Thinking about . . .
Writing Creative Nonfiction

To master the craft of writing creative nonfiction, you need to begin by thinking about your story in a number of different ways and on a number of different levels ' from the broad-brush-stroke view of conflict-development-resolution, to the 'architectural' approach you will use to structure your story on the page, all the way to the literary devices you will use to make your story come alive so your reader will be unwilling -- even unable -- to stop reading until she or he reaches the end.

 What follows is not a how-to write creative nonfictionso much as a kind of random mental checklist of things to think about as youthink about writing your story.

• Story
• Structure
• Scenes
• Character
• Storytelling techniques

The Story

What's my story about?

All stories are about conflict (complication). According to Charles Marsh in an academic paper entitled “Deeper than the Fictional Model : Structural Origins of Literary Journalism in Greek Tragedy and Aristotle’s Poetics," a complication is simply "any problem encountered by any human being. To be dramatic, the complication has got to matter deepy to the character involved."

Aristotle's six fundamental (and pre-gender aware) conflicts

1. Man against Man
2. Man against Nature
3. Man against himself
4. Man against society
5. Man against the god
6. Man against machine

Jon Franklin's Conflict-Development-Resolution model

The 'universality' of the three-act structure

Apparent subject/deeper subject (Phil Gerard)

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Structure

Creative Nonfiction writing guru Lee Gutkind calls it 'framing,' and the construction metaphor may be helpful. Even after we understand what the story's all about in terms of its conflict-development-resolution (the house seen in full, if you like), we need to decide how to structure the telling of that story -- the framing in of the floors and rooms of our story/house -- in the most effective, compelling way in order to create the larger impact we seek.

There are inevitably plenty of different ways of arranging the building blocks of narrative -- scenes, characters, plots, context, etc. -- to tell any story. The question you must ask yourself is what is the 'right' way to tell this particular tale.

Scott Meredith, the famous literary agent, once described what he called the 'seven-element story structure' this way:

1. Character in a
2. Context with a
3. Conflict
4. Tries to solve it, but
5. Fails until the Conflict reaches a
6. Climax when the character succeeds or fails which
7. Resolves the Conflict

Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Rick Bragg sees story structure in terms of five boxes.

1. Lead. Provides image, detail. Draws in reader.
2. Not graph. Provides context.
3. Retell story begun in Box 1. With new anecdote, scene detail to draw reader into complete story.
4. BBI (Boring but important).Statistics, experts.
5. Kicker. Strong ending. Quote. Image. Bragg: 'I'm a strong believer that you can't have a decent story if it doesn't leave you with a strong feeling or sense or image.'

Kinds of structures

Let's look at some standard story frames:

Chronological: We can tell our story chronologically, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end. This is a traditional form of story telling. The trick is to make sure the complication/conflict is clear early on and that the unfolding story will hold the reader's interest.

In media res: Or we can jump into the middle of the story ' usually at (but not past) a critical turning point in the narrative ' and then step back to provide the context leading back up to and then finally resolving the critical turning point we began with. Let's consider a true crime story, for example. You could start with the discovery of the murder victim, whose death becomes the trigger for your story. Having hooked the reader with this compelling scene, you could then go back in time to the events and characters leading back up to the killing and then follow the story through the police investigation, arrest, trial and conviction (or whatever becomes the resolution of your story).

Converging narrative: Think of a serious car accident. Think of all the characters who might be part of such a story: The drivers, passengers, their families, witnesses who dial 9-1-1, the paramedics and police who respond to the accident, the emergency room doctors and nurses who try to save the lives of the victims, the coroner's attendant who takes away the dead, the funeral home folks, perhaps the priest or rabbi who helps plan a memorial service, the friends who have been left behind. In a converging narrative, you might begin with the morning of the accident and follow the characters quickly through their uneventful day leading up to the accident where their lives all intersect and are changed forever. That's converging narrative. (Another example: how might you use converging narrative to tell the story of the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001.

Parallel construction: Did you see the movie Traffic? It unfolded a number of separate stories connected to each other more by the theme of drug trafficking than by any interconnections among the individual stories. With a few fleeting, peripheral exceptions, the characters in one story didn't interact with the characters in another. And yet . . . and yet it worked because the individual stories were compelling, because the theme was clear, because the writers knew when and how to switch from one narrative to another and when  it was time to get back to the first story.

Pass-it-on construction: There's a not-great movie called Twenty Bucks that follows a $20 bill through a bunch of hands, picking up and leaving each person's story as the money moves from person to person. There are narrative stories where such a structure might work very well. Follow a pair of sneakers from raw material to sweat shop factory, through shippers and wholesalers and other middle-people to retailers and finally to the end user. Is there a larger story that this approach might help  us tell?

One-Damn-Thing-After-Another Structure: Dennis O'Neil, the author of The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics (an excellent primer on narrative writing, by the way), describes what he calls a "One-Damn-Thing-After-Another" structure. Although he is disparaging -- "The good guy(s) and the bad guy(s) have a series of encounters, usually violent, that end indecisively until the forces of righteousness prevail and someone who sneers a lot is either trundled off to the hoosegow or perishes" -- I think the O-D-T-A-A is a logical way of describing some nonfiction narrative structures. Among our course readings, consider Tony Horwitz's "To Beirut" or Ryzsard Kapucinski's excerpt from Another Day of Life. In both stories, which are variations of adventure-travel writing, the narrator sets out on an adventure and encounters one-damn-thing-after-another. Instead of leading to a dramatic ending, however, it seems to be the accumulation of these minor encounters and details that creates the larger impression that becomes the story.

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Scenes

Scenes are the building blocks of narrative stories. Most good narratives are made up of scenes, that not only drive the unfolding story but also provide context and information. What are the elements of a scene?

Description: You need to set the scene physically and emotionally. Where are you? What's it look/feel like? Description should be concrete, specific. Character: Scenes involve people. Dialogue: People interact with each other, within themselves. Action: Something happens. Point of view: Scenes are told from a point of view. Ominiscient narrator, the view of one of the characters, etc. Intimate detail: Intimate detail, the kind the comes from research and/or immersion makes your scene seem real.

Because we tend to use scenes to provide context and information, we often end up with scenes within scenes, and move around within time within a scene.

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Character

It is a truism but a useful one to say that stories are inevitably about people. We need to have characters through which to tell our narratives. Can you describe your character? Do you know what's at stake for that character in your story? How does the character change the story? How does the story change the character?

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Storytelling techniques

Unfolding your story: Writers unfold their stories, giving the reader just enough information to make them want to read on but not too much so they lose their curiosity about how it will turn out and why. Clark's 'gold coins': Writer Roy Peter Clark talks about the importance of dropping 'gold coins' along the narrative trail. 'Don't load all your best stuff high in the story. Space special effects throughout the story, encouraging readers to find them and be delighted by them.' Building suspense/using surprise: There are a number of ways to use suspense. The reader may know something a character does not, for example, creating a tension about how the character will react, what trap he or she may fall into. Suspense can be used throughout the story. Surprise, on the other hand, usually only works once. And there need to have been clues that the reader can go back and see; otherwise the surprise will seem more lazy writer's trick than storytelling technique. Commonality of experience: One of the ways in which we relate to stories ' and to characters ' is by finding connections with our own lives. Look for the ordinary in even extraordinary characters or situations to help provide readers with a way to filter the story through their own experiences.

The McGuffin: What is it that your characters are fighting over? It's the McGuffin. Or at least that's the term Alfred Hitchcock used to describe it. These 'plans, documents, secrets must seem of vital importance to the characters . . . to the narrator, they're of no importance whatever.' Except, of course, that the McGuffin needs to be credible, and it needs to be introduced early so the reader will understand what's at stake.

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