanding” and “My Washington D.C. Adventure, in Six Parts”—

to see if we could find a common theme and how it applied the rest of your pieces.

In reviewing “My Washington D.C. Adventures, in Six Parts,” we thought the speaker is trying to

find something he couldn't name, but he knew he was looking for it the whole time. The story,

although slow, seems to build up to this climax and finally in the end it is resolved.

In “On Understanding,” the author is trying to explain why he writes and how that gives him

purpose and understanding. The essay is basically a debate building up to what his purpose is as

a writer and how he can find it and accomplish it. By the end of the essay, we learn that the

purpose is that perhaps the reader will never reach the tension release because the writer

cannot find it; and if the writer cannot find it, then how can they show the reader. But in sharing

with the reader the quest for understanding, perhaps the writer has succeeded, because they

made the reader think.

We came to the conclusion that the question you were trying to answer is “Why am I writing?”

In both “My Washington D.C. Adventures, in Six Parts” and “On Understanding” you seem to be

searching for something. Sometimes you are unable to find it, while other times you find it only

to learn that there is more to be found and shared.

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HOW TO APPEAL TO AUDIENCE

A brief overview of our plan to help you convey your theme of “Why am I writing?” and thus increase

audience appeal is as follows:

Step 1: Delete pieces

1. That don’t directly appeal to audience

2. That don’t appeal to overall structure

Step 2: Reorganize remaining pieces to emphasize central thought

Step 1: Appealing to audience through applicability

WHAT CRITICS SAY ABOUT AUDIENCE APPEAL

Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd said, "The image that calls attention to itself is often the image you can

do without" (162). Most of your pieces are brilliantly written, however, some of them, though they

contribute to the goal of your book, contain ideas that may be too hard for your audience to process.

"Nothing is more boring than confusion (...) the reader is always in danger of confusion" (Kidder, Todd

162). You don't want the readers to be confused or bored; you need to engage them. All of your pieces

need to be unified in purpose, theme, and clarity to guide the reader through the text.

AN EXAMPLE FROM NEIL GAIMAN’S FRAGILE THINGS

Neil Gaiman wrote Fragile Things for adults who enjoy fantasy. All of his pieces in the book carry the

theme identified earlier. His language and structure are simple and clear while still engaging the

readers. Here's an excerpt from one of his poems "Inventing Aladdin":

In bed with him that night, like

every night,

her sister at their feet, she ends

her tale,

then waits. Her sister quickly

takes her cue,

and says, 'I cannot sleep. Another,

please?'

Scheherazade takes one small

nervous breath

and she begins, 'In faraway

Peking

there lived a lazy youth with his

mama.

His name? Aladdin. His papa was

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dead….'

She tells them how a dark

magician came,

claiming to be his uncle, with a

plan (365)

His language is simple but it accomplishes its goal to engage the audience, and the theme of the poem

fits with the theme of his entire book.

AN EXAMPLE FROM INKLINGS

As it has been explained before, the many of the pieces cut from the manuscript don’t appeal directly to

the young adult audience. Following is an example of a poem from Inklings that doesn’t appeal to most

young adults.

Littérateurs is as good a word

as any

A group charmed

by someone else’s cleverness, and

so wanting

or striving to achieve the same

Striving, or crawling

But my

dreams are fiction

And I was never particularly

fond of his—

I mean Perelandra,

not that wonderful divorce

And if

I put line

breaks here and there

they’ll call it poetry and

applaud (Le Littérateur Mal Fet)

While the level of thinking in this poem isn’t too high, the allusions in the poem probably won’t make

sense to many readers. If a reader doesn’t understand it can be a turn off, and it will be harder for them

to get through the book. For this reason we cut many pieces that had higher levels of thinking (such as

literary essays) and pieces with allusions most readers won’t understand (like this poem).

HOW TO IMPROVE AUDIENCE APPEAL IN INKLINGS

You want your manuscript to follow Gaiman's book as a model. But, as it is right now some of your

pieces appeal to young adults, others to adults, and others to English majors. Since we have narrowed

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your audience down to later young adults, in order to accomplish our goal of engaging the audience we

need to cut out pieces that won't appeal to them.

Here's a table with the pieces we recommend you cut out from the manuscript based on immediate

audience appeal and structure:

Cut

Audience Structure

Le Litterateur Mal Fet Sir Isaac Newton*

The Broken Hallelujah Untitled (1)

Slaughterhouse-Five I don't even write poetry.

The Way, The Truth, and The Life Intravenous

C.S. Lewis and Phillip Pullman Go Head to Head J

Four Sublime Words Poor Greenland

MNMLST Emotions My first 911 Call

How to Structure a Novel's Plot Abraham 2:16

A Dialogue on Reader Response Showering with an Author

The Sieve, Empathy, and Hot to Write… Pet Peeves

A Summary of Mimesis Let Me Tell You About Lois Lowry

On Abstract Language Chile Pepper

A Summary of Reader Response Criticism The First Expedition of Vistar and Nnoroc

A Summary of Author-Centric Criticism Compliments

Bezalel* Vinny (cent)

Renovating the Literary Paradigm Forehead Scrimshaw

Poetry

Thesaurus Rex

The No-Crumb Rule

Smithy

Asteroid

Aspire

On the Things You Never Say

Untitle (3) (switch back)

Bleeding from the Head

Ex

No Other Smile

Untitled (4)

comestible

The Distaste of Vegetarians

Re: In Praise of the Bentley

Proverbs 4:7*

We Are Only Half Awake*

Table 2 – Pieces cut

*We felt that these pieces contributed well to the theme of your book, but that they would be better

included at the beginning of other pieces than standing on their own.

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Step 2: Appealing to audience through structure

WHAT CRITICS SAY ABOUT STRUCTURE

William Zinsser said, “Unity is the anchor of good writing. … Unity not only keeps the reader from

straggling off in all directions, it satisfies the readers’ subconscious need for order and reassures them

that all is well at the helm” (50). Structure pulls in your audience and gives them something to look

forward too, but in order to have a good structure, you need to have an overall theme to emphasize and

work towards.

With one unifying theme in mind, we cut pieces that don’t appeal to structure and want organize your

remaining pieces in a way that builds tension towards one ultimate goal. Zinsser also said this about

organization and tension:

Learning how to organize a long article is just as important as learning how to write a clear and

pleasing sentence. All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don’t keep

remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together,

that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the

next and from one section to the next, and that narrative—good old-fashioned storytelling—is

what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug. The only thing they should

notice is that you have made a sensible plan for your journey. Every step should seem

inevitable. (266)

Your journey should end with the resolution of finally finding the answer to the question you have

worked towards for the entire book, but you also need to make sure that the first step is right as well. As

Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd said, "Beginnings are an exercise in limits. You can't make the reader love

you in the first sentence or paragraph, but you can lose the reader right away" (137).

You must catch the audience's attention. That can be accomplished by starting the book with a very

strong piece, one that will either get them thinking or laughing enough to make an impression and make

them hungry for more. A final quote from Zinsser on beginnings:

Readers want to know—very soon—what’s in it for them. Therefore your lead must capture the

reader immediately and force him to keep reading. It must cajole him with freshness, or novelty,

or paradox, or humor, or surprise, or with an unusual idea, or an interesting fact or question.

Anything will do, as long as it nudges his curiosity and tugs at his sleeve. (56)

Now that we have a general idea of what kind of structure captures the audience’s attention and

emotion, let’s look at a structure that works.

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AN EXAMPLE OF STRUCTURE FROM NEIL GAIMAN’S FRAGILE THINGS

The following graphics are the table of contents from Neil Gaiman’s book, Fragile Things, a collection of

short stories and poems that Gaiman has written over the years.

In the beginning of the action section, we discussed the overall theme of Gaiman’s book, a theme that

each of these pieces contributes to. Take a look at his last piece, “The Monarch of the Glen.” It is actually

a novella, and you can see by the page numbers that at 57 pages, this is by far the longest piece in his

book. This piece culminates what Gaiman has been trying to get at all along, even if it doesn’t state it

outright.

Now look at Gaiman’s beginning piece, “A Study in Emerald.”Gaiman says in his introduction that he

wrote this piece as a combination of Sherlock Homes and H.P. Lovecraft.

Here are the first few lines of this piece:

It is the immensity, I believe. The hugeness of things below. The darkness of dreams.

But I am woolgathering. Forgive me. I am not a literary man.

Graphic 5 – Fragile Things table of contents

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I had been in need of lodgings. That was how I met him. I wanted someone to share the

cost of rooms with me. We were introduced by a mutual acquaintance, in the chemical

laboratories of St. Bart’s. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,” that was what he said to

me, and my mouth fell open and my eyes opened very wide. (1)

Even though it may be obvious where this is going to one who is familiar with Sherlock Holmes, the first

few lines still capture the readers’ attention. This entire piece is probably the easiest to read and

understand because the narrative is so fast paced, and the tension of the piece is very capturing.

Every piece that is between his first and his last add in tension until the end, with lighter, easier pieces

closer to the beginning, and denser pieces closer to the end. This is how Gaiman achieves his unified,

climactic structure, now we want to help you bring out the structure of your book.

AN EXAMPLE FROM INKLINGS

You’ve included so many fantastic pieces that connect with your theme. Through a revised structure we

want to make sure that the theme is clear enough that reader’s will feel like they’ve found something,

but not so blatant that it doesn’t take thought to find the theme. In order to do this we need to

restructure a little.

Take a look at the first piece of your book. Right now it is “One Fateful Phone Call.” While this piece

shows how your life was altered in a few minutes, it is not the catchiest piece in your book. We need to

find a piece that catches the readers’ attention and really pulls them into the rest of the book.

Now take a look at some of the pieces we suggested you cut because of structure, pieces like “The No-

Crumb Rule,” “Re: In Praise of the Bentley, and “Asteroid.” While we enjoyed these pieces, we felt that

they did not belong in the book because they offered no build in tension or theme.

HOW TO IMPROVE STRUCTURE IN INKLINGS

We know what the central thought of the work is, we’ve cut pieces that don’t appeal to audience, now

we need to organize the remaining pieces to build tension to a climax. Doing so will give the readers a

path to follow, as Zinsser suggests. On the next page is our suggested revised order for Inklings.

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Order

To P

rese

rve/

Tell

A S

tory

This is a Funny Story

Why Write

A Trip. To the Dentist.

Dad's Kemo Stories

Dog Food

Some people think

One Fateful Phone Call

Wordsmith

The Blanketed Messenger

Prophetic Dream

The Rich Young Ruler

Atypicalgojiday

Hyde

Elementary School Memory

Turtle Years

Riddle

The Apocalypse Man

Lot of poems

Tenere: Latin

Love Haley

Still and Small

To C

on

vey

Idea

s/K

no

wle

dge

/Un

de

rsta

nd

ing

Titled

On the Cloud, Perhaps

Ever notice your feet

On the Demise of the Paper Book

A Eulogy for Paper

Chi Rho

What it Takes to Write a Novel

Mindful

To My Students

Ph.D.

- gress

Untitled (2)

Sharing the Light

The Silence Amplifies the Light

DC Adventure

Lucid Waker

intentionally left blank

On Understanding

Table 3 – Inklings new order of contents

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Beginning

We organized your pieces this way in order to ask and answer the question: “Why am I writing?” The

first five pieces characterize the first section of the book. Consider this the “I’m writing to preserve my

thoughts and to share stories” “section” (The section isn’t clearly defined, but provides a little more

organization for the pieces, because there are many pieces in you book that convey a message through

story). The first piece, “This is a Funny Story,” we chose because it is an attention grabber. It’s a new

idea, and presented well.

The next four pieces we included in the beginning characterize this step in the journey of considering

“Why am I writing?” They include stories that explain why you started writing, and many of them are

amusing, which grabs the reader’s attention. These pieces work in the beginning because they introduce

the question you are asking, and attempt answers.

Middle

The rest of the pieces in the first “section” lead into a sort of climax around the pieces of “The

Apocalypse Man,” “Love Haley,” and “Still and Small.” These pieces have the most emotional impact out

of the stories included, and they also border the next answer to the question “Why am I writing?” (This

isn’t to say that the pieces included in this section don’t convey meaning or understanding, and the line

between the two sections is very fuzzy).

End

The next section focuses on writing to convey knowledge and understanding. This section builds to the

last few major pieces, “Sharing the Light,” ” My Washington D.C. Adventure,” and “On Understanding.”

These final pieces finally answer the question being asked throughout the book, with Washington D.C.

offering the final climax and “On Understanding” offering the resolution of having an answer to “Why

am I writing?” The answer being, “To convey understanding.”

Together, the structure of organization gives the reader the feeling of the journey that Zinsser talked

about. The first pieces hook the reader and ask the question, the middle pieces offer “inevitable” steps

that will lead to an ultimate answer, and the final pieces answer the question. All the pieces work

together to contribute to the journey of understanding that you have invited the reader to take with

you.

Final result

By cutting pieces that have a higher level of thinking, Inklings will appeal to the later young adult

audience. This will mean that more readers who pick up Ecksdot will be more likely to pick up and read

through Inklings.

Also, by creating a tension building structure and cutting pieces that don’t appeal to that structure,

readers will become more invested in the book. Centering the structure around one specific theme also

helps to bring out a commonality between all your pieces so they work together to answer a question.

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These changes will help your work move away from being a collection of works and move towards being

a combination of works that achieve a specific purpose. In short, these changes to your book will, as you

said you hoped they will, “maximize its value to the reader.”

Summary

We found that the audience for the novel was too broad and needed to be narrowed in order to appeal

to a later young adult audience.

In order to appeal to this audience, we focused on restructuring Inklings in two steps:

Step 1: Cut pieces that don’t appeal to

1. Audience

2. Structure

Step 2: Organize remaining pieces to build tension by centering on the specific question and

answer of “Why am I writing? To convey understanding.”

Restructuring Inklings will help the book appeal to the late young adult audience, and give it a specific

purpose which will pull the readers along. With the changes we’ve suggested your work will move away

from being a collection of works and move towards being a combination of works that achieve a specific

purpose. We hope that, in the end, these suggestions for Inklings will, as you said you, “maximize its

value to the reader.”

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Works Cited

Gaiman, Neil. Fragile Things. HarperCollins Publisher. New York. 2007.

Kidder, Tracy and Richard Todd. Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction . Random House Publishing. New

York. 2013.

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. HarperCollins Publisher. New York. 2001.