On Writing Nonfiction

This is perhaps the most concise, astute description I’ve ever read of the challenges of writing nonfiction. It comes from “Man’s Best Friend,” an essay by David Ebershoff.

Before I finish [this story], I want to say something about writing from memory. I’m presenting these events as somewhat simultaneous or subsequent to one another. And they were, but not really. A whole lot of other things were going on at the same time too — other friends, my family, work, travel, [my dog]. But in shaping this story, and testing out its themes, inevitably I needed to whittle down the memories to a few incidents and lines of dialogue that fit into something that might, or might not, resemble a story. And so the impression I might leave you with is that my life during this time felt exactly as I have presented it. And it did, but not always. Only now, with the help of perspective, can I see the major themes, and separate the important moments from the trivial. In doing so, I am forced to shape the past to meet my own requirements — the requirements of this story, to be precise. But life, as you live it, does not feel like a story, with characters, themes, and leitmotifs. Life feels like life — thrillingly shapeless and unknowable.

I concur.

We often read nonfiction (especially memoir) and come away from it with the sense that we know what it was like to have a particular experience or live through a certain era in an author’s life…but we don’t. Nonfiction writers, just like fiction writers, have to cut out the “noise” in order to tell a story. In fiction, readers don’t follow the characters through every mundane action and verbal exchange; if they did, they’d get bored and put down the novel. Instead, readers get the highlights reel, the details crucial to telling the story at hand. So too in nonfiction.It’s kind of like meeting a friend for a drink in a crowded bar. You tune out the conversations happening all around you, tune out the background music, tune out clinking ice cubes and the sound of glasses being filled, tune out the creak of the front door opening and closing. You ignore the wine list painted on the wall, the rows of liquor bottles lined up behind the bar, the faces of the people perched on the bar stools. You don’t try to experience everything. You focus. You pay attention to your friend. The rest is there, but it’s impossible to take it all in and still give your friend the appropriate attention.

Nonfiction purists might say it’s cheating to cut the background noise out of an essay. They might say that by shaping reality in order to focus, it is no longer reality — that the “truth” conveyed is skewed beyond recognition. (Walking into a silent bar void of everything but what’s happening at your table doesn’t feel like being at the bar at all, does it?) I can see that point. But I also know that I couldn’t possibly read enjoy reading something that is essentially a transcript of life.

The beauty of creative nonfiction is that it has the power to distill life — to take any old story and, in removing the filler, find meaning. And anyway, I don’t know any nonfiction writers who would claim that their work tells the truth. The ones I know just strive to tell a truth…their truth.

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On Writing Nonfiction

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