Writing Across Genres: Exploring Meaning in Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction

“It’s just that—sometimes I don’t know what I’m even thinking until I read what I’ve written in here,” I said, tapping a finger on the marbled composition notebook I held in my lap. I was about thirteen years old and, from the passenger seat of our Astro minivan, I was trying to explain to my mom what it was to have the heart and mind of a writer. 

I wish she could have called that word out in me then: Writer. You’re a writer, Adrie. But between juggling a newborn, putting her own dreams on hold, and getting dinner on the table, she very well may not even have heard me. She may have tuned out during the third stanza of the overwrought poem I’d been reading aloud moments before that statement. 

I remember, though. I remember the magic of reading, in my own curling letters, the inner drama of my life spelled out clearly. 

To wrestle with words on a page is part of the writer’s journey. There are stories we hold that flow from our hand with surprising ease and others that must be carved out of the page, pulling back the truth layer by layer until, eventually, we discover meaning.

When my son Theo was born in 2018, it became one of those reverberating experiences. One that drew me back again and again as I tried to capture the essence of meeting him for the first time. How it blew open my understanding of love (for a second time in my life), and how it introduced complexities to motherhood I had never before experienced. 

In this writing resource, I will walk you through an exploration of a single theme—the love of a mother to her son—in three genres: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

I found that each genre revealed a new dimension of understanding, just as I’d learned years before in my marbled notebook. My hope for you is that you give yourself permission to continue to wrestle with the deep and complex feelings in your heart, all the way across and between genres. 

Poetry

In the haze of those first few weeks with my son, I wanted to admit to a strange superstition I’d held around his due date: Friday, July 13th. For the nine months he’d grown inside me, I’d shrugged off the exact due date given to me by my obstetrician, knowing how rarely babies come when assigned. To anyone who asked, I said he was due July 12th. From a desire to capture the beauty of his birth and its timing, I wrote this poem.

A Poem:

I’d like to invite you to read this poem, The Smallest Letters You Can Read, by Australian writer, Cate Kennedy. Penned during the early days of the pandemic, Cate uses a scene from her daughter’s eye exam to illuminate the harsh new realities of our lives during that time. 

Writing Poetry:

Consider using poetry when your margin is thin but emotions are high. Capture snatches of words and phrases. Allow the freeform verse to unfetter you as you explore moments in time. Alternatively, lean into the structure of haiku or sonnet as a means of focusing your conscious mind on the form, allowing your unconscious mind to unlock and express your true feelings. 

Try It:

Write a Haiku Poem. Follow the structure of using 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line, and 5 syllables in the third line. There are additional aspects of a true Haiku poem, such as a reference to nature and an unexpected ending, but I like to begin by simply counting syllables. It’s very soothing.

Fiction

I believe wholeheartedly that the problems of the heart will rise to the surface of whatever art we make. So it shouldn’t surprise me that, when writing a fictional retelling of the Book of Ruth, the questions I faced around mothering a son came forward in this scene:

Frost came with enough persistence to force down any leaves that still remained, and color drained away from the world. It’s no surprise anymore how fast the seasons desert us, never pausing to look back, and it’s exactly in this same way that a boy becomes a man. One evening, you smooth the hair back from his forehead, place a hand on his rounded cheek, and when he wakes, the face is no longer soft, but angular. A jaw cleaves out, a new topography along the throat, the chin superior. And later, as you kiss him goodbye, you find you must lift your heels ever so slightly, and each day after he firms up like granite, rises higher above you, substantial and unfamiliar, something new entirely.

Read the entire short story at Letters Journal. 

While the story itself is about the relationship between the female characters, I have regularly received feedback that this section of text jumps off the page for readers. I know that my heart was certainly in my throat as I wrote it, and the longing expressed here—the anticipated loss of my own son growing up—surprised me. It shook loose in this scene in a way that allowed me to name a strange fear that arrived with his birth: Will I still have a place in his life when he marries someday?

A Short Story:

Cate Kennedy uses another form of lens (this time a camera lens) in her story “Whirlpool” to capture the stuffy, forced feeling of sitting for family Christmas photos. Short stories can be a great method for processing tension within relationships and capturing what’s happening beneath the surface.

Writing Fiction:

To me, the line between fiction and nonfiction is startlingly thin. Not because it’s possible to just change a few details and call stories about our lives “fiction”—frankly, that’s not a good use of the genre at all. I think that the difference between fiction and nonfiction genres is less than we think because our own “true stories” are so very subjective. 

Exploring the lives of fictional characters allows us to get beneath someone else’s skin, practicing empathy in a truly revolutionary way. By embodying the loss of my character, I recognized my own loss staring back at me from the page. 

Try It:

Consider someone in your life that you find challenging and write a first-person paragraph from their perspective. Give them a simple household task to do, like sweeping the floor or chopping vegetables, and write from inside their mind and heart. Just see what rises to the surface.

Nonfiction

Nearly four years after the birth of my son, Theo, I was still brushing up against the sharp edges of anticipated loss. Why did I worry about the future of my relationship with my son and not my daughter? Was there anything I could do to ensure a place in his life when he became an adult? Why was I continuing to think about this now when my children were so small? There were personal inconsistencies and fears in these questions that felt vulnerable. Maybe that is why I packaged them into poetry and fiction initially. Perhaps I wasn’t able to confront myself head-on just yet. But with the impending birth of my third child (another boy), everything rose to the surface again, and I knew that the only way forward was to write my way through. As a nod to the short story that first illuminated my fear, I used the same title when I published this essay in Coffee+Crumbs.

An Essay:

In her essay on the similarities between narrative and visual art, Kennedy recounts visiting Melbourne annually as a child for an eye exam and then taking in the city through dilated eyes. Across genres (and over decades), Cate explores the theme of the perceptiveness of children through the recurrent image of vision and lenses. Does she realize how frequently she’s used this metaphor? Possibly not! But it’s equally powerful in poetry and prose.

Writing Personal Essay:

The genre of writing published by Coffee+Crumbs is called personal narrative essay. Our editorial style tends to focus on a story covering a relatively small span of time, captured in 1,800 words or less. We look for essays that capture the unique personal experience of the writer while still holding some universal elements that will resonate with our readers. Writing within this genre can give you the sense of telling your story to a dear friend, and publishing in this form allows the writer and reader to feel less alone in their journey.

Try It:

Consider a moment in your experience as a mother that changed you. Begin by writing “in scene,” a first-person account of what unfolded in the five minutes before, during, and after a pivotal moment. Be robust in your recall of sensory details, and resist the urge to tell us what you were feeling or what you learned. As you re-read what you wrote, underline the details you captured that seem to carry the most emotional weight to you as a writer. These will be the sensations you want to pass on to your reader, allowing them the chance to really feel what you experienced, not just passively read about your experience. 

Writing Across Genres

There are many sides to every story. I hope that this resource has given you the encouragement to branch out and explore a new genre and that you will discover something new about yourself on the page that hasn’t yet been revealed.