Nosy readers are the best. Nosy readers pry into the plot with questions. They get really up close and personal with characters. They wonder why you added this or left out that.
So, how to you keep your readers nosy to the end of your non-fiction narrative.
This week, my Creative Writing students are working on their “non-fiction” assignment final draft. Their rough drafts have taken me onto several historical battlefields, into campus lunch rooms, alongside hospital beds, and along journeys across state lines. I’ve dodged bullets, gone through rehab, attended Al Anon meetings, and climbed exhausting trails with my class. I’m tired, but exhilarated, as I wait for where each story lands.
Here are three key ways to invite your nosy readers into your story.
First, find the frame. The story is already there and it’s likely that all the facts, all the characters, and all the timeline and settings are present, too. Consider it all like it’s a film. Your job is to first locate the one frame that everything else in the story will illustrate.
When writing a narrative, or a non-fiction journal or essay, the temptation is to voice everything as a play-by-play commentator. It makes sense to the writer to get it all in with a focus on order and chronology.
Try this instead. Write with a framed picture watermarked behind your words. Imagine how this frame moves your story. Forget (or at least minimize) the chronology. (No matter how much Watson declared he would write each story about Sherlock in an orderly manner, the image of what it was all about still dominated the narrative. Think dark moors and phosphorus coated fangs and eyes!)
Second, add the color. We may dream in greyscale, but our waking world – and the stories we read and tell – needs the color our imagination brings.
If I’m standing on a street corner in real time, I hear, see, smell, taste and feel that corner. If it’s a busy lunchtime, the traffic signals changing, people chatting, nature speaking, and a restaurant’s aroma all spill into my senses. If it’s late night, the cool of fog or the brightness of passing headlights may dominate. Describe it in all the sensory imagination you can.
A favorite poem my students analyze is Sandburg’s “Fog.” I suspect they choose it because he only uses 21 words. I’m delighted since they are then challenged to craft 2-3 pages about these few lines. When I read these short stanzas, I feel the fog, smell the harbor, hear the city sounds, see the little paws stepping in and out of the harbor, and sense when the fog drifts away.
Readers are nosy for details. When you write your story, work hard to overdo the imagery, scenery, sounds, textures, etc. Literally, try to overwhelm your story with details. You can always strike out what doesn’t fit your final draft.
Third, cast your characters. Some readers like a to read a creative expression of nature or setting; but without “characters choosing” to borrow from one writer, there is no narrative. The nosy reader wants to know who your characters are, why they chose one rather than another way, and why they are there in the first place.
Remember the frame? Who is in your frame? How do they look? Laugh? Stand? Walk? Sound? Dress? Lean into others? Disney, for a century, has built its reputation on giving life and character to inanimate objects. In rapturous amazement, we watch a candlestick argue or sing and dance with a clock. Without voice and choice, they are useful objects. Disney makes them our friends.
Here is a photo from my past. I know who they are and what was happening at the moment of this frame. More importantly, I know that one has blue eyes that capture every detail in the moment, another’s hands are thin and sinewy but quick to touch others with comfort. One friend laughs with every bit of their lungs, and another’s shoulders shake with an awkward full-body bounce and no sound when I tell a joke. The other simply rolls his eyes.
The beauty of writing non-fiction narratives is that your imagination puts you in the frame (yes, I’m Archie on the end) and all that leads up to and beyond the click of the shutter.
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