ANGLE

ANGLE
 Have you ever poured your heart into a
personal essay only to find the piece has
grown like an untended plant? You really have
no idea where to begin, where it should end
and what goes in the middle. The problem isnt
with your subject; the problem is that you
dont yet have an ANGLE.
 You find the counterpart of the angle in every form
and genre.
In books, its called the premise (a woman works her
way through Julia Childs cookbook in a year).
In advertising, its called the handle (Trix are for
kids!).
In movies, its the concept (humans invade the
magical habitat of peaceful blue beings on another
planet). In an essay, an angle is the controlling idea.
 Say you want to write an essay about how you love to cook. You have
a subject, but you dont yet have an angle.
Subjects invite you to write and write but give you no particular
direction in which to take your writing.
Angles, on the other hand, tell you exactly what to writeand thats
what makes them so essential.
An angle for a piece on cooking could be that for you, reading recipes
is like reading one-act plays, and preparing the dishes is like acting out
the scenes.
If you ask a group of people to write about the contents of their
closet, each person would likely approach the same subject from a
different angle. One might say, My closet is full of clothes bought for
another woman. Anothers take might be, My closet does not live
 An angle always includes an element of surprise. For
her piece in the Modern Love column of The New
York Times, Cathleen Calbert put the angle in the first
line: Ive never liked men. I like guys. Calbert
surprises her readers with a twist, a conceit, that
grabs their attention long enough for her to say what
she wants to say. In other words, when you begin to
craft a personal essay, you cant just blurt out what
comes to mind. You need an unexpected way of
approaching your subject.
 Once you have a good angle, the actual writing
is a snap, because you know what to put in and
what to leave out. In fact, once you have an
angle, what often follows is the easiest thing in
the world to write: a list. If your angle is that
your closet lives in the past, you might start
with the fur, then move on to the Lambertson
Truex handbag, showing how each represents
an earlier version of you.
Lets consider some ways to find
angles that will lend focus,
originality and appeal to your
personal essays.
 START WITH THE OPPOSITE OF WHERE YOUR
PIECE WILL END
When I wanted to write about how stupid
my cat was, I couldnt just blurt out: My
cat is really stupid. Let me give you some
examples. That might be a good subject,
but its no angle. So I began with the
opposite of a stupid cat:
I watched that National Geographic
show, the one that was a
shameless ode to catstheir
wisdom, their aloofness, their
mystery. I wanted to believe it, but
then I looked over at my cat, Mike,
rapt in front of the reflection of the
 This angle, which I call the setup, provides a
strong starting point. If youre writing about a
humiliation, you might start by being full of
yourself. If youre writing about bravely leaping
from the tall rock into the pond, begin with
cowering at the edge. This creates natural
tension and guarantees that the piece will be
about a change in the narrator. As with other
types of writing, at the heart of many good
personal essays is the story of how someone
 MAKE UNLIKELY COMPARISONS
Elizabeth Rapoport wanted to write an essay about
how everybody wants more sleepbut its easy to
see how a straightforward approach to that subject
could have been something of a lullaby itself. Enter
the angle: Sleep has become the sex of the 90s.
Once she had that twist, the rest came naturally; all
she had to do was write about stolen naps as if they
were trysts. Im not mentally undressing my dishy
seatmate on the commuter train, she wrote. Im
wondering whether hed take offense if I catnap on
When I wanted to write that being the
parent of teens requires different
thinking than being the parent of little
kids, I stumbled upon an angle with the
potential to amuse readers while still
providing some hard truths:
While children are dogs, loyal and
affectionate, teenagers are cats. When
you tell them to come inside, they look
amazed, as if wondering who died and
made you emperor.
While children are dogs, loyal and
affectionate, teenagers are cats. When
you tell them to come inside, they look
amazed, as if wondering who died and
made you emperor.
Such unlikely comparisons keep your
audience tuned in because they want to
see just how similar these otherwise
dissimilar ideas are. Reward them with
humor and unexpected truths.
 BRING IN OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS
Conflict and change lie at the heart of many of the best personal essays, and one
way to highlight that conflict is to include an opposing point of view.
For instance, you might want to write about a quirk of yourssomething you
always do, never do, love to do or hate to do. Maybe you wear high heels
everywhere, or youd drive two hours just for a fresh mango. But if its quirky
rather than, say, forbidden, the piece has no tension. You can create conflict,
however, by bringing in someone who objects to that quirk. I like, for example, to
do what I call piddlingtaking time to putter around and check my mail, refold T-
shirts, collect pennies from my dresser and drop them in the Alhambra jar marked
College Fund and, in general, piddle around with my stuff. When I wanted to
write about how stupid my cat was, I couldnt just blurt out: My cat is really
stupid. Let me give you some examples. That might be a good subject, but its
no angle. So I began with the opposite of a stupid cat:
By itself, this isnt all that interesting. But my husband,
Bill, is the weekend warrior who doesnt understand
the need to piddle, who wants to go for a bike ride in
the park, or buy dowels for the fabric we bought or
take cartons of books to the used bookstore. Now
theres conflictopposing viewpoints on worthwhile
ways to spend our shared weekend afternoons.
Conflict doesnt have to be heated or serious to make
a piece entertaining or authenticit simply has to be
present.
 HIGHLIGHT DIVISIONS OR CATEGORIES
Creating unexpected groupings by dividing people into
unusual categories can yield an angle that both lends
humor and invites readers in as they think about which
group they belong to.

In our earlier example, Calbert used this angle when she

divided the male population into men and guys. In
another, Steven Lewis writes in the Last Word column of
Ladies Home Journal:
The world can be divided into those who will let a
telephone ring off the hook when they are even mildly
indisposed and those who would cheerfully trample
small children and flower beds rather than let it hit the
third ring.
When you use categories as your angle, you have the
option of being either an observer or a participant, in
which you add an additional twist by including yourself
in one of the categories. I took this approach in a piece
dividing the world into scolders, who frequently correct
others who are breaking the rules, and scoldees (like
CONTRAST YOUR TONE AND SUBJECT
If an angle is always a kind of surprise (whether its an approach,
a comparison or an idea), then it follows that a surprising tone
can be an angle in itself. We expect a new mother to talk
sentimentally about giving her baby the care he needs. Instead,
my student Bernadette Glenn took a tone that highlighted her
contrarian point of view:
I had to face the misery of filling the day with a boisterous, self-
centered little bully who had no control over his own bowels, never
mind his emotions. I had imagined a small period of rest every day,
but he was outgrowing naps, and he drooled on the newspaper and
punched me if it looked like I was not paying attention to him.
This approach makes us perk up, not only because were
surprised that a mother would talk about her baby this way, but
because were engaged by her irreverence. One way to practice
this angle is to write about something you hate as if you love it, or
vice versa.
Another of my students, Marsh Rose, used a similar approach to
write a piece about having a falling-apart rental and an indifferent
landlord. We would expect a tone of complaint (and of course we
dont want to hear it, do we?), but instead of that predictably
angry voice, she adopted a tone of yearning, akin to one you
might use for an adored but elusive lover. This enabled her to get
her point across while delighting the reader along the way:
Dear Zo,
I would like to introduce myself to you. In fact, I often sit in
this dim living roomcross-legged on the floor furnace,
praying for warmthand imagine what that might be like
to introduce myself to you. I see myself racing into the street,
flinging myself at your noisy green Camaro as you drive by
with your gaze averted, and shouting out. Landlady! I
would cry, Landlady!
 BE TOPICAL
The best way to get into print quickly is to hitchhike on the news of
the day. Every editor wants to run pieces that are current. The
governor of South Carolina is on the Appalachian Trail, and you walked
it once yourself. Swine flu is coming back? Heres the chance to send
editors that essay on your near-death experience from a mysterious
illness, or your formative years on a pig farm.
When Joe McGinniss book on Senator Edward Kennedy caught flak
for putting thoughts in the senators head, an enterprising writer for
American Way magazine wrote a piece in which he invented the
thoughts of other famous figures, such as this imagined interior
monologue of George Washington crossing the Delaware: I cant
believe this. Im their leader. I should definitely have a seat. Add a
topical angle to your piece, and you might be amazed at how quickly it