The two quotes that resonated with me were: "Writers are gleaners; we are always listening for story ideas." and "That idea of “truth being stranger than fiction….” The most bizarre stuff can happen in “real life,” and we hesitate to place it in fiction." In fact I have a blog post with the title, When Truth is Stranger than Fiction. For me the process is, theme (which is women's nineteenth century occupations) then do research on the subject, and somewhere in the process of the research the characters and mystery plot come, with their own introduction of meaningful themes. But this also works for contemporary stories, and my science fiction stories. Subject of interest to me, preliminary research, and the characters and plot and sub-themes follow, often in very unexpected ways. For anyone interested in how this works for me, here is the link to another post about this process: https://hfebooks.com/when-truth-is-stranger-than-fiction-by-m-louisa-locke/
I would add journalism to the list. It’s probably no accident that a lot of novelists started out as journalists: Hemingway, Joan Didion, Robertson Davies, Charles Portis (author of True Grit), so the reporter’s basic who-what-when-where-why is something you can sometimes see in their work.
Of course, journalistic precision and clarity isn’t right for every style. For example, Kafka’s stories almost never mention real place names or people or dates. That gives his work a kind of vagueness, but almost maybe a universality that specifics might undermine.
I think one journalistic thing to avoid is the New Yorker / Guardian / New York Times “profile” approach to description. These articles are really just celebrity puff pieces. You can tell when you’re in profile territory by the tics, for example always describing like a fashion magazine what the profiled person is eating or drinking (“grains, seeds, black coffee”) and their appearance and how they’re dressed (“Eggers, who is thirty-eight, has pale-green eyes, a dark cropped beard, and hair buzzed close to his scalp on the sides. He dresses in black, and his left hand is heavy with signet rings and a large gold watch.”). This is probably okay for parody or satire, but readers might find it tedious otherwise.
I'm reading Michael Connelly's first Bosch book, not my usual fare. But on whim. And enjoying. (The blow-by-blow recounting of steps taken is interesting... I digress. But I'm so used to cutting all that can be inferred. This is whodunit territory.)
At one point, looking in the mirror--yes, the dreaded "looking in the mirror/window/reflective something-or-other" moment!--he states, "He was handsome."
It's so simple, and effective. It conveys the character, how he perceives. How he can detach! Even when it comes to his own self. He doesn't go on to say what "handsome" is, to his mind. Throughout, the snippets of description give the reader a solid sense of how a detective see the world; all through the eyes of one putting together pieces, always.
Thanks, Frank--I always so appreciate your thoughts!
It’s possible that profile writers are aware they’re writing self-parody and so kind of lean in to it.
I know people who’ve read the Bosch books and watched the complete series. And it sounds like Titus Welliver is great in the role. I remember him from Lost.
A great thing about genre fiction is that you don’t have to pretend it’s real or that it depicts the real world. When Miss Marple goes on holiday and almost immediately the village vicar or second soprano in the choir turns up dead, you don’t go, Hmm, what an unlikely coincidence, something like that happened the last time she went on holiday. No, you accept it because it’s a “mystery”; in the real world, there would be a travel ban on this angel of death.
Yes, especially those mysteries in which the writer has to make no attempt to stay within any procedural boundaries are the wildest! "Angel of death" indeed!
Noticing the details: I’m trying to undo a natural urge to create debate-style/agenda pushing stories because to win an argument is more like a magic trick - careful stepping around or ignoring of details that dont suit. I’m trying to build more truth and nuance into my fiction so this is a great point of focus for me. Just read wonderful book by Victoria MacKenzie about a medieval writer who lived where I do. It’s a stunner, and it’s the details - description of river fog rolling in under door cracks and a thousand other little writerly nuances that I can just feel are verifiably true (and respond to climate here to this day) that lets me sink into the story, fully trusting in the writers hand. Lots of skill in memoir too - and/but I think this authority is baked in to readers mind cos we know ‘it’s true’. Lots of great ideas to build this authority into fiction here. Thanks!
Arthur! I'm grateful you've shared with us your thoughts as you question your own work, and acknowledge changes you'd like to make. I know I'm constantly doing this--as each project twists something else out of me; I have to stop and wonder at the demands of the Thing. And often the gentler of projects the more demanding... for exactly your reasons. Easier to rave on, than to go quietly. Stillness seems almost impossible, but is enviable. The fog creeping in is welcomed, always! Yes to the detail that creates truth and trust!
Can you share the book title? You're right about the foundational thing of writers thinking "it's true" with memoir, and how, when working with fiction, we don't have that same foundation to rest on. No rest for the fiction writers! But when it is built, slowly, as we can, it lets the reader sink in... ah, that's your phrase: sink in.
If so, please consider clicking the above link and liking the Notes post—leave a comment or even share within your own community. Poetry lives on in the minds of hearts of writers, it breathes on the page.
Your voice can be heard among the starry illuminations, howling at the moon.
Definitely. Love Mary Karr. And DeLillo. As a book editor I often work with memoir, and memoir should ideally be written in many ways much like fiction with a story/narrator ARC, vivid settings and details using the five senses, engaging dialogue, even ‘plot’ in the sense that everything links to the next thing and moves the story forward. Of course in memoir everything ‘actually happened,’ so you can’t just make stuff up. (Although there’s a discussion to be had here about the accuracy of memory, etc.) But fiction techniques in memoir make a lot of common sense. Especially when you’re trying to marry depth, meaning, emotion and entertainment.
Lots to think about in your 9 Tips article. I think great memoirs have long used fictional techniques, even invention. If you have a recent edition of Robert Graves’ famous memoir, Good-bye to All That, about his WWI experiences, take a look at Paul Fussell’s introduction, where he details the ways Graves used fictional devices (suspense, surprise, irony) and elements from popular books (write about food, drink, battles) to ensure his book was successful (he was broke at the time).
Graves was also aided by publication the year before of two novels that have memoir-ish elements: A Farewell to Arms (“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.”) and All Quiet on the Western Front (“We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans.”).
The public had an appetite for these kinds of books a decade after the Armistice and it’s not clear how much of a distinction readers made between fiction and non-fiction.
Memoir has to have an "emotional core," and in writing fiction, it's useful to think about what this might look like.
There are the overlapping pieces between nonfiction and fiction--think Venn diagram. But think, too, about what isn't shared. And how you might twist and play with those elements. Let it allow you to see afresh.
Interesting to consider the distinctions readers made, yes, and the role of immediate history.
I had that reply thing too with someone's comment. Both. I like the idea of bringing attention to detail, or as someone commented a journalist's eye, but actually I really need to read it again(and again probably). I have no trouble applying fictional techniques to nonfiction, but the reverse is somewhat difficult for me. But that may be because I haven't written a lot of fiction
The two quotes that resonated with me were: "Writers are gleaners; we are always listening for story ideas." and "That idea of “truth being stranger than fiction….” The most bizarre stuff can happen in “real life,” and we hesitate to place it in fiction." In fact I have a blog post with the title, When Truth is Stranger than Fiction. For me the process is, theme (which is women's nineteenth century occupations) then do research on the subject, and somewhere in the process of the research the characters and mystery plot come, with their own introduction of meaningful themes. But this also works for contemporary stories, and my science fiction stories. Subject of interest to me, preliminary research, and the characters and plot and sub-themes follow, often in very unexpected ways. For anyone interested in how this works for me, here is the link to another post about this process: https://hfebooks.com/when-truth-is-stranger-than-fiction-by-m-louisa-locke/
So you're truly working with VERY similar approaches to fiction and nonfiction.
Thank you for weighing in! 'Yes' to "unexpected ways."
I would add journalism to the list. It’s probably no accident that a lot of novelists started out as journalists: Hemingway, Joan Didion, Robertson Davies, Charles Portis (author of True Grit), so the reporter’s basic who-what-when-where-why is something you can sometimes see in their work.
Of course, journalistic precision and clarity isn’t right for every style. For example, Kafka’s stories almost never mention real place names or people or dates. That gives his work a kind of vagueness, but almost maybe a universality that specifics might undermine.
I think one journalistic thing to avoid is the New Yorker / Guardian / New York Times “profile” approach to description. These articles are really just celebrity puff pieces. You can tell when you’re in profile territory by the tics, for example always describing like a fashion magazine what the profiled person is eating or drinking (“grains, seeds, black coffee”) and their appearance and how they’re dressed (“Eggers, who is thirty-eight, has pale-green eyes, a dark cropped beard, and hair buzzed close to his scalp on the sides. He dresses in black, and his left hand is heavy with signet rings and a large gold watch.”). This is probably okay for parody or satire, but readers might find it tedious otherwise.
I'm chuckling, I must admit, at that description!
HOW a thing is done is everything.
I'm reading Michael Connelly's first Bosch book, not my usual fare. But on whim. And enjoying. (The blow-by-blow recounting of steps taken is interesting... I digress. But I'm so used to cutting all that can be inferred. This is whodunit territory.)
At one point, looking in the mirror--yes, the dreaded "looking in the mirror/window/reflective something-or-other" moment!--he states, "He was handsome."
It's so simple, and effective. It conveys the character, how he perceives. How he can detach! Even when it comes to his own self. He doesn't go on to say what "handsome" is, to his mind. Throughout, the snippets of description give the reader a solid sense of how a detective see the world; all through the eyes of one putting together pieces, always.
Thanks, Frank--I always so appreciate your thoughts!
It’s possible that profile writers are aware they’re writing self-parody and so kind of lean in to it.
I know people who’ve read the Bosch books and watched the complete series. And it sounds like Titus Welliver is great in the role. I remember him from Lost.
A great thing about genre fiction is that you don’t have to pretend it’s real or that it depicts the real world. When Miss Marple goes on holiday and almost immediately the village vicar or second soprano in the choir turns up dead, you don’t go, Hmm, what an unlikely coincidence, something like that happened the last time she went on holiday. No, you accept it because it’s a “mystery”; in the real world, there would be a travel ban on this angel of death.
Yes, especially those mysteries in which the writer has to make no attempt to stay within any procedural boundaries are the wildest! "Angel of death" indeed!
I find this sort of thing infuriating, because it's superficial and irrelevant (IMO). It's the one thing I can't stand about Malcolm Gladwell's work.
Noticing the details: I’m trying to undo a natural urge to create debate-style/agenda pushing stories because to win an argument is more like a magic trick - careful stepping around or ignoring of details that dont suit. I’m trying to build more truth and nuance into my fiction so this is a great point of focus for me. Just read wonderful book by Victoria MacKenzie about a medieval writer who lived where I do. It’s a stunner, and it’s the details - description of river fog rolling in under door cracks and a thousand other little writerly nuances that I can just feel are verifiably true (and respond to climate here to this day) that lets me sink into the story, fully trusting in the writers hand. Lots of skill in memoir too - and/but I think this authority is baked in to readers mind cos we know ‘it’s true’. Lots of great ideas to build this authority into fiction here. Thanks!
Arthur! I'm grateful you've shared with us your thoughts as you question your own work, and acknowledge changes you'd like to make. I know I'm constantly doing this--as each project twists something else out of me; I have to stop and wonder at the demands of the Thing. And often the gentler of projects the more demanding... for exactly your reasons. Easier to rave on, than to go quietly. Stillness seems almost impossible, but is enviable. The fog creeping in is welcomed, always! Yes to the detail that creates truth and trust!
Can you share the book title? You're right about the foundational thing of writers thinking "it's true" with memoir, and how, when working with fiction, we don't have that same foundation to rest on. No rest for the fiction writers! But when it is built, slowly, as we can, it lets the reader sink in... ah, that's your phrase: sink in.
For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain. By Victoria MacKenzie. Some faint Mary and Martha undertones you may dig too.
Thank you very much! Will look it up, yes.
Fine writer and reader of Substack—we are starting a movement to get a poetry section added to the platform. Can I ask, are you with us?
https://substack.com/profile/10309929-david/note/c-15579327
If so, please consider clicking the above link and liking the Notes post—leave a comment or even share within your own community. Poetry lives on in the minds of hearts of writers, it breathes on the page.
Your voice can be heard among the starry illuminations, howling at the moon.
Thank you for your time and support.
Love and appreciation,
David
Definitely. Love Mary Karr. And DeLillo. As a book editor I often work with memoir, and memoir should ideally be written in many ways much like fiction with a story/narrator ARC, vivid settings and details using the five senses, engaging dialogue, even ‘plot’ in the sense that everything links to the next thing and moves the story forward. Of course in memoir everything ‘actually happened,’ so you can’t just make stuff up. (Although there’s a discussion to be had here about the accuracy of memory, etc.) But fiction techniques in memoir make a lot of common sense. Especially when you’re trying to marry depth, meaning, emotion and entertainment.
I wrote a piece about this years ago actually for Creative Penn: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2018/03/09/fiction-techniques-writing-memoir/amp/
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Lots to think about in your 9 Tips article. I think great memoirs have long used fictional techniques, even invention. If you have a recent edition of Robert Graves’ famous memoir, Good-bye to All That, about his WWI experiences, take a look at Paul Fussell’s introduction, where he details the ways Graves used fictional devices (suspense, surprise, irony) and elements from popular books (write about food, drink, battles) to ensure his book was successful (he was broke at the time).
Graves was also aided by publication the year before of two novels that have memoir-ish elements: A Farewell to Arms (“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.”) and All Quiet on the Western Front (“We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans.”).
The public had an appetite for these kinds of books a decade after the Armistice and it’s not clear how much of a distinction readers made between fiction and non-fiction.
Memoir has to have an "emotional core," and in writing fiction, it's useful to think about what this might look like.
There are the overlapping pieces between nonfiction and fiction--think Venn diagram. But think, too, about what isn't shared. And how you might twist and play with those elements. Let it allow you to see afresh.
Interesting to consider the distinctions readers made, yes, and the role of immediate history.
Thanks for answering my question, Alison. This is very insightful and eye-opening. I've save the post so I can keep referring back to it.
I was pleased to have the question to grapple with, Terry!
In your comment above (which for some reason has no "reply" button on it!) are you referring to the blow-by-blow of certain books or types of writing?
I had that reply thing too with someone's comment. Both. I like the idea of bringing attention to detail, or as someone commented a journalist's eye, but actually I really need to read it again(and again probably). I have no trouble applying fictional techniques to nonfiction, but the reverse is somewhat difficult for me. But that may be because I haven't written a lot of fiction