creative writing of reflection

Reflective Writing

“Reflection is a mode of inquiry: a deliberate way of systematically recalling writing experiences to reframe the current writing situation. It allows writers to recognize what they are doing in that particular moment (cognition), as well as to consider why they made the rhetorical choices they did (metacognition). The combination of cognition and metacognition, accessed through reflection, helps writers begin assessing themselves as writers, recognizing and building on their prior knowledge about writing.” —Kara Taczak, “Reflection is Critical for Writers’ Development” (78) Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies

Reflective writing assignments are common across the university. You may be asked to reflect on your learning, your writing, your personal experiences in relation to a theory or text, or your personal experiences in an internship or other type of experience in relation to course readings. These are assignments, as Kara Taczak notes, that offer opportunities to solidify knowledge about our experiences and how they might relate to others’ experiences and existing research. Moreso, reflection can lead to more informed understandings of our own experiences and course content in ways that may make that knowledge more useful in future classes and practice. However, often  reflective writing  is not taught as an explicit writing skill and can be problematically treated as a less rigorous form of writing. Below are some broad writing tips that can help not only your reflective writing to be stronger, but also the reflective inquiry to be more meaningful.

Collect relevant evidence before you start writing.

Yes–we recommend using  evidence  in reflective writing! When connecting personal experiences to the readings, that means selecting quotes from the readings and then coming up with specific moments in your life that relate to those quotes. When reflecting on learning or growth, that might mean locating evidence (quotes) from your previous papers that showcase growth.

Be specific.

It’s really easy to see reflective writing as more informal or casual, and thus, as requiring less attention to details; however, strong reflective writing is very precise and specific. Some examples of statements that are too vague and meaningless include, “I learned a lot about writing this semester.” Or, “I feel like my experiences are exactly as Author B says in this quote.” Neither of these statements tells us much–they are a bit devoid of content. Instead, try to name exactly what you learned about writing or exactly how your experiences are related to the quote. For example, you might reflect, “At the beginning of the semester, unsure of how to summarize a text well, I was just describing the main the idea of the text. However, after learning about Harris’ concept of capturing a writer’s “project,” I believe I have become better at really explaining a text as a whole. Specifically, in my last essay, I was able to provide a fully developed explanation of Author A’s argument and purpose for the essay as well as their materials and methods (that is, how they made the argument). For example, in this quote from my last essay,...”

Focus on a small moment from your experiences.

It’s hard to not want to recap our entire childhood or the full summer before something happened for context when sharing a personal story. However, it’s usually more effective to select a very specific moment in time and try to accurately describe what happened, who was involved, and how it made you feel and react. When writing about a moment, try to place readers there with you–help readers to understand what happened, who was involved, where it happened, why it happened, and what the results were. If this is a more creative assignment, you might even include some sensory descriptions to make the moment more of an experience for readers.

Fully explain the quote or focus of each point.

In reflective writing, you are usually asked to share your experiences in relation to something–a perspective in a text, learning about writing, the first-year experience, a summer internship, etc. When introducing this focal point, make sure you fully explain it. That is, explain what you think the quote means and provide a little summary for context. Or, if you’re reflecting on writing skills learned, before you jump to your learning and growth, stop to explain how you understand the writing skill itself–”what is analysis?,” for example. Usually, you want to fully explain the focus, explain your personal experiences with it, and then return to the significance of your experiences.

Use “I” when appropriate.

Often, in high schools, students are taught to abandon the first-person subject altogether in order to avoid over-use. However, reflective writing requires some use of “I.” You can’t talk about your experiences without using “I”! That being said, we’ve saved this advice for the bottom of the list because, as we hope the above tips suggest, there are a lot of important things that likely need explaining in addition to your personal experiences. That means you want to use “I” when appropriate, balancing your use of “I” with your explanation of the theory, quote, or situation you were in, for example.

Reflection conclusions can look forward to the future.

In the conclusion, you may want to ask and answer questions like:

• What is the significance of my experiences with X?
• What did I learn from reflecting on my experiences with Y?
• How might this reflective work inform future decisions?
• What specific tools or strategies did this activity use that might be employed in the future? When and why?

Write the reflection introduction last.

We always recommend writing introductions after you’ve drafted your entire essay–this allows you to actually introduce the specific essay you’ve already written (it’s easier to do and more likely to be strong). Reflective introductions have a little bit more flexibility. You do want to introduce the focus of your essay right away–and you might do that by naming it, by sharing a related anecdote, by naming a previously held idea/belief that has changed through learning happening during this course, or by explaining a reading or class discussion that make you curious about the focus you selected.

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• Writing Tips

A Simple Guide to Reflective Writing

5-minute read

• 23rd May 2023

Reflective writing is the process of describing something you’ve experienced, evaluating its meaning, figuring out if you’ve learned anything from the experience, and then working out how the process can be beneficial.

Many people don’t know how to write reflectively or what’s required in the process.

This post will explain what reflective writing is. We will then show you how to organize and structure your own reflective writing in a simple and straightforward manner.

What Is Reflective Writing?

It’s a common belief that we can break down thinking into two processes: reflective and critical . The former can be part of the latter, but it’s more personal.

Reflective thinking, or a reflection, is a learning process that involves your own personal analyses of and responses to new situations, experiences, data, or events. There is no right or wrong way to think reflectively – it’s more about exploring different ideas and questions.

Reflective writing is a way to reach a deeper level of understanding on a given topic. Writing something down can help you analyze it.

Here are some common elements of reflective writing:

●  Analytical

●  Subjective (thoughts/opinions)

●  Free-flowing

●  Written in the first person

And here are some examples:

●  A personal response to something new

●  Field notes, journals, logbooks, peer reviews , blogs, etc.

What Is Nonreflective Writing?

While the goal of reflective writing is to come to a deeper level of understanding about a given topic, the goal of other forms of writing is often to explain, argue, or describe something in detail.

These are some elements of nonreflective  writing:

●  Descriptive

●  Objective (instructions/arguments)

●  Structured formally

●  Written in the third person

Here are some examples:

●  An explanation or argument

●  Research papers, statistical reports, persuasive essays , formal reviews, news articles, etc.

How to Write Reflectively

Because reflective writing is subjective, its structure is usually less formal. While being logical is important, you can also be creative, hypothetical, and opinionated.

A few different formats can help show you how to organize your reflective writing, but we’ll focus on a popular four-step approach that we often refer to as the DIEP strategy :

1. Describe

You begin by simply describing everything that happened. This includes what you did, saw, heard, etc.

This description should be the shortest portion of your writing, but it should include all the details you think are relevant.

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2. Interpret

The next step is to consider what the experience meant to you. Here, you can explore how and why something happened.

Some useful questions to ask yourself during the interpretation stage are:

●  How do I feel?

●  Have I acquired any new insights?

●  How does this experience connect with what I already know/believe?

●  What hypotheses or conclusions can I form?

3. Evaluate

This is where you analyze how valuable the experience was and consider why it happened. You should make judgments that are connected to the observations you’ve previously described and interpreted.

Here are some important things to examine at this stage:

●  Focus on the most important things you’ve observed or learned.

●  Identify the significance of any hypotheses or conclusions you’ve formed.

●  Examine whether you’ve developed any new skills that you can apply in the future.

Finally, you need to figure out what you’ll do with what you’ve learned and how you’ll do it. Come up with a plan to make any newly discovered information useful to yourself.

A few good questions to answer are:

●  Will my future behavior change based on what I’ve learned or experienced?

●  Why will this change occur, or why won’t there be any change?

●  What will I do next?

●  Do I need to acquire or develop any new skills to enact my plan?

Although beginning a piece of reflective writing can seem daunting, if you follow the four steps we’ve outlined above, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Just remember that it’s all about your observations and what you have (or haven’t) learned from a given experience.

The format for reflective writing can often be less strict, but you still want your writing to be readable. Here are a few things you should make sure to do:

●  Write from your own perspective.

●  Clearly outline the context of what you’re reflecting on.

●  Make sure your writing is structured well, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

●  Use an appropriate writing style and ensure correct grammar and punctuation.

What Can I Do If I Need Help?

If you’re not confident in your overall writing ability, don’t worry. A professional proofreader can check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. They can identify and correct errors and provide you with valuable feedback to help you improve.

Great proofreaders are not hard to find. A simple way to do so is to visit Proofed’s online platform . You’ll get any document you submit to us returned within 24 hours.

We’ll even proofread your first document for free!

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What Is Reflective Writing?

Written by Scott Wilson

What is a reflection in writing? Reflection in writing is the act of including analysis or perspective on the text within the text itself. It’s a technique that is used to examine and interpret a passage or event described in a written work, and can be either a literary device or a tool for self-analysis.

Commonly found in academia, reflective writing is a genre of essay that prompts the writer to tell about a meaningful personal experience and reflect on the lesson learned or how it changed their perspective. 

Though you will likely be tasked with exercises in reflection in academic setting, you will still be expected to take a creative approach in order to engage your readers.

Telling an engaging story is important here because your essay will be most effective when your readers find themselves leaning into the page, a physical posture of their interest. 

Like a mirror, reflective writing allows the writer and readers to look back at the text and themselves to uncover deeper meaning. This allows perspectives or unexamined aspects of the text that might otherwise be hidden to be discovered and unpacked.

For the author, reflection is an exercise in self-analysis. While writing reflectively, the writer is expected to examine their own reactions and to document them as they are writing. In works of fiction, the reflection may be undertaken on behalf of a narrator and used to weave additional drama or meaning into a work.

Reflective writing describes the internal reactions of the writer and uses them to interpret the events described in the text.

Although reflection is a subjective exercise, it is often used to inject more objectivity into writing. When the writer engages in reflective writing, they can take a step back and deliver more context in the piece. This offers them a path not only to greater understanding of their own instincts and ideas, but also for the reader to better understand the work.

Creative Writing Degrees Use Reflection as a Tool for Study and Storytelling

Reflective writing is a popular academic tool in general. Students asked to summarize assignments, or keep journals, or describe their experiences are all engaging in reflective writing assignments. The use of reflection creates an academic focus and draws more learning from a given experience by giving students time to think about both the lessons and their connections.

You can expect to be assigned quite a few reflective writing assignments in the average creative writing degree program. Just as in other academic fields, reflection is of the tools that professors use to help students understand their own process and how to deconstruct their own work to improve it. But it’s also training for using reflection creatively, as a device to create new and deeper experiences for their readers.

Self-reflective narrators like Holden Caulfield and Mr. Stevens makes works like The Catcher in the Rye , and The Remains of the Day the classic works of literature they are. While reflection offers the individual writer a tool for investigating their process and methods, it can also become a tool for injecting life and drama into characters and plots.

Where would Samuel Beckett be without the use of reflection in writing? Likely waiting on a break that never comes.

In other cases, such as the works of Milan Kundera, feature entire reflective philosophical essays, both shaping the characters and offering more universal truths that are an essential aspect of the story.

Creative writing students explore both those uses of reflective writing in other literary works and ways to use reflection in their own work and study. Assignments may ask for self-reflective essays exploring your ideas and works, or for you to incorporate reflective writing into those pieces themselves. Either way, expert professors help shape your sense of reflection and its uses through the study of creative writing.

The Components of Reflective Writing

Formulaic writing is never encouraged in creative writing, especially at the college level, but there are some key parts to reflective writing that cannot be ignored. Think of these elements as ingredients for a recipe. Key components of a reflective essay are:

• Description: Give a detailed account of the experience you had. Remember to treat your reader as though they are beside you during the experience, relying on the five senses to make the retelling of the event as real as possible. Be mindful of inundating your reader with details, instead choosing to focus on the ones that would leave holes in your story if you kept them out. 
• Interpretation: What’s your take on the episode? What did you learn? What does it mean? Is there something bigger than yourself that chose to teach you this lesson? Why you, why then, would you have learned the same lesson if it had happened at a different time in your life? All of these questions are starting points for reflection. The interpretation of the experience should be personal, almost to the point of feeling uncomfortable to write (respect your boundaries, but push them where you are able). 
• Evaluation: This is almost an extension of interpretation. Here, you will focus on the value of the lesson learned. You’re not here to only tell a good story about a personal experience, you’re here to explain what you learned from it and to tell your reader why it was so valuable. Maybe you don’t know the answer yet and will arrive at the conclusion as you’re planning it out. Reflective writing will be entertaining and empowering for your reader, but it offers the opportunity to be cathartic for you. Don’t be afraid to dig deep. 
• Planning: This is your opportunity to share what you are currently doing with the lesson learned or what you plan to do with it. Life lessons are inevitable, the meaning of them left to our own interpretation. Their power lies in how we reflect on them, how we use the experiences to change us in one way or another. There is potential here to let this part of the essay feel like a call to action for your reader, or to turn a little too sweet. If that’s your thing, go for it. But don’t feel pressured to turn this reflective essay into an after school special if what you experienced and what you learned ended on a sad or upsetting note. Be authentic in what you say and how you say it, whether it be happy, sad, or somewhere in between. The most important thing you can do in any of your writing is remain true to yourself. 

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Study Skills

Reflective practice toolkit, introduction.

• What is reflective practice?
• Everyday reflection
• Models of reflection
• Barriers to reflection
• Free writing
• Reflective writing exercise
• Bibliography

Many people worry that they will be unable to write reflectively but chances are that you do it more than you think!  It's a common task during both work and study from appraisal and planning documents to recording observations at the end of a module. The following pages will guide you through some simple techniques for reflective writing as well as how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls.

What is reflective writing?

Writing reflectively involves critically analysing an experience, recording how it has impacted you and what you plan to do with your new knowledge. It can help you to reflect on a deeper level as the act of getting something down on paper often helps people to think an experience through.

The key to reflective writing is to be analytical rather than descriptive. Always ask why rather than just describing what happened during an experience. 

Remember...

Reflective writing is...

• Written in the first person
• Free flowing
• A tool to challenge assumptions
• A time investment

Reflective writing isn't...

• Written in the third person
• Descriptive
• What you think you should write
• A tool to ignore assumptions
• A waste of time

Adapted from The Reflective Practice Guide: an Interdisciplinary Approach / Barbara Bassot.

You can learn more about reflective writing in this handy video from Hull University:

Created by SkillsTeamHullUni

• Hull reflective writing video transcript (Word)
• Hull reflective writing video transcript (PDF)

Where might you use reflective writing?

You can use reflective writing in many aspects of your work, study and even everyday life. The activities below all contain some aspect of reflective writing and are common to many people:

1. Job applications

Both preparing for and writing job applications contain elements of reflective writing. You need to think about the experience that makes you suitable for a role and this means reflection on the skills you have developed and how they might relate to the specification. When writing your application you need to expand on what you have done and explain what you have learnt and why this matters - key elements of reflective writing.

2. Appraisals

In a similar way, undertaking an appraisal is a good time to reflect back on a certain period of time in post. You might be asked to record what went well and why as well as identifying areas for improvement.

3. Written feedback

If you have made a purchase recently you are likely to have received a request for feedback. When you leave a review of a product or service online then you need to think about the pros and cons. You may also have gone into detail about why the product was so good or the service was so bad so other people know how to judge it in the future.

4. Blogging

Blogs are a place to offer your own opinion and can be a really good place to do some reflective writing. Blogger often take a view on something and use their site as a way to share it with the world. They will often talk about the reasons why they like/dislike something - classic reflective writing.

5. During the research process

When researchers are working on a project they will often think about they way they are working and how it could be improved as well as considering different approaches to achieve their research goal. They will often record this in some way such as in a lab book and this questioning approach is a form of reflective writing.

6. In academic writing

Many students will be asked to include some form of reflection in an academic assignment, for example when relating a topic to their real life circumstances. They are also often asked to think about their opinion on or reactions to texts and other research and write about this in their own work.

Think about ... When you reflect

Think about all of the activities you do on a daily basis. Do any of these contain elements of reflective writing? Make a list of all the times you have written something reflective over the last month - it will be longer than you think!

Reflective terminology

A common mistake people make when writing reflectively is to focus too much on describing their experience. Think about some of the phrases below and try to use them when writing reflectively to help you avoid this problem:

• The most important thing was...
• At the time I felt...
• This was likely due to...
• After thinking about it...
• I learned that...
• I need to know more about...
• Later I realised...
• This was because...
• This was like...
• I wonder what would happen if...
• I'm still unsure about...
• My next steps are...

Always try and write in the first person when writing reflectively. This will help you to focus on your thoughts/feelings/experiences rather than just a description of the experience.

Using reflective writing in your academic work

Many courses will also expect you to reflect on your own learning as you progress through a particular programme. You may be asked to keep some type of reflective journal or diary. Depending on the needs of your course this may or may not be assessed but if you are using one it's important to write reflectively. This can help you to look back and see how your thinking has evolved over time - something useful for job applications in the future. Students at all levels may also be asked to reflect on the work of others, either as part of a group project or through peer review of their work. This requires a slightly different approach to reflection as you are not focused on your own work but again this is a useful skill to develop for the workplace.

You can see some useful examples of reflective writing in academia from Monash University ,  UNSW (the University of New South Wales) and Sage . Several of these examples also include feedback from tutors which you can use to inform your own work.

Laptop/computer/broswer/research by StockSnap via Pixabay licenced under CC0.

Now that you have a better idea of what reflective writing is and how it can be used it's time to practice some techniques.

This page has given you an understanding of what reflective writing is and where it can be used in both work and study. Now that you have a better idea of how reflective writing works the next two pages will guide you through some activities you can use to get started.

• << Previous: Barriers to reflection
• Next: Free writing >>
• Last Updated: Jun 21, 2023 3:24 PM
• URL: https://libguides.cam.ac.uk/reflectivepracticetoolkit

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Creative Writing Practice

Reflections on Form and Process

• © 2021
• Debra Adelaide 0 ,
• Sarah Attfield 1

University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia

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Presents unique insights into the writing process of well-known authors and other creative practitioners

Examines a range of key challenges common to all writers, and offers solutions to them

Discusses a range of writing forms and genres, from novel, screenplay and immersive media, to critical writing, memoir and working-class poetry

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Table of contents (16 chapters)

Front matter, theoretical challenges: working it out, introduction.

Debra Adelaide, Sarah Attfield

The Ethics of Working-Class Realism in Poetry

• Sarah Attfield

The Golden Rules

• Sunil Badami

Screenwriting Beyond the Paradigms: Creative Thinking and Script Development

• Craig Batty, Zara Waldeback

Everything You Can Imagine Is Real: Worldbuilding, the Donnée and the Magic of Writing

• Claire Corbett

Adaptation: Essence, Originality and Radical Transformation

• Margot Nash

Practical Challenges: Starting, Stopping and Failing

The writer’s notebook.

• Delia Falconer

Prompting Creativity: Revisiting Aristotle’s Advice on Plot and Character

• Mark Rossiter

Trading Hours: Time, Order, and Narration in Lucky’s

• Andrew Pippos

Writing Without Frames

• Gregory Ferris

The Corrections: Succeeding at Failure in the Creative Process

• Debra Adelaide

Consolidating the Process: Success and Resilience

Counting coco pops: on constraint and creativity.

• Dave Drayton

When Your Subjects Do Not Agree: An ‘Idiosyncratically Australian Perspective’

Critical distance: creative writing as a critic-fan.

• Liz Giuffre

Art, Design and Communicating the Story: The Cover of Coach Fitz

Behrouz boochani: writing as resilience and resistance.

• Mark Isaacs
• Creative writing
• problem-solving
• genre writing
• screenwriting
• Worldbuilding

About this book

Creative Writing Practice: reflections on form and process  explores the craft of creative writing by illuminating the practices of writers and writer-educators. Demonstrating solutions to problems in different forms and genres, the contributors draw on their professional and personal experiences to examine specific and practical challenges that writers must confront and solve in order to write. 

This book discusses a range of approaches to writing, such as the early working out of projects, the idea of experimentation, of narrative time, and of failure.  With its strong focus on process,  Creative Writing Practice  is a valuable guide for students, scholars and practitioners of creative writing.  

Editors and Affiliations

About the editors, bibliographic information.

Book Title : Creative Writing Practice

Book Subtitle : Reflections on Form and Process

Editors : Debra Adelaide, Sarah Attfield

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73674-3

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Literature, Cultural and Media Studies , Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-73673-6 Published: 10 October 2021

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-73676-7 Published: 10 October 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-73674-3 Published: 09 October 2021

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XVII, 260

Number of Illustrations : 3 b/w illustrations

Topics : Creative Writing , Literature, general

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How to Reveal the Creative Process Through Reflection

For many visual art teachers, time with students is precious and fleeting. Sometimes you have less than an hour with students before they’re gone and a new crop of students come through the door. There’s barely enough time to finish a project, let alone stop and reflect on the work.

However, as educators and as artists, we know just how valuable it is to take time to reflect on and to make revisions to our work.

So how do we build reflection time into our classroom routines? And how do we use that time to help our students better understand the creative process? Let’s find out.

Why is it essential for students to recognize the value of process?

Our society values products and outcomes, but often ignores how we get there. But artists grasp the value of the process, which comes from the research, planning, and execution of a piece of work. An understanding of the process not only allows for growth and learning but also for a more authentic presentation of work and self. It’s how artists can push boundaries and move beyond the simple reproduction of an object and into the creation of new works of art.

Additionally, understanding how they’ve gotten from point A to point B helps our students build cognitive functions and processing. The development of an iterative process that looks at where you’ve been, where you are, and where you want to go, holds immense value. Pausing to reflect helps to guide this journey.

Recording the Creative Process

One way I’ve found to help students reflect on the creative process is to have them record it. While that may sound daunting, I assure you it can be done.

At my school, the 6th-grade students work with the drama teacher, the dance teacher, and me on a rotating basis, spending eight sessions with each teacher before moving on to the next. After the students have worked with each teacher, we bring them back together and work as one large group on an interdisciplinary collaborative project. It’s a creative format that allows for experimentation and flexibility, but it also moves quickly!

It was through this project we figured out how we could have students document their process through daily reflections. Our goal was to allow them to look back on their work and see how they’d incorporated projects and concepts from all three disciplines.

The daily reflections were so successful; I’m considering doing them with all of my classes.

If you’d like to try something similar, here’s what to do:

1. At the end of each class, set aside five to seven minutes for students to reflect on the day’s activities.

2. Have students snap a quick photo of their work. This can be done on an iPad or with a digital camera or another device. If you don’t have the technology available in your classroom, you can also have students do a quick thumbnail sketch.

3. Have students respond to one or two prompts in writing.

You might consider asking things like:

• What was your inspiration for the project/work you completed today?
• What was the biggest challenge you encountered on the project?
• How does this project tie together previous exercises and concepts from the class?
• What was your favorite part of class today?

At my school, we can to do this type of reflection using a discussion thread (private to the individual student and teachers) on our school’s learning platform called Schoology . This platform makes the whole process extremely easy. After the students make their entries, we can respond with clarifying questions, informal feedback, critique, and positive affirmations.

The value of these reflections and individual journals has been extremely beneficial to us, as teachers.

Creating this back and forth dialogue with the students has allowed us to:

• See which students are connecting with which concepts and which students seem lost or unengaged
• Direct students to refer to earlier work and connect threads between the different disciplines
• Create dialogue around student work and process as we respond to their entries
• Get to know the students better
• Look back on student work while writing comments and grades
• Provide evidence to administrators of the creative process our students have gone through and the ways our classes are building student thinking and analysis skills

If your school doesn’t have a learning management system that supports this type of back and forth dialogue, you can set up something similar through a private classroom blog or even through a set of sketchbooks. Anything where students are writing and recording can provide valuable documentation.

An Alternate Approach: Cutting Back

For my other classes, my schedule is more traditional, as I see my students on a consistent basis. Even so, I feel a rush to get through project after project during the course. After seeing how formal reflection positively informed my teaching, I worked on making shifts with my Art Foundations class, a survey class for 7th and 8th-grade students.

One of the first things I did was to make a conscious choice to let go of some of the projects in my curriculum.

Even though there are lots of fun projects I want to do with students, the extra space to breathe is more important. I wanted to create room to build in reflection and journaling but was worried about kids not taking the reflections seriously, or giving little thought to them.

If you’re having similar thoughts, I would encourage you to start with exit slips . In my experience, these can serve several purposes. First, they allow you to gauge how much the students are enjoying particular projects. Second, they give students a chance to have a voice and participate in the structure of your work. Finally, and most importantly, they provide a moment for students to pause and reflect on their work.

When starting out, simple prompts work best. You might want to try things like:

• A particular challenge for me was…
• An awesome success for me was…

Once students are comfortable with simple feedback forms like this, you can move onto more extensive reflections. For example, you can post things like essential questions and enduring understandings on the board throughout a project. In this way, you can remind students what they should be thinking about while working. This method helps keep students in the mode of process and reflection, rather than just creation.

The most important piece of this, ultimately, is building the artistic skill of reflection artists use as part of the larger creative process. Tangible documentation of the process allows students to see their progress and understand their, and others’, thinking. Seeing the process reinforces that progress is being made and solidifies understandings of technique and skill. There are many methods of reflection, and while the ones I’ve shared have worked for me, I am always considering how to expand on them.

How is the creative process revealed in your classroom?

What ways do your students reflect on their work?

Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Raymond Yang

Ray Yang is the Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion of NAEA and a former AOEU Writer. They believe the arts can change the world.

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For the most part, novelists and memoirists use the same set of tools to tell their stories. They both create vivid scenes, develop three-dimensional characters, and evoke a strong sense of place. They rely on dialogue, effective pacing, and themes. But there is one tool that is used almost exclusively in creative nonfiction: reflection, sometimes called “the reflective voice” or “the voice of experience.”

Defining Reflection

The purpose of reflection.

The aim of reflection is to make sense of the story, but it is not used to tell the story. (The voice of innocence does that.) Memoirists use the reflective voice to make meaning—to help readers discover the underlying message of a particular scene or moment from the character’s life. The color-coded passage below, from Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face , illustrates how the voice of innocence (green) and the voice of experience (purple) work together to tell the story in a work of creative nonfiction:

[My mother] borrowed a pair of scissors from the nurse’s desk, and while I sat in a chair she snipped off what remained of my hair, my white, white scalp shining through.  We discovered for the first time that I had a large birthmark above my left ear.

The next morning my mother came in with a hat, a small white sailor’s hat, which I put on and almost never took off for the next two and a half years, even during the periods when my hair was growing back in.  Sometimes it grew several inches and was perfectly presentable as hair, but I knew it was only going to fall out again, and I refused to be seen in public without my hat.  My hat.  It became part of me, an inseparable element of who I thought I was.

My hat was my barrier between me, and what I was vaguely becoming aware of as ugly about me, and the world.  It hid me, hid my secret, though badly, and when [other children] made fun of me or stared at me, I assumed it was only because they could guess what was beneath my hat.  It didn’t occur to me that the whole picture, even with the hat, was ugly; as long as I had it on, I felt safe.  Once, on television, I saw someone lose his hat in the wind and I immediately panicked for him, for his sudden exposure.  It was a visceral reaction.

Here, the voice of innocence communicates the child’s experience—it creates a brief scene that shows the character receiving a haircut and beginning to wear a hat that later becomes central to her identity. Then, the reflective voice takes over to say things the child can’t say because she doesn’t know them yet. The child doesn’t realize her hat acts as a mask or that she is “ugly” even while wearing it. These are the adult’s revelations—things she has learned in the years since she wore a hat to hide from the world.

How to Reflect

Beginning memoirists often fall into the trap of only using the reflective voice or only using the voice of innocence, rather than combining the two. This typically happens because they don’t feel comfortable moving between these distinct voices. However, with a little practice and the use of several effective techniques, it becomes second nature. Below are strategies adapted from memoirist Joyce Dyer’s handout “Techniques to Start Reflection in Creative Nonfiction.” These strategies can be applied in nearly all works of creative nonfiction.

• Ask a question. (Why is to so hard to…?)
• Reject possible explanations. (I don’t believe… It seems unlikely…)
• Imagine or speculate. (I wonder what would have happened if… I like to imagine… I hope my mother knew… Perhaps things would have been different if…)
• Tell an alternative version of events and then reveal the truth. (It didn’t actually happen like that… Unfortunately, that’s a lie…)
• Use timestamps to show distance between the event being described and the present day. (Now, I can see… Today, I understand… Looking back… I didn’t realize it then, but…)
• Use generalizations to explain a key takeaway from a scene. (We don’t often think of justice as…)

The color-coded example below, an excerpt from Richard Hoffman’s memoir Half the House , illustrates the author’s smooth transition from the voice of innocence (green) to the voice of experience (purple) using the “timestamp” technique (underlined).

By the end of football season, I couldn’t bear the shame anymore.  I tried to explain to Coach Tom that as a Catholic I would have to tell the priest about [the sexual abuse] in confession.  I tried to reassure him that he didn’t have to worry, that the priest was bound by “the seal of the confessional.”  Priests had been tortured to death without revealing what was told to them in confession.

“Bullshit,” he said.  “He’d go right to your mother and father.  Think about that, you little moron.  I bet that would go over big, huh?”

After that he avoided me, and only spoke to me when he had to.  It was over.  I remember a boy named Chris was always with him after that.

So when my mother asked about the purple wound on my arm, I told her a dog had bitten me on my afternoon paper route.  She wanted to know whose dog it was.  Did it have a collar on?  There was no telling what kind of germs a stray might be carrying.  As I remember this now , I’m not convinced that she believed me, and thinking of the awful silence that came between us, I sometimes feel as desolate as I did back then, when the winter sky slipped away to dark blue and I hurried to get The Evening Chronicle on a mile and a half of doorsteps before it grew too dark to see.

The word “now” is a signal to the reader, a flashing neon sign showing that the narrative has jumped forward in time from a childhood memory to the adult narrator’s reflection on that memory. This shift from the voice of innocence to the voice of experience doesn’t call attention to itself, but it does allow the memoirist to include knowledge and feelings the child wouldn’t have been able to articulate. It also helps readers to understand the long-term impact of the lie and the feelings it created—again, things the child couldn’t have known in the moment.

Reflection is a key element of most memoirs and personal essays. Therefore, it’s an essential skill for writers of creative nonfiction to develop. When writers move seamlessly between the voice of innocence and the voice of experience, they add depth to their work and help readers connect to the characters’ experiences on a deeper level.

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Teaching, Writing, and Reflecting

The winner of Creative Nonfiction's "How We Teach" essay contest discusses her first teaching experience and the lessons she learned from it

Margaret Downey is a trained secondary English teacher who spent the past few years living in rural, upstate New York. She now resides in Copenhagen, where she works in a child development office at a study abroad institution for American college students. She spends her spare time reading, writing, traveling, and playing with her coworkers’ children. “The Month That I Taught English…” is her first publication.

CNF:  You seem to use this essay about your experience substitute teaching high school English to help process how that summer impacted you and how you affected your students. Did writing about the experience help you to understand it differently or on a deeper level? Do you often use writing to get a better understanding of your experiences?

Downey: Julia Alvarez wrote, “Unless I write things down I never know / what I think, no less feel, about the world…” and I couldn’t agree more. I have always had a hard time fully processing experiences, but once I begin writing about something, I suddenly understand how I think and feel about that event.

CNF:  What led you to realize you wanted to be a teacher in the first place?

Downey: Throughout most of my childhood, I wanted to be a writer. When I got old enough to realize that “only” being a writer wasn’t completely feasible, I decided to combine my love for writing with my love for school (I proudly won “Teacher’s Pet” in my high school yearbook). Becoming an English teacher seemed like a good compromise because I loved working with students, and I was really interested in helping others love writing as much as I do. The current curriculum mostly teaches students to regurgitate sentences or fill in boxes, like the graphic organizer for ACE-IT my English teacher gave me in 9th grade. Writing can be so much more than that, though, and I was eager to share my knowledge and excitement about it with students.

I’ve realized in the past few years that I also enjoy working in higher education—still working with students, but more one-on-one than teaching. And I will of course always be a writer on the side of whichever career I choose.

CNF:  How did the knowledge that there were escaped convicts in the school’s vicinity impact the atmosphere of learning? Was it harder for the kids to focus? Was the mood of the school fearful, excited, anxious?

Downey:  No one could stop talking about the prison escape. Most people expressed excitement because we were in a tiny town in rural upstate New York, where almost nothing happens. A few of my students had dreams of being the hero—of finding and shooting the convicts on their own. Although no one talked about it, I know there was a lot of anxiety surrounding the escape, especially for the few days we had to go through roadblocks and open the trunks of our cars for armed policemen, just so we could get past the stoplight outside the school.

I would say that yes, the students probably had a harder time focusing in school during the prison escape, but it was also the last three weeks before summer vacation, so many students were already feeling the weird combination of sleepiness and rowdiness that comes from not wanting to do any work but also feeling happily antsy because the sun is out. What made the learning atmosphere most bizarre, I think, was my arrival. I was a new teacher in a classroom full of students who hadn’t learned anything all year, and even though they were ready for summer and excited or stressed out about the prison escape, my arrival automatically put them into “First Day of School” mode. They had great behavior, followed all my directions, participated in discussions, and didn’t check their phones in class. It was an interesting dynamic stepping into my classroom, compared to walking through the rest of the school, where everyone seemed ready to chase prisoners and then sit on the beach.

CNF:  Your story combines several stories that aren’t necessarily connected: the escaped chinchilla, the escaped convicts, and teaching essay-writing. What is it that made you weave those components of the story together? Did you struggle with making the story lines work with each other?

Downey:  I was only a teacher at this school for a short amount of time, and yet everything about the experience seemed like it was straight out of a movie. The stories students told me about their previous teacher, the way the school came together when the chinchilla escaped, the nearby prison break…. Each new day, I had to question, “Is this really happening?” The truth about why I wove the chinchilla, the prison escape, and the essay writing together is that those are the main events that took place in my three weeks at the school. I can’t imagine how many other crazy stories I would have to choose from if I had stayed longer.

In terms of making the stories work together, at first I really wasn’t sure how they were connected—I just knew, when I finished teaching, that I needed to write something about my time there. I’m pretty sure the earliest draft of the essay was just a giant, boring narrative of my three-week adventure, something no one should have to read. I didn’t think anything would come of it, but with time, I couldn’t stop thinking about my experience, and I especially couldn’t stop thinking about the chinchilla, when it seemed like everyone else was still focused on Richard Matt and David Sweat. I spoke with some teachers from the school after I moved back home to ask if anyone found the chinchilla, and they almost didn’t remember that he ever escaped. I felt so sad thinking about this small creature’s valiant escape from the science lab going unnoticed, just as I felt sad thinking about how little time I spent with my students, compared to all the other weeks they would be in school without me. I knew I would forever remember teaching them, but would they remember me?

And then the essay was born.

CNF:  Did your summer of teaching affect your attitudes and expectations as you started graduate school that fall?

Downey:  This subbing experience boosted my confidence and improved my ability to go with the flow. Packing up my belongings on short notice, moving into a house with strangers in a town where I knew no one, and taking over an immense amount of planning, teaching, and grading is a feat that not everyone can accomplish. It’s also the type of experience that makes you think, “If I can do that, I can probably do anything.” I’m not sure if it directly impacted any of my attitudes or expectations while in graduate school, but keep in mind that this past May, I packed up my belongings and moved across the world work at a higher education institution in Copenhagen. Certainly that decision was made possible by the confidence and adventure that this subbing experience provided me.

CNF:  Many young teachers struggle in the classroom, and it requires a sort of bravery to write about those first teaching experiences. After processing the experience through writing about it, how do you think those three weeks influenced you the most?

Downey:  I think that the experience impacted my professionality and my ability to “play it by ear.” I learned that no matter how well-thought-out a lesson or unit plan might be, you simply can’t predict what will happen every day. It’s important to be able to think creatively and adapt to the situation—not just in teaching, but with all aspects of life. These are skills that, if I were to be an English teacher again, I would promote in my classroom.

CNF:  Have you written anything else inspired by teaching? What other life experiences and events fuel your writing?

Downey:  I wrote a memoir in college about my connection to education. Under the mentorship of Dr. William Bradley, this independent study explored highlights of the semester I spent student teaching at a rural school with a 22% Native American population, as well as my life-long love of teachers.

For the most part, though, my writing is inspired by the everyday. I have certainly had some noteworthy moments in my current job working with college students in Copenhagen, for example, which I’m sure will blossom into personal essays over time. So stay tuned, one day, to read about the violent intruder panic alarm one of my students accidentally set off in an extremely impoverished preschool in London, or about the professor whose life I saved by performing heart massage and mouth-to-mouth, or even about the barefoot woman begging for change outside my office.

There are stories everywhere, if you just pay attention.

* Illustration by Mary Dorfner Hay

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