Module 1- Essay

The essay is a form of writing that you will always employ. Remember the formal themes (sulatin) that you
composed and revised in your English and Filipino classes. The skill that you learned came in handy when you were
asked to write essays as part of your exam for other subjects such as Science and Araling Panlipunan. After
graduation, you will need to write an admission essay as required by universities in selecting applicants. You will write
more reviews and reaction papers. You will write more research papers. When you apply for a job, chances are, you
will be required to write an employment essay to detail your experiences and qualifications.

The word essay was adapted from the French literary corpus when 16th century philosopher Michel de
Montaigne described his writings as "attempts." Montaigne began composing his essays in 1572 and published his
two-volume collection entitled Essais in 1580. From France, the essay form went to England, through 16th century
philosopher Francis Bacon's Essayes. However, the French word originated from the Latin verb exigere, which
means "to drive out." And before Montaigne developed the genre, Japanese literature already had zuihitsu. Makura
no Sõshi (“The Pillow Book") by Sei Shōnagon, court lady to Empress Consort Teishi, already had written a few of
these "essays." The court lady started writing her diary at the end of the 10th century. Meanwhile, our term
sanaysay was coined by Modernist Filipino poet and critic Alejandro G. Abadilla in 1938. It is a portmanteau for
a written account of someone who is "sanay sa pagsasalaysay" (skilled in narration).

Essays are divided into four most common forms (description, narration, exposition and
argumentation/persuasion) based on their purpose (called rhetorical modes or mode discourse). In order for
you to flesh out the essay, you need to go back to the binary oppositions in literature fiction versus nonfiction and
prose versus poetry. As you know, prose is any kind of written text that is not poetry (in verse form); that is to say it is
written in paragraphs. The essay is written in prose form. Also, essay is anything prose that is not fiction. But notice,
as you have learned from the previous lessons, there are always gray areas, and hybrids always emerge.

In the preface to the anthology Mga Piling Sanaysay which Abadilla edited in 1950, he classified essays
into critical, satirical, political, social, historical, philosophical, didactic, spiritual, biographic, inspirational,
reminiscent, literary, and humorous. Formal essays are characterized by philosophical, scientific, or
historical treatise. They are impersonal and didactic. On the other hand, informal essays could be as imaginative as
fictional works. Montaigne, who wrote "I confess myself in public," is considered the "Father of Informal Essay."

If you notice, Abadilla divided traditional essays based on style and tone. For example, there is no didactic
essay; just an essay with a didactic tone. Another example is the reminiscent essay. Personal essays like the memoir
are forms of reminiscence, Here, you have already established three elements of essay: the tone is the manner of
approaching a thesis, while the form and structure give a logical arrangement of ideas and events. The tone of your
essay can be formal or personal. It may be diplomatic or sarcastic. Other elements of the essay include the form and
structure which give a logical arrangement of ideas and events. The structure of a narrative has three parts: the
beginning, the middle, and the end. The same format applies in writing an essay. An essay has an introduction, a
body, and a conclusion.

Module 2- Narrative structure

Essay Structure

You have learned that there is one basic structure for all narrative stories-be it prose or poem or drama. All
stories have three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can even map it out on essays. Check out this chart
for comparison.

Beginning Middle End

Fictional work (plot) Exposition Rising Action to Falling Action/

Climax Denouement

Narrative Poetry Beginning Middle End

Drama (One-Act Exposition Rising Action to Falling Action/

 Play) Climax Denouement

Drama (Three-Act Act I Act II Act III

Play) (Setup) (Confrontation) (Resolution)
Exposition Rising Action/Climax Falling
Action/Resolution
Drama (Five-Act Act I Act II-Act III Act IV-Act V
Play) Exposition Rising Action to Falling
Climax Action/Resolution

Essay Introduction Body Conclusion

As with any literary genre, the beginning of an essay-the introduction-is very important. Every card that you
lay on the table, so to speak, will have an effect on the outcome of your story. It will also help the readers follow the
flow of your narrative.

Brevity is important in writing a thesis statement. Even if your introductory paragraph is only one-sentence
thesis statement, if it is crowded with uninteresting words, it will bore your readers, especially if you advertise your
piece as a narrative or literary essay. There are a few strategies that you can employ to make your first paragraph
eye-catching to your readers. Stating questions, for example, gives your readers a chance to contemplate and
connect your theme to their personal encounters. Just make sure that your essay will answer all the questions that
you are going to post.

Here are some styles and samples that you can utilize:

1. Start with (a) question(s).

Is writing the gift of curling up, of curling up with reality? One would so love to curl up, of course, but what
happens to me then? What happens to those, who don't really know reality at all?

- "Sidelined," Elfriede Jelinek's Nobel Lecture (translated from German by Martin Chalmers)

2. Start with a quote.

He seemed a god last night, seated in a red velvet armchair, with his shock of white hair, his beard spread on his
chest, his eyebrows as thick as forests, his hand resting on the head of his cane." This is what today's newspaper
said about Walt Whitman, the patriarch of seventy whom the discerning critics-always the fewer-assign an
extraordinary place in the literature of his country and his time. Not since the sacred books of antiquity has there been
a doctrine comparable in its apocalyptic language and sinewed poetry to that of this old poet whose grandiose and
priestly utterances erupt like sun-bursts through the pages of Leaves of Grass, his astonishing book whose sale is
prohibited.

- "Walt Whitman, the Poet" by Jose Marti (translated by Juan de Onis)

3. Start with an anecdote.

I once heard of a prince, and a great captain, having a narration given him as he sat at table of the proceeding
against Monsieur de Vervins, who was sentenced to death for having surrendered Boulogne to the English, - [To
Henry VIII. in 1544]-openly maintaining that a soldier could not justly be put to death for want of courage. And, in
truth, 'tis reason that a man should make a great difference betwixt faults that merely proceed from infirmity, and
those that are visibly the effects of treachery and malice: for, in the last, we act against the rules of reason that nature
has imprinted in us; whereas, in the former, it seems as if we might produce the same nature, who left us in such a
state of imperfection and weakness of courage, for our justification. Insomuch that many have thought we are not
fairly questionable for anything but what we commit against our conscience; and it is partly upon this rule that those
ground their opinion who disapprove of capital or sanguinary punishments inflicted upon heretics and misbelievers;
and theirs also who advocate or a judge is not accountable for having from mere ignorance failed in his
administration.
- "Of the Punishment of Cowardice" by Michel de Montaigne (translated from French by Charles Cotton)

4. Start with a sound device.

Twit-twit-twit, I always say those words. Twit-twit-twit...

-"Huni" by Aya Santos (translated from Filipino by Mark Angeles)

5. Start with a dialogue

The abductors of Jonas Burgos declared "Pulis kami!" to the mall crowd who were startled by the abduction,
With the two-word mantra, the criminals whisked Jonas away to be added to the statistics of desaparecidos. The
criminals might as well have recited "abrakadabra!" and "poof!" Jonas Burgos disappeared in full public view in a
Metro Manila mall.

-"Abrakadabra!" by Atty. Joel Ruiz Butuyan

6. Start with song lyrics.

Ang pag-iisang dibdib

Ay pagpanday ng pag-ibig
Ito ay wagas na pangakong mag-alay
Ng panahon at buhay
Alang-alang sa iyong minamahal
Ito rin ay kasunduan
Sa iniirog na bayan
Pag-aalay sa kanya
Ng panahon at buhay

- "Romance in the Hills" by Victoria Manalo (from the song "Awit sa Kasal")

7. Start with a vignette or a short impressionistic scene.

The village of Concord, Massachusetts, lies an hour's ride from Boston, upon the Great Northern Railway. It is
one of those quiet New England towns, whose few white houses, grouped upon the plain, make but a slight
impression upon the mind of the busy traveler hurrying to or from the city. As the conductor shouts "Concord!" the
busy traveler has scarcely time to recall "Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill" before the town has vanished and he
is darting through woods and fields as solitary as those he has just left in New Hampshire. Yet as it vanishes he may
chance to "see" two or three spires, and as they rush behind the trees his eyes fall upon a gleaming sheet of water. It
is Walden Pond-or Walden Water, as Orphic Alcott used to call it-whose virgin seclusion was a just image of that of
the little village, until one afternoon, some half-dozen or more years since, a shriek, sharper than any that had rung
from Walden woods since the last war-whoop of the last Indians of Musketaquid, announced to astonished Concord,
drowsing in the river meadows, that the nineteenth century had overtaken it. Yet long before the material force of the
age bound the town to the rest of the world, the spiritual force of a single mind in it had attracted attention to it, and
made its lonely plains as dear to many widely scattered minds as the groves of the Academy or the vineyards of
Vaucluse.

-"Emerson" by George William Curtis

Narrative Techniques in Essay

Saying that the narrative structure is comprised of the beginning, the middle, and the end does not mean
that the flow of your story has to be chronological in order. You can use narrative techniques like in medias res,
flashback, and foreshadowing.
 Module 3- Perspective
You have learned that POV and angle are two elements that appear to have less weight in writing fictional works.
To make matters worse, readers (leisure readers, students, literary critics, etc.) do not inquire about the element
called tone. The situation is understandable. Even in creative writing classes, there are discussions revolving around
the "death of the author." It has nothing to do about a deceased author. There are "theory wars" in literary
departments and circles on the essay by French literary critic Roland Barthes, from which the said presumption
was mentioned. If you are a follower of Barthes, you will argue that, to interpret a text, you must not consider the
motives and limitations of its author. “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text."

Barthes's argument should not be brushed off, especially by a creative writer like you. As a creator and, of
course, a reader, you must decide whose side is more authoritative-if it is the writer's or the reader's. Some authors
give no value to the feedback of their readers. In the practice of creative writing, you do not only write on a whim, or
because or "love it," or because you have a lot of free time. You must learn how to do a close reading and compose
critical analysis on works of literature, however banal they may be. We have a lot of write we have a lot of texts. We
need ones who will interpret those texts. That is your job.

In literature, tone is the approach of the author on his or her writing. Tone is not only set in fictional works. It
is also apparent in essays. Scott Ober, author of Contemporary Business Communication, defined tone as
"the writer's attitude toward the reader and the subject of the message. The overall tone of a written message
affects the reader just as one's tone of voice affects the listener in everyday exchanges."

Tone is as important as other elements in CNF. "Of course," Philip Gerard, co-author of Writing Creating
Nonfiction said, "the author has been with us in every line, in the second way that an author participates in a
nonfiction story: tone." In setting the tone of your writing, you consider diction (choice of words), syntax
(arrangement of words), and. sentence structure (construction of sentences). The tone is evident in the
speaker, dialogue, flow of the story, and actions of each character. Although there is a general tone to a literary work,
the tone may change based on the development of the story, scenes, and the characters.

The narrative voice is the voice of your work's speaker (narrator or persona). It is called authorial voice. That is
why it is important for you to decide on what angle of vision, whose POV your story will be told.

Here is a rundown of the POVS and how you can use them in CNF:

A. First-person POV
Though the literary work is signified by the use of I or we, you have learned from fiction writing that the speaker-
the authorial voice-is not necessarily the main character, or the author himself or herself. Writing in the first person
means that you have to be mindful of the language register of the narrator. Consider, for example, this part from
Alice Walker's epistolary novel The Color Purple:

You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy

Dear God,

I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know
what is happening to me. Last spring after little Lucious come I heard them fussing. He was pulling on her arm. She
says It too soon, Fonso, I ain't well. Finally, he leaves her alone. A week go by, he pulling on her arm again. She says
Naw, I ain't gonna. Can't you see I’m already half dead. an all of these children.

In nonfiction, we expect that the "I" is the author himself or herself. We expect that the work is either
biographical or historical. It is a way to become acquainted with the author. Read this part of G.K. Chesterton's
essay "A Piece of Chalk":

I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I not only liked brown paper, but liked the quality
of brownness in paper, just as I like the quality of brownness in October woods, or in beer Brown paper represents
the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-colored chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it,
sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the fire fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said
(in an off-hand way) to the old woman: and I put the brown paper in my pocket along with the chalks, and possibly
other things. I suppose everyone must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries
in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to
write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great
epics is past. With my stick and my knife, my chalks and my brown paper, I went out on to the great downs…

B. Second-person POV
It is signified by the use of you. Poet Jillian M. Phillips pointed out that "the use of second person-'you'-is rare in
fiction, but is fairly common in poetry." In this case, the "you" is combined with the "I."

Consider this poem:

Full Metal Jacket

Mark Angeles

A pale moth would have alighted

on the crown of your head.
instead of an eyeless bullet.
One smoky night of windless,
unrestrained detonation,
and scattered them to bits
inside the armor of your skull.
someone's gun whispered
and spat the slug to the air,
into the cables of your brain.
No one is safe under heaven.
The culprit could be as innocent
as a harmless pale moth
and yet so full of hatred
even before he pulled the trigger.
That slug, still full metal jacket,
beheld the bursting marvel
imprinted on your mind
No one is safe under heaven.
(for Stephanie Nicole Ella)

Consider this paragraph from Annie Dillard's nonfiction narrative book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

You are a sculptor. You climb a great ladder; you pour grease all over a growing longleaf pine. Next, you
build a hollow cylinder like a cofferdam around the entire pine, and grease its inside walls. You climb your ladder and
spend the next week pouring wet plaster into the cofferdam, over and inside the pine. You wait; the plaster hardens.
Now open the walls of the dam, split the plaster, saw down the tree, remove it, discard, and your intricate sculpture is
ready: this is the shape of part of the air.

C. Third-person POV
This POV is signified by the use of the pronouns he, she, it, or they. The speaker is not one of the characters of
the narrative. The character does not participate in the flow of the story, and is, therefore, not affected by it. As you
have learned, there are three ways of writing the third-person POV.

1. Objective -- The speaker gives an unbiased POV, knows or reveals nothing about the characters' internal
thoughts, feelings, and motivations, and sticks to the external facts of the story.
2. Limited omniscient - The speaker knows the internal thoughts, opinions, feelings, and motivations of one
character only (usually the main character), which means anything character does not know about, the
narrator cannot tell.
3. Omniscient – The speaker knows, and at least partially reveals, the internal thoughts, opinions, feelings,
and motivations of all the characters, and describes almost everything about the places and events of the
story.
As for CNF, read how Michael David Tan was able to justify using the third person in his article

"Looking after my 14-year-old HIV positive son":

They were standing in front of the consultation room after Rod was told to wait for a few hours before the
results of his lab tests will be released when Rod finally said something to his mother. "Gutom na ako (l'm hungry),"
he said, removing his mask as he started patting his mother's front pockets. Aling Tilda frowned, tapping her son's
hand away. Then she opened her bag, took P50 from inside, and handed this to Rod. "Ayan (There you go)," she
said. "Ewan ko kung saan ka bibili ng pagkain ditto (But I don't know where you can buy food in this place)." Told of
the cafeteria in the hub, Rod left after he was given direction. Aling Tilda stayed. Then, after rubbing her eyes, she
said: "Bunso 'yan. Tatlo sila magkakapatid. Lalaki lahat (Rod is the youngest. There are three of them. All boys)." She
sighed. "“Yung mga kuya, di tinest (The elder brothers, they were not tested)." Asked how she feels about what
happened to Rod, she was straightforward. "Andiyan na 'yan (That's already there)." Then, with a sigh, and as if
catching herself, she added: "Pero sana nga wala (But we hope it is really nothing)." Rod was back almost
immediately, handing Aling Tilda loose change. "Mahal ang pagkain dito (Food is expensive here)," he said. "Gusto
ko sana kumain, ang mahal naman (I wanted to eat, but the goods they sell are expensive)." He then proceeded to
open the plastic mini-cup of ube ice cream he had with him, immediately spooning some into his mouth. "Sasakit
tiyan mo niyan (You'll have upset stomach)," Aling Tilda reprimanded. "Dapat kumain ka muna (You should eat
something substantial first)." With one hand holding the plastic mini-cup of ube ice cream, Rod's other hand reached
into the front pocket of his short pants. "May biscuit naman ako (I have biscuits)," he said. Aling Tilda reached out to
rub Rod's arm. He let her, still busy spooning ice cream into his mouth. He was enjoying every spoonful. "Magbabago
ba ang turing ninyo kay Rod ngayon (Will your treatment of Rod change now)?" she was asked. She looked at Rod,
misty-eyed. "Anak ko 'yan (He's my child)." And then she said again, this time as if to herself: “At andiyan na 'yan
(And that's already there)."