Bird by Bird III: Return of the Bird


On page 60 of Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird, she talks extensively about the importance of staging
and set design in writing. She uses a large anecdote to effectively explain how she invisions scenes in
her mind before she writes them. She tells about a time when she was writing about a scene with a
garden, but she didn’t know much about gardening. She talks to other people to get help on explaining
what is all in a garden.
I really like Anne Lamott’s satirical style of writing that she uses in a few parts of this passage. For
example, she talks about her struggle of keeping plants, and she rhetorically asks if the plant needs
a psychiatrist.
I agree with Lamott’s argument on how “set design” helps writers because many times I find myself
wondering how I can make a scene more realistic. It is important to give details that are true in order to
make a reader feel like they are truly inside of your writing.

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