{"id":988,"date":"2026-10-18T09:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/?p=988"},"modified":"2026-10-18T20:20:54","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T00:20:54","slug":"nature-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/blog\/2026\/10\/18\/nature-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who am I to give advice on nature writing? No one. I couldn\u2019t write a readable essay about nature if my life depended on it. But I have read a lot of nature writing,1<\/a><\/sup> and more importantly I was recently reminded of Jonathan Franzen\u2019s essay, The problem of nature writing<\/a>. I won\u2019t offer my own advice about nature writing, I\u2019ll just pull a couple of suggestions from Franzen\u2019s essay, and I won\u2019t be at all offended if you follow the link to Franzen\u2019s essay and never return. He is, after all, an accomplished writer<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

The phrase under the title captures Franzen\u2019s key insight:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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To succeed\u2014to get people to care about preserving the world\u2014it can\u2019t be only about nature.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To succeed, nature writing has to capture not only those of us who are already captivated by it, but also those who think they don\u2019t care about it, maybe even those who find nature scary (or at least messy). And how do we do that? By telling stories. Stories capture an audience.2<\/a><\/sup> So nature writing needs to be story telling, but not just any story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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Narrative nature writing, at its most effective, places a person (often the author, writing in first person) in some kind of unresolved relationship with the natural world, provides the character with unanswered questions or an unattained goal, and then deploys universally shared emotions\u2014hope, anger, longing, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment\u2014to engage a reader in the journey.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Effective nature writing involves a story about people, usually the author. Whether it\u2019s Thoreau at Walden Pond, Abbey at Arches, or Dillard at Tinker Creek, effective nature writing tells a story about the author and their intense personal relationship with nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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We can\u2019t make a reader care about nature. All we can do is tell strong stories of people who do care, and hope that the caring is contagious.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve read this far, you owe it to yourself to read Franzen\u2019s essay<\/a>. It\u2019s not long, and you\u2019ll learn much more from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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  1. <\/a>Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Edwin Way Teale, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and others ↩<\/a><\/li>\n\t
  2. <\/a>If you don\u2019t believe me, read through a few of the articles on Randy Olson\u2019s Substack, ABT Agenda<\/a> ↩<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Who am I to give advice on nature writing? No one. I couldn\u2019t write a readable essay about nature if my life depended on it. But I have read a… Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":989,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}