Writing Compelling True Stories

 Earlier this year I was interviewed by Writing NSW and Writers Victoria for their newsletters:

WRITING NSW

Q. Do you need different skills when writing true stories as opposed to writing fiction?

I think you need a mix of the same skills and some different skills. To write true stories that will engage your readers you usually need to include vivid scenes, complex and believable character portraits, small memorable details, resonant universal themes, careful pacing, and authentic dialogue. All of these are also classic ingredients in fiction. But non-fiction writing is constrained by the need to be as truthful as possible, which can require careful research, fact checking and honest self-inquiry. The readers of true stories are looking for authenticity, not fantasy. They want vicarious experiences. And they are often sceptical, especially in this era of AI and ‘fake news’. They need to be reassured that, if they put their trust in you, you won’t just make stuff up and call it non-fiction.

Q. What is the difference between a ‘story’ and a ‘situation’ in writing? What are key symptoms of a ‘situation’?

Q. The idea of ‘the situation and the story’ comes from the American writer Vivian Gornick. She defines the situation as the ‘context, circumstance, plot’ – in other words, the facts of your story. These will always be unique. The story, she says, is ‘the emotional experience preoccupying the writer, the insight, the wisdom, the thing(s) you’ve come to say’. In other words, these are the universal ingredients that will allow your unique story to resonate with ANY reader.

For example, with my second memoir ‘Childless: a story of freedom and longing’, you could say the ‘situation’ was the long, complex and unique history of my attempts to have a child, and the life I built for myself after those attempts failed. The ‘story’, though, was about loss and grief, about realising I would never live the life I always expected to live, and about trying to turn that negative into a positive. Many of us, in very different circumstances, may have faced the same emotional challenges. These are the universal ingredients that can make up the ‘story’.

Q. When writing about real people, how can writers navigate the ethical challenges of accurately portraying others while respecting their privacy and feelings?

This is a tricky one. And it’s very important – you definitely need to think this through as you’re writing. Whose privacy may be compromised if you tell this true story? What impacts might that have on them? Will they have a ‘right of reply’? How might it impact on your relationship with them? Are there any legal risks? Have you been as honest about and critical of yourself as with others?

There are strategies you can use – changing the names and identifying physical details of real characters; leaving out parts of your story if those parts could do damage; reminding the reader that these are just your recollections of events and that others may have slightly different recollections.

Q. Your memoirs, Shy and Childless, draw directly from your own experiences. What advice would you give to writers who want to start writing a memoir, but don’t know where to start?

 Think of the things that have bothered you most in your life, and/or that taught you the most about yourself, and/or that generate the most vivid memories for you. Start writing those memories down. Allow them to flow onto the page without trying too hard to create a shape or structure for them, at the start. This is how I’ve approached both of my memoirs. Trust that eventually the outline of a story will begin to appear, as you make connections between these memories. Hindsight will offer you new insights.

Q. What’s one thing you wish you’d known when you began writing? 

When you’re telling true stories try not to worry too much about whether your readers will like you. People-pleasing can cramp your style and make you seem inauthentic. Better to focus on being honest – it will earn your readers’ respect.

WRITERS VICTORIA

Q. Can you talk a little bit about the process of transforming your experiences – something very tangible and present to you – into the form of a book, with all its boundaries and borders.  

I’m fascinated by how form and content can work together in creative non-fiction writing. The boundaries and borders imposed by the book form can help you to shape the chaos of memory into the coherence of narrative storytelling. Each chapter needs to be a satisfying whole, within the larger satisfying whole of the book. But you can also mess with those imagined boundaries in really playful ways. For example, in Shy: A Memoir there are some chapters which are written in the form of annotated dialogues, or lists of lists, or in the voice of my imagined ten-year-old self. Each of those stylistic choices can reveal something new to the reader about how it feels to be stricken with shyness.     

Q. Your second memoir Childless: A Story of Freedom and Longing  was praised for being “generously intimate and insightful” by The Age. What does the balance between research, memory and experience look like when writing a memoir? 

Every memoir is different when it comes to finding that balance. Shy was a hybrid memoir/self-help book which drew heavily on both memory and informative content. I wanted to illuminate for the reader, the visceral experience of shyness and the known causes of social anxiety, so my task was to marry the information I gleaned from experts (psychologists, sociologists, linguists) with the remembered moments when shyness had caused me discomfort or suffering. You could think of the immersive confessional material as the ‘spoonful of honey’ that makes the ‘medicine’ of facts go down more easily.  

With Childless, though, I chose not to do much formal research because I wanted to tell a very intimate personal story. Every non-parent’s experience of unwanted childlessness is different, and I didn’t want to speak on anyone else’s behalf, or to ‘school’ readers about the medical or social science of infertility. But I hoped my unique and complicated story might elicit empathy and understanding for the unfulfilled longing that many childless people share.  

The boundaries and borders imposed by the book form can help you to shape the chaos of memory into the coherence of narrative storytelling.

Q. How has your career as a presenter and columnist impacted your non-fiction practice? 

Hugely! My broadcasting career taught me how to write in a conversational manner, because as an ABC radio producer and presenter, I was literally writing scripts to be spoken out loud. It’s an act of imaginative empathy, working out how to talk to your listener/reader as if they are in the room with you.  

And writing hundreds of personal columns for The Age newspaper taught me how to tell a memorable and compelling story in very few words. The task of writing a whole book can feel daunting, but if you imagine it as a series of shorter pieces that you string together into a satisfying whole, like a collection of linked columns or essays, it can be less intimidating.   

Q. What is your approach as a teacher of memoir writing?  

Everyone has stories worth sharing. As author Paul Auster wrote, “We all have intense inner lives, we all burn with ferocious passions, we’ve all lived through memorable experiences of one kind or another.” My role is to help each writer find the best way to convey those memorable experiences so that they resonate with anonymous readers. That can involve clarifying the story you’ve come to tell about the situation you’ve lived through. It can involve applying elements of creative writing craft to the raw material of your memory. It can involve simply reassuring the writer that their story IS worth sharing. It’s a privilege, helping writers to send their stories out into the world for others to enjoy.