Blog 4

In Silent Dancing, Cofer brillianty used segments by transitioning from one part of her story to another. The first one that caught my eye was when she was explaining how ehr father told someone that he was Puerto Rican, but according to her, she could have passed for European. Then all of a sudden, she begins to describe how her family is sitting in the living room, and does it by writing "The movie opens."

The next one was how she explained that her father's greatest wish was to move way from the barrio, but it was her mother's fear. Then she transitions into the next segment by explaining what happened next in her home movie. By doing this twice already, I was hooked onto the story. I wanted to keep on reading in order to find out what had happened next. Also, I learned something very valuable about writing creative non-fiction.

When writing CNF, it is tough to keep the reader interested, if the writer keeps writing about one general topic. Of course, it is understandable to me that it is the point of writing CNF; to write about something in particular that the story is built around. However, segments in a story keeps the reader thinking about two things at once. With Cufer's story, I was thinking about how the father and mother both want different things and then I had to put that in the back of my mind, because she then went on to explain the home video in the next paragraph. Maybe a reason she did it was that she didn't want us to focus on just one general thing. She wanted us to think back and forth about different points that all added up to complete her piece.

This story was the best for me when thinking of segments. The other stories had them as well, but this one stood out for me. Cufer may have unintentionally did it, but I did learn about how to place segments throughout my stories.