What makes nonfiction narrative
writing effective?
Mr. Cook’s notes on “Mo’
Better Radio” a talk given by Ira Glass, host of This American Life, on the
topic of nonfiction storytelling on the radio, May 25, 1998
1. Seeking Pleasure
- “I still feel like my job is…to document
these real moments that surprise me and that amuse me, and that just
gesture at some bigger truth.”
- “Dawn moments”: After the Exxon Valdez spill Dawn soap was
the best product for cleaning waterfowl. This sort of quirky detail is
usually cut out of news stories. Ira’s advice is to include these. They
are surprising. They are amusing. They are real and provide a story with
the texture of real life.
2. What we’re all used to
- A story is about an issue. We hear from one
side. We hear from the other side. Then, if there’s time, we hear a bit
about who is affected—but we don’t hear about the particular people
affected but about the kind of
person who is affected.
3. How we structure a
story
- “This is the structure of the stories on our
show: There's an anecdote--a sequence of events. This happened, and then
this happened, and then this happened.”
- “And the reason why that's powerful, I think,
is because there is something about the momentum, especially in a medium
where you can't see anything, especially in radio. That you just want to
know what happens next. It's irresistible. You just cannot help but want
to know what happens next.”
- “Then, there's the part of the story where I
make some really big statement like there's something about the kindness
of strangers. It's got to mean something. You can have people read
the little story from the Bible, but unless you tell them, you know, the
lesson they're trying to draw from it, it's not a real sermon. And radio,
in particular, is a very didactic medium.”
4. What people want
- “Dish,” i.e. gossip. Allen Ginsberg, the
author of “A Supermarket in California,”
praised a fellow poet, Frank O’Hara, for having “a common hear/for our
deep gossip.” I think “deep gossip” is an interesting—and accurate—way to
describe a lot of the best writing.
5. Stroke of Luck
- Make your luck by spending a lot of time
observing and asking questions. A lot of time. Even, what seems like, too
much time.
- “To do this Taft [High School] series, I was
getting 30 hours of tape a week. That's a lot of time. Especially when you
realize that when you record 30 hours of tape, to figure out what you've
got, you've got to listen to 30 hours of tape. That takes 30 hours.”
6.
Surprises
- “The first thing [you want] when you listen to
the radio, even when you’re watching TV, I think, is to be surprised.”
Ira then gives this example of a surprise
from a story about a high school prom:
Glass
on tape: On the
dance floor there was a certain amount of copping feels and kissing. But the
sexual tension of the prom hit a kind of surreal zenith when the deejay told
the boys to bring chairs down to the dance floor — the girls were seated in the
chairs — and the garter ceremony began.
Emcee at dance: We will count down on 10.
Glass: Over a hundred teenage girls presented
bare legs with garters.
Emcee: All hands — you have to put your hands
behind your back.
Glass: Meaning, grab the garter with your
teeth.
Emcee: All right. I’m going to count backwards
from 10. Ten, nine, eight . . .
In the example above there’s surprise—“garter with your teeth”?—and
tension—created by the countdown. But there’s a second surprise a few moments later in the story, Ira reports,
“when I ask teachers about it later, they all say, “Where have you been?
They’ve done this for years!” At homecoming, apparently, things get even more
explicit.”
- Ira doesn’t explain much about how surprise works
or why its necessary. Instead, he uses two stories about Frank Sinatra to
illustrate what it isn’t and what it is: it isn’t a straightforward
account of the night at the Paramount Theater when Frank Sinatra went from
a nobody from Hoboken
to a star; it is a vignette of Frank Sinatra mixing ribald, crass humor
with heartfelt, elegant crooning. The first story has important
information about an important moment, but has no surprise. The second
story shows vividly reveals a contradiction at the heart of Frank
Sinatra’s stardom: surprise!
- Since Ira doesn’t explain much about what makes
surprise important (except to say surprise is vivid) I though I should
offer some thoughts of my own: surprise, I think, is necessary to create a
rhythm of tension and revelation. Surprise is also necessary challenge the
listener to see something new.
7.
The 45-second rule
- “It turns out that we public radio listeners are
trained to expect something to change every 45 to 50 seconds. And as a
producer you have to keep that pace in mind. For example, in a reporter’s
story, every 45 or 50 seconds, you’ll go to a piece of tape.”
- Ira
goes on to suggest that after 45 to 50 seconds of storytelling (or someone
explaining a concept), it’s important to include reflection, in other
words thoughts about what’s significant about the story (or concept). What
does the story mean? Ira says his each radio piece “proceeds in a rhythm of: anecdote,
reflection, anecdote, reflection.” (Anecdote
is a fancy word for brief story.)
8.
Reading
- “If you work in radio, you’ve got your writing
and you’ve got the way you read it.”
- “We try to get [story readers] to talk and just
like [they] really talk.”
- “Then we [insert] pauses. An image will stay with
you a little longer if we put in more of a pause.”
- Ira then says that
music and sound effects are important too.
9.
Another way to tell a story
- “I would interview somebody for about an hour, an
hour-and-a-half, until at some point I would hit something that they
really, really cared about. You hit the issue the person hasn’t quite
resolved. It’s almost like their unconscious starts to speak. And then
they start to describe scenes and characters and images. It’s almost like
a dream. It’s like what happens in therapy. And that’s what you’re going
for, because at the heart of every story is some unresolved something
expressed in scenes and images and characters. And then I’d cut
away all the other stuff and then you’d have this perfect little gem,
perfect little object.”
10.
More dish
- Ira glass jokes,
emphasizing the importance of gossip or “dish”—the pleasure of
storytelling and listening.
11.
Alex Chadwick
- “I learned more from than anybody was Alex
Chadwick, and specifically the thing that I learned–and I’ve told him this
and I think it kind of freaks him out–he is the one who I would hear jump
to these little abstract ideas all through his script.”
- Ira goes on to explain that these “little
abstract ideas” are what give stories relevance, significance, and
sometimes a bit of “grandeur.” A storyteller might give a little detail
and then let that detail give rise to an abstract idea. Or, the story
teller might give the abstract idea first and then use the detail the
flesh it out, to embody it, or dramatize the idea.
12.
How do you find these stories?
- “What
we’re looking for is narrative–a story with characters and scenes. And
some bigger something is at stake, and we watch these people go through
this bigger something. It’s not just documenting everyday life; it’s
documenting a drama.”
- “To give you an example of what I mean, a really
good, very experienced radio producer named Dan Collison sent me this tape
where he wanted to do a story about going across country with an
interstate trucker. It could be an okay story. And he sent me a tape and
it’s 45 minutes long, beautifully produced with very clear writing. You
know, they had their little moments on the road. And the only problem with
it was, all it was was somebody driving across the country. There was
nothing at stake; the trucker didn’t have any burning issue, no
thoughts about, like, what am I supposed to make of this? There’s no
unresolved something at the center of it. So we didn’t run it.”
13.
Mission
- I wrote a string of stories on the public
schools–a story every week or two. And there’d be all these kids in the
stories, gang kids, and teachers, and all these people like struggling
over these policy issues. And I think that the policy stuff made a small
contribution, but I really think that the thing that people remember,
and that got to people, was the fact that they could empathize with all
the characters, they could empathize with the kids, they could empathize
with the teachers. And what people seemed to carry away from it was
like a picture of what it would be to be a person in that situation.
- “[R]adio,
more than your other media, allows you to tell a story where the way a
person looks doesn’t interfere with what you’re getting from it.
I remember I used to do these stories about gang kids, and I always
thought that one of the advantages of doing it on radio was that you
wouldn’t see this kind of tough kid with baggy clothes. On radio, you
could just hear their voice and I could tell their story in a way where
you would become them more.
- Sometimes
when it comes to empathy in stories, I’ll do two different kinds of
stories. There are the stories about experiences that we’ve all had,
like going to the senior prom–I hope we’ve had–and those stories are about
trying to make you relate to characters who are a lot like yourself.
- And
then there’s this whole other set of stories which are like making you relate
to characters you normally would not relate to. In those
stories, we consciously manipulate the facts to allow you entrance.
- In
our lives in this country, it is hard to maintain a kind of empathy.
Because we are so various as a nation, it’s hard to remember to feel
for people around us who are so separated. And it’s not the only
mission of journalism, or the mission of radio, or the mission of public
radio, just to tell us the facts and to analyze the day’s news. It’s also,
I would say, the mission of public broadcasting to tell us stories that
help us empathize and help us feel less crazy and less separate. And
just, you know, go straight to your heart.
