Zoom In, Then Linger

Ethan Gilsdorf on Zooming In and Lingering:

“In personal essay, memoir and creative nonfiction, we want to bring to our pages a sense of verisimilitude, of intruding upon someone else’s circumstances, of grasping someone else’s fleeting take on the world.”

How to do this?

Gilsdorf suggests:

“The language of cinematography is a useful analogy: in a wide or medium shot, the viewer is distant from the subject; in close-ups and extreme close-ups, the frame of reference is tight.

In writing, this means: rather than quickly cutting away, or keeping the viewer far removed, like a drone hovering high above, we can zoom in on the subject of our attention, or pan across it, slowly.

We can train our writerly efforts to pause. To not skip over— but to linger, loiter, dawdle, stay put, wait.”

Excerpted from “Stay a Little Bit Longer: The Art of Zooming In and Lingering,” The Brevity Blog, March 17, 2025