Composition

Neil Gaiman begins his “Make Good Art” speech by addressing the audience and sharing how his background is different from theirs. In his introduction, Gaiman explains his experience with higher education and briefly mentions the way he has not necessarily created a deliberate career plan, but made a list of goals that he constantly worked to achieve. 

From the beginning, Gaiman tells the students that he will share with them “the best piece of advice I ever got, which I completely failed to follow” (ll. 22-23). This captures the students’ attention as they are probably curious to find out what that piece of advice is. Like this, when Gaiman finally tells them about the advice he received from Stephen King, he makes sure that it has more impact on the stud...