Fiction as Research Practice

Short Stories, Novellas, and Novels

Patricia Leavy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315428475
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The turn to fiction as a social research practice is a natural extension of what many researchers and writers have long been doing. Patricia Leavy, a widely published qualitative researcher and a novelist, explores the overlaps and intersections between these two ways of understanding and describing human experience. She demonstrates the validity of literary experimentation to the qualitative researcher and how to incorporate these practices into research projects. Five short stories and excerpts from novellas and novels show these methods in action. This book is an essential methodological introduction for those interested in studying or practicing arts-based research.

PART I

FICTION AS RESEARCH PRACTICE

Chapter 1

Blurred Genres: The Intertwining of Fiction and Nonfiction

Humanity has but one product, and that is fiction.

—Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction

Paige went to the lobby to check the mail for the third time that morning. She had already checked both before and after her daily run, although she knew it was too early. Always rational, she justified this irrational behavior by lamenting that Saturday deliveries were unpredictable, and since the wait from Saturday to Monday was the worst she might as well check, and possibly calm herself. As she turned the tiny key and lifted the icy metal latch she wondered how much longer she could endure this. Still nothing. She waved at Frank, the doorman, and scurried back into her elevator eager to return to the warmth of her home. Although already into April, the last blizzard had blanketed New York with a coldness that had yet to pass. Her slim frame couldn’t let go of the chill. She rubbed her hands together wondering if her trembling was from the cold, anxiety, or guilt. “What kind of mother am I?” played over and over in her mind.

Not wanting to keep her friend Gwen waiting, she ran upstairs, slipped on her boots, and darted into her bathroom removing a hair tie from a drawer. She took her brush and pulled her long dark auburn hair tightly into a high ponytail, making certain to smooth any flyaway strands. She uncharacteristically indulged for a moment, searching the reflection for someone familiar. As she looked in the large bathroom mirror perfecting her hair, she wondered where she had disappeared to. Then, remembering she was meeting Gwen, she shook her head and lunged back into her routine. She grabbed her workout bag and scoured her walk-in closet for her handbag, until she remembered leaving it by the front door to save time. She hurried downstairs, threw the handbag into her workout bag, and put on her Burberry coat. She cinched the belt tightly as if to confirm that she was in fact there. In an effort to hide in public she grabbed a pair of oversized black Chanel sunglasses from her mail table, slipped them on, and left.

Upon arrival at the health club, she made a beeline to the locker room whizzing past Mollie Johnston, whom she hadn’t seen in years. As she brushed past on route to her locker, Mollie yelled after her, “Paige? Paige Michaels, is that you?”

Paige turned around too flustered to recognize the woman at first. She was beaming with an out-of-place friendliness. Her round face and dark blonde curls seemed familiar, but the fullness of her face suggested she was overweight and not pumped up with Botox, so Paige couldn’t quite place her.

“It’s me, Mollie Johnston! Well, Mollie Cooper back then, but now …”

As recognition set in, Paige interrupted with “Oh, oh hi Mollie,” catching her breath and slowly backtracking towards the jolly woman.

“Well, you’re practically incognito, aren’t you?” Mollie remarked with a bright smile.

Paige took off her sunglasses and leaned in to peck Mollie on the cheek. “I’m so sorry. I’m running late for my squash game … Wow, it has been ages,” Paige continued, finally in control of her breathing.

“Since college. Well, you look just wonderful, put together as ever. Still just perfect. Perfect Paige just as always. I’m jealous!” she said as she gave Paige the once over. “I’ve been on the wait-list for this place for ages. I’m so glad to see a friendly face,” Mollie continued.

“It’s nice to see you too,” Paige replied in a concerted effort to appear friendly. She could see that Mollie meant well, but she wasn’t in the mood to smile through awkwardly worded compliments. “So you live in the city now?” she continued out of courtesy.

“Yes, yes, just about fifteen blocks from here. My husband, you remember Paul?” Paige smiled ever so slightly in confirmation and Mollie continued, “Paul’s at a big firm in Midtown and the boys started college last year, one is at Bates and the other at Colby, so I have a lot more time to myself—we have twin boys; gosh, did I even tell you that?” Without waiting for a reply Mollie continued, “Anyway, you can see why I was so desperate for a space to open here! So, what about you? Don’t tell me, you’re blissfully happy with Spencer of course—what about kids, do you have any kids?”

“Mollie, I don’t mean to be rude but I’m terribly late for my match. It’s wonderful seeing you. Let’s catch up another time,” Paige said, already backing away.

“Oh gosh, I didn’t mean to hold you up,” Mollie replied in a jovial tone. Paige was already walking away but put her hand up in a backward wave as Mollie hollered, “Would love to get together.”

With her back to Mollie and several yards away, Paige nodded, one perfect loose curl of her high ponytail bouncing up and down as she continued to walk away.

After changing into her all-whites and restocking her locker with a stack of freshly pressed clothes, she met Gwen who was already warming up on the court. As Paige opened the glass door, the always glamorous Gwen turned around and said, “I can’t believe I finally beat you here. It only took three years. Do you want to warm up?”

“I was cornered in the locker room. Let’s go, your serve.”

The preceding excerpt is the opening of my second novel, American Circumstance (forthcoming). This novel explores two primary themes: appearance versus reality (how people’s lives look to others versus how they are experienced) and the complex ways that social class shapes people’s identities. These are topics that can be difficult to approach—social class and economics, and the personal ways they impact people’s lives, are challenging to address in nonfiction writing or lecture formats because they are so intimate, are linked to issues of status and pride, and are highly politicized. The fictional format offers a chance to observe these complex issues in all their nuances and to invite diverse readers into the text in a pleasurable way.

Fiction can draw us in, giving us access to new yet familiar worlds in which we might meet strangers or through which we might reflect on our own lives. Through the pleasure, and at times the pain, of confronting emotionally charged truths, the process of reading fiction can be transformative, as is the process of writing it. Fiction is engaged.

Fiction is both a form of writing and a way of reading (Cohn 2000). Fiction grants us an imaginary entry into what is otherwise inaccessible. The practice of writing and reading fiction allows us to access imaginary or possible worlds, to reexamine the worlds we live in, and to enter into the psychological processes that motivate people and the social worlds that shape them. In short, engaging with fiction in our research practice creates innumerable possibilities.

There is a robust and complex history of merging fiction and research (or fiction and nonfiction). This history could be approached and summarized in a number of ways. I come into this field from the qualitative and arts-based research paradigms, so I use those practices as my point of departure.

Qualitative Social Research

Using fiction as a social research practice is a natural extension of what many researchers and writers have long been doing. The work of the researcher and of the novelist aren’t as disparate as some may claim. On the contrary, there has always been a winding road between research practice and the writing of fiction (Franklin 2011). Stephen Banks (2008, 155–56) writes that “the zone between the practices of fiction writers and non-fiction writers is blurry,” because fiction “is only more or less ‘fictional.’” There is a historical interplay, or intentional border crossing, between “fiction” and “nonfiction,” as I discuss below with regard to blurred genres such as historical fiction and creative nonfiction.

Fiction writers conduct extensive research to achieve verisimilitude, similarly to social scientists (Banks 2008; Berger 1977). Verisimilitude refers to the creation of a realistic, authentic, and life-like portrayal, and it is the goal of both fiction and established social science practices like ethnography. Fiction writers and qualitative researchers both seek to build believable representations of existing or possible worlds (Visweswaran 1994, 1) and to truthfully or authentically portray human experience. It is not as if fiction writers created fantasies and researchers recorded facts. The material writers use in fiction comes from real life and genuine human experience. Similarly, qualitative researchers very much shape every aspect of their investigation, imbuing it with meaning and marking it with their fingerprint.

Now, innovative researchers propelled by changes in the qualitative paradigm and arts-based researchers are harnessing the unique capabilities of fiction as a means of engaging in effective and publicly accessible research practice. In order to understand fiction-based research, it is important to ground the conversation in a discussion of the nature of social research and knowledge-building practices, including qualitative and arts-based research. Fiction, more than any other research practice, directly challenges the fact/fiction dichotomy and forces us to renegotiate the boundaries between the two. Understandably, this makes some uncomfortable; however, I choose to focus this book on how fiction has and can be used in research, not on the critiques.¹

Social research is a process aimed at knowledge-building and meaning-making; at accessing, expressing, and negotiating truths and then effectively communicating those “truths” to relevant audiences. This basic premise is important to bear in mind, since I suggest that when we consider fiction-based research practice the general goals of accessing and effectively communicating those truths is the backdrop of any project.

Characterized as a craft, qualitative research aims at generating deep understanding, unpacking meanings, revealing social processes, and, above all, illuminating human experience. Qualitative research values sensory knowledge and experience, multiple meanings, and subjectivity in the research process. In recent years many qualitative practitioners have reconceptualized the researcher’s role in ethnographic studies and the way to best represent that research. The sharp rise in autoethnography and narrative inquiry (Leavy 2009a), as well as the impact of critical area studies such as women’s studies (Leavy 2011a), have normalized the active presence of the researcher in his or her writing. Reflexive writing is increasingly common, which Elizabeth de Freitas (2007, 1) defines as writing that “traces the presence of the author in/through the text.”

Pushes toward public scholarship have also changed how many view their practice. The academy has long been plagued by criticisms that researchers are in their “ivory towers,” shut off from reality and disconnected from the communities in which they are enmeshed. Influenced by a confluence of factors—an engaged public (fueled by social media), the effects of the social justice movements on the academy, developments in community-based research and service-leaning, and changes in technology and publishing that allow for the widespread sharing of knowledge—there is a strong movement toward increasing public scholarship (Leavy 2011a). Researchers across the academy, but particularly in the qualitative community, are seeking new ways of making their work more accessible. Arts-based research is accordingly gaining in popularity.

Arts-Based Research (ABR)

Arts-based research (ABR) emerged between the 1970s and the 1990s,² and now constitutes a significant methodological genre (Sinner et al. 2006).³ This practice developed out of a convergence of factors,⁴ and has been further propelled by technological advances in digital imaging, the Internet, Photoshop, sound files, and so forth. As I noted in my earlier work (2009a, 2011a), arts-based research has developed within a transdisciplinary methodological context involving the crossing of disciplinary borders as well as cross-disciplinary collaborations. Arts-based research practices are a set of methodological tools that adapt the tenets of the creative arts and can be used during all phases of social research (Leavy 2009a). Genres of ABR include but are not limited to: poetry, music, theatrical scripts, theatrical or dance performances, visual art, and film, as well as the genres of fiction on which this book will focus—novels, novellas, and short stories.

Pioneers in the field of art education Tom Barone and Elliot Eisner (1997, 214) note seven features of ABR:

1. The creation of virtual reality

2. The presence of ambiguity

3. The use of expressive language

4. The use of capitalized and vernacular language

5. The promotion of empathy

6. The personal signature of the researcher/writer

7. The presence of aesthetic form

For social researchers the appeal of the arts is in their ability to transform consciousness, refine the senses, promote autonomy, raise awareness, express the complex feeling-based aspects of social life (Eisner 2002, 10–19), jar us into seeing and thinking differently, illuminate the complexity and sometimes paradox of lived experience, and to build empathy and resonance. Arts-based research draws on the oppositional, subversive, transformational, and otherwise resistive capabilities of the arts (Leavy 2009a). Suzanne Thomas (2001, 274) writes: “Art as inquiry has the power to evoke, to inspire, to spark the emotions, to awaken visions and imaginings, and to transport others to new worlds.” When trying to understand the power of the arts in social research, it is important to remember our general objective. As Ardra Cole and J. Gary Knowles (2001, 211) note, “researchers aim to portray lives.” They suggest much of our work can be conceptualized as life history research—research that links individuals’ personal lives and relationships to the larger contexts in which they unfold—and this practice involves drawing on artistic practice, because imagination and metaphor are needed in order to portray lives sensitively. Cole and Knowles (ibid., 215–17) further delineate seven elements of arts-informed life history research, which ultimately come to bear on fiction-based research:

1. Intentionality (intellectual and moral purpose)

2. Researcher’s presence (signature or fingerprint)

3. Methodological commitment

4. Holistic quality (authenticity, sincerity, truthfulness)

5. Aesthetic form (aesthetic appeal and adherence to genre conventions)

6. Knowledge claims

7. Contributions (theoretical, practical, transformative)

If we are attempting to understand and illuminate people’s lives, then we need to make our research accessible to the many, not the few. Dorinne Kondo and Kirin Narayan make this point well drawing on the power of metaphor: “Ethnographers should not be like those first class lounges behind hidden doors in the airport, which only certain people, having paid their dues, get to walk through. For ethnography to matter in a multicultural world it needs to reach a wider range of audiences both in and beyond the academy” (quoted in Behar 1995, 21). Free from academic jargon and other prohibitive barriers, the arts have the potential to reach a broad range of people and to be emotionally and/or politically evocative for diverse audiences.

Historically, academic researche...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part I. Fiction as Research Practice
• Part II. Exemplars with Commentary
• Part III. Conclusion
• Appendix A: Writing Prompts
• Appendix B: Exercises for Transforming Your Research into Fiction
• Appendix C: Tips for Getting Published
• Appendix D: Recommended Resources
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Authors