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.

The Genre: Narrative/Creative/Literary Nonfiction--Which Is It?

Charles Mingus, Jazz Composer and Bassist

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; 

making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

                                                                                                 Charles Mingus

AS it has always been, our genre is named after something it's not, rather than something it is. It is not fiction. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the genre has evolved in the past fifty years into a blend: factual reporting enhanced with something like fiction (but definitely not fiction). 
     In the1960s and 1970s, along with much else in our world, cold, hard-news fiction transformed into a more human form. Called The New Journalism at the time, nonfiction was defined as writing that "not only seeks to explain as well as to inform; it even dares to teach, to measure, to evaluate."
     As a child and adolescent, I read only fiction--and biographies. Other nonfiction writing seemed distant and academic, news-oriented and analytic. But in the mid 1960s, Truman
Capote's In Cold Blood served, at least to me, to make nonfiction suddenly sexy, and completely compelling. Reportage became story.


What we're talking about is labeled, variously, narrative, creative or literary nonfiction. 
     It's narrative because it tells a story and has the general components of a story arc--rising action, climax, denouement. Children acquire a "story sense" around two years of age; by three they can tell a story--true or not--that has a beginning, middle and end. And a point. Composing life experience with the story arc of fiction allows us to engage our readers on a human level. Life experience doesn't occur, however, in neat story arcs. That's why writers craft life events into memoir.
     It's creative because--in addition to reporting facts--creative nonfiction writers employ the techniques of fiction writing: scene, dialogue, setting, characterization, interior monologue, for example. The creative nonfiction essay, story, or article appeals to readers because it reads somewhat like fiction. The facts are structured and organized in order to appeal to a reader's innate sense of story.
     It's literary because the writing has the definitive elements of literature: "excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest." It is literary when the writer composes the narrative using creative techniques with the intent of satisfying a reader's need to understand the world and human relationships more thoroughly. It's literature when the writer composes beyond mere plot, or, in the case of memoir, beyond mere life event. Life experience can be made into art, the angle of the writer's perspective highlighting significance. And when the writer simplifies the extreme complication of human life, her writing benefits everyone who reads it. 


This post is mostly thinking out loud, then writing to figure out what I think to see if it makes sense. Writing's good for that--composing forces us to clarity--at least for the moment. Let me know if it's clear and makes sense. Add your perspective here, your understanding of the memoirist's task, through your lens. I'd love to hear it.


Next week: Thoughts about deception in memoir writing.