Content Development

For this section, I decided to choose a piece I wrote for Nonfiction Writing: my memoir piece.

My idea for my memoir piece came from a mini-assignment I completed for class. I chose a picture of my husband on the beach. The picture was taken a week after our wedding, but we weren’t on our honeymoon. Instead we were on a family vacation with his side of the family. I began thinking about how awkward or weird that this might seem, which led me to think about all the other obstacles and issues that we had to overcome from his side of the family. As I began reflecting, I wrote down all the obstacles and thought about how most were unexpected issues that arose throughout our relationship. While some obstacles were unique to our situation, it made me think that we cannot be the only young couple that has experienced many issues with joining a new family, thus making my audience young couples who are dating, engaged, or newly married.

I struggled with how to structure my piece. My professor pushed us to go beyond an academic style paper and choose a different genre, one that would match our audience and purpose for our writing. Through our peer workshops, I decided my genre would be a journal. However, I came to realize that a journal is more private, so I switched my genre to a blog. Now the piece would be more accessible to my audience.

As I discussed my project with my professor, I realized that it reaches more than my intended audience–young couples. It reaches parents and older married couples, too. Parents would be able to read my experiences and reflect on how they treat their child’s significant other. Older married couples would also be able to reflect on my experiences and think about their own experiences with their significant other’s family.

Joining a new family can be difficult, and many young couples face similar challenges. Initially when I wrote this piece, they were my target audience; however, after receiving feedback from my peers and professor, I realized that other types of audiences would be able to benefit from reading my experiences, too.

Drafts

Draft #1

Draft #2

Final Product

You can find my final product at https://jmckenziehansen.com/nonfiction-project-1/