Elissa Schappell opened her Q&A session in Gifford Auditorium on Wednesday afternoon by asking the crowd of students to “do some sort of interpretive dance” because she is “very easily bored.”

Schappell, an author and professor at Columbia University, spoke to a crowd of more than 60 students from Syracuse University’s Living Writing course, ETS 107, about her writing technique and her book, “Blueprints for Building Better Girls” — which she called the “anti-etiquette book,” that discusses wearisome times and how to behave when nobody wants to listen.

In ETS 107, students are taught about living writers and the vibrant nature of writing. This semester, they read Schappell’s award-winning novel, while learning how to question authors on their content, technique and inspirations. The students in attendance for Schappell’s Q&A session did exactly that.

One of the audience members praised Schappell for her authenticity while writing about sexual assault. The student asked Schappell whether she censors her writing for her audience.

“Not at all,” Schappell said.

Schappell said she doesn’t ever think about the audience while writing because then she “can’t tell the truth.” The reason Schappell resorts to art is to have the truth of the culture and her own experiences reflected back to her.

She added that she hopes by writing about topics like sexual assault that she can change the conversation that’s happening about such topics today. She concluded that she could not do that in an honest way if she lies, and that sexual assault cannot be represented painlessly if it’s genuine.

Schappell also advised writers not to think about how their writing will be perceived, but to hope that the audience will reward them for pure motives.

A male audience member asked Schappell if she has received backlash for her “overtly fleshed-out female characters.”

Schappell replied, “Oh sure, but you always wanna piss people off.”

If some people are not “pissed off,” Schappell said, then a writer is not doing their job right. She said she writes women as she sees them — people who “aren’t angelic do-gooders but they aren’t whores or witches either.”

Schappell added that it is an artist’s job to fashion fully fleshed-out human beings, and not everybody will appreciate that.

A student writer asked Schappell how she became a writer, and Schappell said she has always been one and that it is one of the only skills she has. As a child, Schappell said she was filled with rage and she expressed her anger and depression through writing, mostly in a journal under the pseudonym Shannon.

Another audience member recognized Schappell’s interest with etiquette books and asked her what kind of influence they had on “Blueprints for Building Better Girls.”

Schappell, who collects etiquette books, said she found them “fascinating” when she was younger because they instructed people on how to behave. Schappell said that as a child she never understood how people are supposed to behave and could not comprehend how decorum and etiquette related to “being human.”

“How are people supposed to behave under the most trying circumstances?” she asked.

Schappell said she also wanted to use humor to disarm people, serve as a shield for her as a writer and as a sword for characters. Humor allows audiences to trust writers because life is hard enough without reading about agony, she said. Therefore, she said she uses humor as a catharsis while writing about discomforts that everyone knows about, but nobody wants to talk about.

A student from the audience asked her if she could advise those who are in love for the first time — similar to two characters from her stories.

Schappell responded by asking her if she “had time to get drinks later.”

Published on December 9, 2015 at 11:19 pm

Contact Arva: ahassonj@syr.edu