How MFA Students Learn to Read Like Writers
Or, What the heck is an annotation?
Hi Everybody,
Since Legacy&Lore is now officially MFA Lore, I thought I should give you a view into the beating heart of MFA education: the annotation.
A graduating MFA student at Goddard once said to my colleague : "I see annotations everywhere!" And with good reason. In our program, students had to write at least 45 “annos” over their four semesters with us. They could focus these very short critical responses on books, films, plays, or even museum exhibits, but the goal of every annotation was to unpack a literary tool that the student could apply to their own work.
Annotations teach us to read like writers. Simply reading for pleasure, or even like an English major, will not do the trick. Writers need to cultivate the particular focus on craft that goes into every annotation. Only through this process will our reading make us better writers.
Nevertheless, most new MFA students find the idea of annotations daunting. And folks who’ve never gotten an MFA may never have heard of them. So I thought I’d use this post to deconstruct an annotation for you.
One of my former students, the dazzling writer , has given me permission to use her annotation on poet EJ Koh’s memoir The Magical Language of Others as our example.
Annotations are not book reviews
We’re all familiar with book reviews. I remember writing one on Anne of Green Gables in grade school (showing my age, but how I adored that series!). Today, millions on Amazon and Goodreads write reader reviews, and what’s left of Main Stream Media still publish professional book reviews. The purpose of all these reviews is to share opinions of books, either with an eye toward recommending or warning other readers away. To accomplish this, book reviews summarize the major themes, characters, and vibe of the book and recap the basic plot without giving away the ending.
Annotations are not book reviews. They’re more like mini-excavations or brief exploratory surgeries. When you write an annotation, it’s immaterial whether you “like” or “dislike” the book you’re annotating. All that matters is whether some particular aspect of the book has something to teach you about the craft of writing.
You’ll dig into that something for as long as you need to — a couple of paragraphs or several pages. Some annos can be expanded into critical essays, if you’re so inclined. But the annotation itself is solely for your own benefit as a writer.
The goal of any annotation is to help you figure out how an author accomplishes something that you’re struggling to do in your own work.
First, read wide open
For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to assume you’ll annotate mostly books. Know that you can use this same process to closely examine any experience or design.
Some of my other posts here at MFA Lore are annotations at heart:
But my purpose today is to show how annotations can help you read books like a writer. So, what’s your first step?
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