Q: I just wrote up an account of an event that happened to me when we first moved to Georgia. I want to know if it qualifies as an essay. It is not a series of musings on a central theme, as in some essays I’ve read. It is the true story of what happened and what I learned from it.
I looked up how to write an essay, and the information told how to write a persuasive essay. Mine isn’t that type of writing, though. If I write a nonfiction piece without attempting to prove a point, is it an essay or an opinion? It would help to get clarification, because I usually don’t write nonfiction.
A: Essays come in many forms, including personal opinion, persuasive, and personal experience. Many humor columnists write in the form of essays that relate personal experiences combined with their personal opinions about what took place.
Personal experience essays concentrate on a specific event or related events, and they often unfold with action and dialogue, which sets them apart from a persuasive essay. If your story is shown through action and dialogue with strong writing, it becomes creative nonfiction. If you already write strong fiction, you should have no problem writing strong personal experience essays, too, and it sounds as if that’s what you have done by writing about your experiences when you moved to a new state.
Q: I like to write humorous essays. Where can I market them? How does one get one's own newspaper column?
A: You’ll find plenty of markets for essays in the usual reference books and websites for writers: Writers Market, www.writersmarket.com, Literary Market Place, and more. Remember not to trust any one source too much. Always seek several sources. For example, I use writersmarket.com, but I search for companies that list their websites. I then go to the publishers' websites to get accurate information on how each publisher prefers for writers to submit articles, because every one is different.
As for writing and syndicating a newspaper column, the answer is far too complex. For a simplistic answer, see http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Newspaper-Column, or for how to syndicate a column, see http://www.ehow.com/how_2050845_syndicate-column.html.
Q: I am having a discussion with my writer’s group about referenced titles in a story. I said the title should be in italics. Another member believes, according to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, the title is to be underlined. Can you give us the correct answer, underlined or italics?
A: The answer depends on type of title and the type of writing. If you are writing a research paper, obviously you should follow MLA style and underline book titles, if that is what MLA calls for. Because I edit books, I'm more familiar with Chicago style, which is used not for research papers but for books, so that's what I feel more comfortable explaining.
If you are writing a book that refers to another book, Chicago style calls for italics for book titles and other works of art, such as album titles, statues, and paintings. If the body of the book refers to the title of an essay, research paper, or a short story, however, that title should be in quotation marks.
Consistency is the most important thing. Underlines in a manuscript translate to italics in a published work. The two are, in effect, the same thing. For that reason, never use underlines in one place in a manuscript and italics in another.
Bobbie Christmas, book editor, author of Write In Style (Union Square Publishing), and owner of Zebra Communications, will answer your questions, too. Send them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Read more “Ask the Book Doctor” questions and answers at www.zebraeditor.com.
