Researching Story and Subject

As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it 

till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a 

ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. 

Last week I wrote about field researching a subject before writing, before deciding what direction a narration will take. I wrote that because that's what I'm doing: I know my subject, but don't yet know the story that will drive it. In one way, the story will be illustrated by the subject, in this case a specific landscape. On the other hand, the subject will direct the story. I hope one will have the same weight as the other, that story and subject will be balanced.

So what does it look like to "see where the research takes us," to "trust our instincts"? It's the same endeavor whether you are researching the subject or the story, whether you are exploring externally or internally.

First realize that drafting/composing/researching, in whichever order it takes, requires that we consider both the subject--the physical world of the narration, and the story--the life event you are documenting.

• The subject for a book I recently recommended, Anthony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome, was the ancient city. The story was Doerr's experience there. He exposed both subject and story--the place and his personal connection to the place. 
• In Cheryl Strayed's Wild, the subject is the Pacific Coast Trail, the story her physical, emotional and mental struggle to recover and heal. Neither would communicate without the other. 

In either case:
Look for patterns in your subject and story. Similar to the recurrent designs in wallpaper or fabric, patterns in human behavior make the person.

• Notice repetitions of action, speech, thought, dress if you are establishing a character in your memoir. Notice patterns as well in the physical world--shapes, colors, sounds, smells, flora and fauna.
• Story comes from our observation, documentation and meaning-making of these patterns. This is actually an understatement since nearly all maturation--mentally, emotionally and physically--comes from our awareness of patterns in our own behavior.

Look for a story sense in the subject, a pattern we intrinsically know--that understanding of beginning, middle and end. More than that, look for rising action, consequence, solution or resolution (sometimes acceptance of no solution). Look into the history of any subject or story--find primary sources as much as possible.

Make continual connection between the narrator's (the writer's) perspective and the story's unfolding action, between the subject's effect on the narrator and its effect on others. E. M.Forster said it, in his famous epigraph to Howards End: "only connect." If we do that, merely that, we begin to make meaning.

Wonder, wander, write--always.