Finding a Story's Heart (In The Word Cellar)

in the clearing, Frog Creek Lodge, Lakebay, WA; spring 2010 (Diana+, Kodak GC400)

Essays are the Dianas of the writing world.

When you write creative nonfiction (such as blog posts and essays), are you trying to record the facts of what happened or to capture the essence of the experience? Unless you work as an investigative reporter or a journalist, you probably seek to capture the essence of people, places, and events in your writing. You seek to tell a story.

Great nonfiction doesn't just tell us what happened. It creates art from real life.

There's the scene at hand, and then there's the story.

I used to try to take pictures that captured the whole scene and encapsulated every little true-to-life detail. But those photos bored me; they had no story. Playing with my analogue Diana F+ camera has started to change that. Plastic cameras like the Diana are known for creating photos with a vignette effect -- the way an image fades, blurs, and shades around the edges. Vignette is also the word for a short, descriptive story.

But you don't need a plastic film camera to take great story-shots. And you don't need to write short vignettes to create a story with heart. Digital or analogue. Blog post or long form essay. They're all about framing an object subjectively; about finding the light and shadows; about contours and composition. Art isn't just about capturing what happened. It's about making sense of what happened. Art is about making connections between one thing and another and then another. I'm drawn to stories (visual and written) that do more than simply record a scene. I want stories that offer a new perspective, stories that capture the emotion, essence, and meaning of a moment.

How do you write beyond the events and into the heart of the story?

In elementary school, I went through a phase of telling the truth -- the whole of it and nothing but it. I appointed myself guardian of just the facts, ma'am. If my mom and I ran errands, going first to the bank and then to the bakery, and she later told my dad that we'd gone to the bakery and the bank, I corrected her. She had the order wrong, which meant she wasn't telling the real story.

Ah yes, the real story. Earlier this month we looked at finding our true writing voice. I said that while there is such a thing as an authentic writing voice, it's also a living thing that evolves and can splinter into different (but equally authentic) voices. Turns out that the real story is another slippery entity.

A few months ago my friend Vivienne (who, incidentally, takes gorgeous photographs bursting with stories) and I talked about how to write beyond events and into what really happened. In other words, how to find a story's heart. This topic could consume us for weeks (and maybe it will), but here's a primer on what I know about getting to the heart of things.

1. Stories need meaning, not morals. (This is some of the wisest writing advice my pal Jen Lee has given me.) Give your readers enough meat of the story and its implications to help them understand why the story matters. Don't turn a story into a Sunday School lesson. Nobody likes a moralizing know-it-all. (Trust me, I know; I've been one.) Trust your readers, but don't make them do the creative equivalent of quantum physics to understand what the story means.
2. Stories need details. But not too many. And only the important ones. How do you tell how many and which details to include? It's different for every writer and for every piece of writing, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Details should create texture and interest within a story. They should focus the readers' attention on what matters. They should add to the artfulness of the scene you're writing. Frame your paragraphs as you would frame a photograph. Use spectacular and specific details to draw in readers and immerse them in the world you're recreating. Don't try to capture the whole world, even when you're writing true stories. Be selective.
3. Stories need a bridge between the personal and the universal. Even when you're telling an intimate story about a unique experience, readers should find something in it to relate to as fellow humans. But beware of moralizing here! Don't build a literal bridge that points out the obvious or talks down to the reader. Oddly enough, the more specific your details, the more universal your story can become. This is one of those things (like so much) about writing that I see and feel intuitively. I'm working on figuring out a more concrete way to explain it. Until then, mull it over and let me know if you can verbalize it any better. (Please share in the comments if you take a stab at it.)
4. Stories need a focus. The focus of a story drives the meaning, the details, and the bridge. I usually don't know a story's focus until I've written a large chunk of it. Only after sketching out and connecting ideas do I find a story's heart. I've rewritten essays five times before I found their real essence. A story can contain a lot of seemingly disparate elements, but you need to know how they tie together. If you don't know -- at least on some intuitive level -- your readers won't know.
5. Stories need to be True. That's "Truth" with a capital "T." This may be the most important point of all. Your story needs to feel True on the page, in your mind, in the eyes of your readers. I've written things that are technically true by dutifully capturing my thoughts or the true-to-life details of a scene. But the scene fell flat and veered outside the heart of the story. Annie Dillard says it best in her "Notes for Young Writers": "The work's unity is more important than anything else about it. Those digressions that were so much fun to write must go." This is another one of those things that you learn by doing. The more you write, the easier it will be to decipher what's True, and to sacrifice anything that doesn't serve the story. (Try to get your hands on Dillard's short essay. It may be the best writing advice I've ever read. You can find it in Issue 15 of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction.)

I want to capture the whole world in my writing, but I can only do it one frame and one heartbeat at a time. Now it's your turn: How do you write into the heart of a story?

**Post your writing questions in the comments or send them to jennifer{at}thewordcellar{dot}com.

In The Word Cellar runs on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month. Read other posts in the series here.

Right Now

circle of light; in a friend's living room (Diana+, Fuji Pro 400H)

Right now the time is 3:27 a.m.

Right now, I'm thinking about friends across oceans who are having their second cup of morning coffee or taking a late afternoon walk on the beach; friends in my own time zone who will be getting up in less than two hours; friends in the middle of this continent who are fast asleep; and friends on the west coast who may have just gone to bed.

Right now, through the open window I hear a bird chirping. He's been at it for hours. For awhile others had joined in, but now it's just his lone tweet over and over again. A quick online search tells me that perhaps this is a mockingbird, or some other bird defending his territory.

Right now, also through the open window, I can smell the pleasant stink of a skunk. I let it linger for awhile, and then I lit a lavender scented candle to take the edge off.

Right now, my husband and two grey cats are fast asleep. I wonder if anyone else in my neighborhood is awake to hear that nocturnal bird.

Right now is the best I've felt all day. A gloom of ennui weighed me down today, which I combatted by decluttering my house and studio. Now I can sit in my considerably less cluttered studio, in the quiet of night, by candlelight, and reconnect with the muse. I feel her coming back to me, and I am so grateful.

Right now, I am starting to feel sleepy. Soon I will wash my face, brush my teeth, take out my contacts, and crawl into bed. I'll do these ordinary, daily rites while a midnight bird stands his ground and a striped skunk skulks or scurries through the neighborhood.

Fresh Hot Waffles

Waffle Window. Portland, OR. (Diana+, Fuji Pro 400H)

This photo has been sitting in a draft blog post while I hunted for some words to go with it: a juicy story to match the feel of that luscious blue against the red-and-brown brick, a string of words worthy of the dreamy cloud-haze hovering over the hanging basket. But what could I write that this photo doesn't already tell you? This is the Waffle Window in Portland, Oregon. You walk up, order a waffle done one of at least a dozen ways, and then you can sit outside and eat it and people watch (keeping an eye out for hipsters on tall bikes). It's scrumptious and so much fun. Those are the facts of this photo, and they're fine facts. But what could I possibly write that says more than the image itself?

(I finally have a photo scanner and have been uploading my analogue Diana pictures to Flickr. One more roll to go.) (Until I finish shooting another!)

The Persistence of Memory

Good photography was one of the priorities for our wedding, and I think we spent about double for the photographer than we did for my dress. We met with several people who claimed to understand what we were looking for, but none of them truly did. Then we met Melinda. She understood that we wanted a photo-journalistic approach, something more artsy than staged. As a result, we have two huge albums filled with honest and poignant shots of the day.

But one of my very favorite photos was taken by a guest with an average camera. It's blurred, overexposed, out-of-focus, and off-kilter. And I love it so much. It captures something that I have been trying to put into words for the last six years. I think it's what memories look like. It reminds me of a photo you'd find in an old attic, and then marvel at how these people -- alive years ago -- look so young. It looks like a photograph taken through glass, and reminds me of "Nightswimming" by R.E.M. It's somehow melancholy and comforting all at once.

I love photographs in general and want to know more about taking them. I want to learn how to take better photos, and I know that a minimum level of technical knowledge goes with that. (Even if, like this lovely lady, I just want to play.) I tend to have a general impatience for learning technical things, even though I'm proficient at them once I've pushed through my desire for instant gratification. I should probably learn how to use the settings on my digital camera, or even figure out what different types of film are and why they're used.

What I really want is to create photo-art that evokes emotion and meaning. So I'm thinking about buying a Diana or Holga camera. Are you familiar with either of these? From what I understand, the Holga is a newer version of the Diana, but they're made by different manufacturers. They're both cheap, poorly made, middle format (what is that?) cameras that let in light and distort pictures. They create some beautiful art effects like vignetting and blur.

The playfulness and surprise results of such a camera excite me. Part of the reason I love the image above is that it was a fluke. I guess I'm looking to create intentional flukes, as ironic as that seems.

Can anyone recommend which to get: the Diana or Holga? What else should I know about them? Homemade modifications to the cameras seem to be a big part of the sub-culture. Are they necessary to get interesting photos? Please share in the comments.