Write Choices

Elements of Nonfiction Storytelling

Susan (Sue) M. Hertz

• Editorial: CQ Press
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483322629
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Langues et linguistique
• Categoría: Études sur la communication

Developing narrative nonfiction writers at any stage of their career

Write Choices: Elements of Nonfiction Storytelling helps writers cultivate their nonfiction storytelling skills by exploring the universal decisions writers confront when crafting factual narratives. Rather than isolating various forms of narrative nonfiction into categories or genres, Sue Hertz focuses on examining the common choices all true storytellers encounter, whether they are writing memoir, literary journalism, personal essays, or travel stories. Write Choices also includes digital storytelling. No longer confined to paper, today?s narrative nonfiction writers must learn to write for electronic media, which may also demand photos, videos, and/or audio. Integrating not only her own insights and experience as a journalist, nonfiction book author, and writing instructor, but also those of other established nonfiction storytellers, both print and digital, Hertz aims to guide emerging writers through key decisions to tell the best story possible. Blending how-to instruction with illuminating examples and commentaries drawn from original interviews with master storytellers, Write Choices is a valuable resource for all nonfiction writers, from memoirists to essayists to literary journalists, at any stage of their career.

1 What’s the Big Idea?

Overview

Finding an idea that is as compelling to the reader as it is to the writer looms often as daunting a task as scaling Kilimanjaro — barefoot.

Yet sources of inspiration are all around if we know where to look and what questions to ask. In this first chapter, we examine the paths that could lead to narrative topics, including brainstorming, the writer’s passions, conversations, observations, reading, reflection, and web cruising. Once we have a subject, we ask ourselves the hard questions — Where lies the conflict? What’s surprising? Is this idea timely or timeless? — to ferret out the fresh angle.

The invitation went something like this: Please attend a potluck dinner to which you will bring a taste treat for the guests and a book idea for the hostess.

A Book Raising party, I called it. And because the only folks invited were writers and because writers, or at least all the writers I know, will put up with pretty much anything for food, I predicted that I’d host a full house. Which was a good thing because I desperately needed help. In my early 30s, I had moved from newspaper feature writing to magazine article writing and longed to leap into the world of tens of thousands of words, to dive deeply into a topic, expand my skills, and surface an author. For the past year I’d explored a variety of ideas that for one reason or another — too depressing, too simple, too boring — tanked. I hoped that the combined creative genius of my writer friends would produce a project far more electric than the ones I’d thought up on my own.

And so they arrived to this brainstorming session with zucchini casseroles and spinach salads and chocolate-raspberry cupcakes. At the door they signed a waiver conceding to the hostess all rights to all ideas. One friend, a feature writer for the Boston Herald, needed story suggestions for a Monday meeting with her editor and refused to sign. I didn’t blame her. She and her hummus were still allowed in. We ate, we drank, we laughed, and then we got down to business. By the end of the evening I had what I thought were two intriguing book ideas to pitch to my literary agent.

While he loved the concept of the book raising party, he dismissed one of the two ideas, and was only mildly interested in the second. Still, he contacted an editor, who, within minutes of hearing the pitch, said it wasn’t for her, thanks and hung up. Still on the line, I sighed, frustrated, muttering that I wanted to write about social issues, but that it felt like I would never land the right idea. “Sure you will,” my agent said. “What you need is a vehicle.”

• “Like what?” I asked.
• He paused, thinking. “Like a year in the life of an abortion clinic.”
• “Yuck,” I said.
• “No, it is great,” he said. “Think about it.”

I did, and 2 years later Prentice Hall published “Caught in the Crossfire; A Year on Abortion’s Front Line,” my narrative nonfiction account of how the politics and the protests on the outside affected the staff and patients on the inside of Preterm Health Services in Brookline, Massachusetts. What my agent had known, and I was in too much of a hurry to appreciate, was that subjects are everywhere, but ideas require a hook, or as he called it, a vehicle. My writer friends and I could talk until we were breathless about potential topics — shoe trends, addictive video games, sibling rivalry — but without a specific approach to those topics, we were merely treading water, flapping around but not moving forward. Yes I wanted to write about social issues, and sure enough, abortion is a social issue, but what about abortion did I want to learn? What angle could I pursue that would surprise? What could I discover that was new?

As writers, we are always searching for stories to tell, whether those stories are about our own lives and experiences, or the experiences and lives of others. Whether we hope to write a short essay, a 5,000-word magazine narrative, a thick book or text for a digital slide show. Yet so often we find ourselves staring into the abyss, a big empty vat, when we try to summon ideas to pursue. Our literary quests would be so much easier if we trained ourselves to think in terms of questions rather than subjects.

Subjects, indeed, float all around. A subject to explore on the page could be a hobby (fly fishing, scrapbooking) or a fear (small places, slithering snakes). A subject could be a memory (a father’s rage) or an event (a trip to Istanbul). Subjects emerge from daily media stories (small town racism, wheelchair basketball) or observations (territorial winter surfers, over-friendly dog walkers). Conversations breed potential subjects — a casual chat about willful toddlers or a ferocious brainstorming session that yields a slideshow of embarrassing middle school memories. Sometimes subjects surface when we least expect them — soaking in a steaming tub, driving on a rural back road, half-asleep on the hammock — any occasion, really, when our racing brains relax. As we let our thoughts ramble, the inner critic shuts down and from our subconscious bubble concerns (plastic bag pollution), pleasures (Red Sox tickets), recollections (sailing on a stormy Lake Michigan).

An idea for a narrative, however, is not based on a subject, but rather on a question about the subject. What do you want to learn about the impact of your father’s rage? How do territorial surfers affect the sport? What’s new in your town about the effort to ban plastic bags? Is a seat at Fenway Park worth the cost and hassle?

A reporter by trade and by nature, I’m an annoying fountain of queries, as my friends and family will attest. I ask about their day and their health. I ask about their feelings toward a proposed historic district. I ask why the elementary school abolished morning recess. I ask whether the wind turbine keeps them awake at night. And as a result of three decades of telling true stories, I ask myself what I want to learn from topics assigned to me and topics I drum up on my own. Ask any writer and he will tell you the same thing: Every story begins with a question.

So let’s begin this journey into nonfiction storytelling by first fishing for subjects and then directing our energies into applying a hook, into discovering the mystery we want to solve about the subject. Picture yourself in a car, settling into your comfy leather seat, ready to go. First you decide on your destination. Then you figure out a route. In the craft of telling true stories, the question you pursue is your GPS. But the best part is that you don’t need to tinker with an electronic tracking device to launch your idea. The only ingredient required is curiosity.

Where lurk subjects?

Flannery O’Connor once said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” In other words, anyone over 12 has plenty of subject matter for literary pursuits. Branch out beyond one’s own life and potential topics sprout as thick as tallgrass on a prairie.

The first step toward identifying whether a subject has enough inherent drama to spawn a narrative is to stomp to shreds that noisy internal editor, the voice that shoots down every idea, every suggestion. Not all topics will be winners but you won’t know what could prove fruitful if you nix rather than nurture.

And what would be easier to nurture than something that fires you up? First stop for the subject sensor: your passions.

Find subjects in passions

“I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

~ Joseph Campbell in an interview with Bill Moyers for the documentary “The Power of Myth”

When the mythologist Joseph Campbell coined the phrase “Follow your bliss” to help guide his students and readers toward a richer life, he could also have been speaking to writers in search of ideas. If you’re bored by a topic, no doubt your reader’s attention will drift off to favorite YouTube videos by Paragraph Two — so it only makes sense that writers seek ideas within subjects about which they are passionate.

Todd Balf is an avid outdoorsman. He loves to bike and run and kayak and hike. He loves sports, all sports, and is fascinated by how humans push themselves physically and emotionally in pursuit of a dream. Little wonder, then, that he has made a career out of writing and editing for adventure magazines, such as Outside, Esquire, and Men’s Journal. His first book, “The Last River,” was about a tragic kayak trip taken by some of the top U.S. paddlers down the Tsangpo River Gorge in Tibet, his second, “The Darkest Jungle” about the failed 1854 expedition to find a route across the isthmus of Panama, and his third, “Major,” a biography of one of the earliest stars in competitive bicycling, an African-American named Marshall Major Taylor. “I get my ideas mostly from what I’m passionate about,” says Balf. “Because I’m not particularly expert in anything, I use my inexpertise and curiosity to feed ideas.” While he cheerfully admits that his passion is adventure and travel, he adds that his definition of adventure is broad. “It could mean growing a really good tomato or it could be trudging across a jungle in Panama,” he says. “The mindset is always the same; you have something that you aren’t sure you can do, you’re committed to wanting to do it, and then you write about that experience and journey to getting to it or not getting to it.”

When asked how they come up with ideas, writers will often say one word: “theme.” Just as athletes migrate to specific sports and chefs to certain cuisines, writers have favorite topics they pursue again and again. Tracy Kidder, for one, spent his early energies writing books about process — the process of building a computer, of building a house, of educating fifth graders. Susan Orlean has devoted decades to writing about people and their obsessions, be they a New York City fishmonger or a Spanish bullfighter. Born of a Nigerian father and Finnish mother, Faith Adiele centers much of her writing on identity.

As much as I’d like to call myself a generalist, with a portfolio containing tales ranging from problem feet to ghost hunts, the subjects that ignite my curiosity inevitably involve people confronting adversity. Parents of homicide victims learning to cope. Parents of young children learning to juggle child-raising with caring for their aging parents. Scientists struggling to conduct their research amid political turmoil that threatens their life’s work.

What are your passions? Are you an avid road biker? Traveler? Family genealogist? Quilter? Egyptologist? Are you fascinated by architecture? African-American history? Do you find yourself flipping to magazine stories about women struggling to balance ambition and family? To stories of survival? To entrepreneurs creating life-altering devices and services? What subjects pique your curiosity? Harbor mystery and fascination, perhaps even frustration? Often we write best about topics that perplex us the most.

Find subjects in conversations

During my years as a regular contributor to Boston Magazine, an editor once asked me to write a BIG story on day care. The father of a toddler, he found himself in frequent conversations with other parents about problem nannies and overcrowded day care centers, and he figured that if that many of his peers were obsessing about child care, then so were plenty of Boston Magazine’s subscribers. He didn’t have a specific angle; finding one was my job. Ordinarily, I would have been happy with the freedom, but in this case, I clutched. Single at the time, I lived alone, my daily contact with children limited to waving to my landlord’s two young daughters who lived on the first floor of our apartment building. What I knew about daycare was what everyone knew — that finding someone to care for your child with love and humor and healthy snacks and lots of outdoor time was tough. But a story about the trials of finding quality day care wouldn’t make it past the pitch. Too trite. Too obvious. Frustrated, I vented to my carpool mate Barb en route to our teaching jobs at the University of New Hampshire. “What about a story from the day care provider’s side?” she suggested. Her mother-in-law owned and directed a day care center just north of Boston, and while she prided herself on the attention and education she offered at her center, the visits and inquisitions and demands she received from the state were daunting at best. Ever since Tookie the Clown had been arrested and found guilty of child abuse in another Massachusetts center, the state had been relentlessly aggressive in monitoring the men and women who cared for other people’s children. Some might say too aggressive. What, then, were the challenges of providing quality care in an era of hyper state vigilance and helicopter parents?

“Brilliant!” I said. The surprise factor was great; who thought of the day care provider’s perspective? The editor agreed. After weeks of shadowing both sides — the day care providers and the social workers assigned to assess childcare centers’ safety and quality, as well as talking to parents and dependent care experts, I had the answer to my central question: While all parties agreed that child safety was paramount, the state would better serve providers, and thus children, if it served as an advocate rather than adversary. Between the low pay, long days, constant criticism by parents, and social workers demanding pounds of paperwork, more fans, and fewer electric cords, the providers were run ragged. “Who Cares for the Child?” offered all sides but leaned sympathetically toward the women and men who care for children as a livelihood. Had my carpool mate Barb never mentioned her mother-in-law, I would have missed this angle.

One of my grad students, too, profited well from a conversation. During a casual chat with a friend, she heard the story of a dramatic winter rescue on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire’s notorious tallest peak that until recently, held the world record for strongest recorded winds. A group of volunteers, skilled climbers from the North Country, faced the brutal gales and below-zero temperatures to recover a stranded hiker. Amy, an athletic blonde who loves being outdoors in all kinds of weather, perked up, her story antennae erect. What was the name of the volunteer group? she asked. Mountain Rescue Service. How long have they operated? Since 1972. Why would anyone risk his life in the legendary wind, cold, and snow of the White Mountains to rescue unprepared hikers? No answer. Amy decided to find out and spent the next year learning how the Mountain Rescue Service climbers operated, and the next year following them out on rescues. The answer to that original question proved the pulse of her MFA thesis, a portion of which became an article for the Appalachian Mountain Club’s magazine.

Dialogue prompts reflection, and reflection can lead to a piece of memoir, or a personal essay. Bonnie Rough and her new husband spent many an hour debating the wis...