I Was A Teenage Beauty Pageant Judge: Immersion Journalism

Although we think of nonfiction writing as “objective,” many popular contemporary feature writers (David Sedaris, David Foster Wallace, Sarah Vowell, etc.) immerse themselves in their topics to produce provocative narratives. They become shopping mall Santas, go on cruises, or stay in the Chelsea Hotel, and their personal experiences allow them to explore their reactions to their subject. In this class you’ll learn strategies for approaching stories from a personal angle, studying examples of the genre and engaging in writing exercises to generate story ideas.

The instructor has written dozens of stories of this kind, doing everything from judging a teenage beauty pageant to riding with a repo man the week before Christmas, and he has found that to tell someone’s story, you have to know their story. In this workshop you will not just write about others’ stories – you will experience them, leaving class with at least one story idea in which you can later “immerse” yourself.