5 Creative Nonfiction Skills for Novelists
By Kathryn Craft | August 10, 2017 |
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
We pulled up to the gate at Utah’s Arches National Park in an imprudent touring vehicle: a loaded U-Haul van. This would be our only sightseeing detour on the trek that would take my sister from her home in California to a new job on the East Coast. She paid the entrance fee and passed me a map. That one action would enrich our memory of the experience for years to come: the map was wrapped in a magnificent essay, “Rethinking Wall Arch.”
As our engine strained to take us up the final 1600 feet of elevation into the park, I read the essay aloud. The writing was so confident I was immediately struck by a sense of its importance.
If you’d like readers to say that your fiction conveys a sense of importance, here are some mad skills you can co-opt from this essay.
- Make important plot events personal.
The plot focus of the essay is the final event in the life of Wall Arch, which at 71 feet long was one of the main attractions at Arches National Park. The author immediately establishes his unique perspective:
Sometimes I’m considered bad luck. Things tend to fall wherever I work.
After a brief laundry list of unfortunate events, we learn that Wall Arch collapsed the morning this writer took a new job at the park, which sets up a specific—and humorous—perspective. No one else could have written this piece quite this way (which makes it all the more startling that no byline was given. But I digress.).
- Contextualize plot by extending the story frame.
We learn that Wall Arch has stood since “time immemorial”:
It was already curving gracefully when the Egyptian pyramids were still under construction. It stood defiantly while the mighty Roman Empire was collapsing an ocean away. It was still holding strong when the Declaration of Independence was being signed in 1776. And, most notably, it was still there on August 4 when everybody went to bed.
The way the author delivers us right back to his personal experience is a clever twist.
- Suspend disbelief by grounding the event in known phenomena.
When faced with a calamity of epic proportions, the first thing we do is gather what facts we can.
One answer is fairly straightforward. Erosion and gravity reign supreme over sandstone. For countless eons, rain, ice, and groundwater slowly but relentlessly ate away at the natural calcium “cement” holding the arch’s sand grains together. Eventually there wasn’t enough of this cement left to withstand the pull of gravity, and so the whole structure finally came crashing down.
- Philosophize.
Facts alone rarely tell a compelling tale. People are drawn to writing that probes life’s mysteries. We want to know why things happen, yes, but also what that means for us. This author steps away from what is known and risks infusing the piece with perspective drawn from his personal belief system.
Beyond the sadness or sense of loss that the collapse might evoke, there is a realization that something will eventually fill the void were the arch once stood. Simply put, another answer to the question “Why?” is, “So nature can make room for something else.”
- Bring home your point.
Novelists are often unwilling to make their point in so many words—but there are so many words in a novel that your point may get lost. After revising until you’ve made sure that each word choice is just right, you’ll want to go back and make sure that all of those “right words” add up to point the reader in the right direction.
In the Arches essay, the writer has coupled personal reflection with known phenomena to tell a recurring story that feels fresh, that spans millennia while seeming new. What was specific has become universal. Reporting for a new job on the day the arch fell becomes a small part of the greater circle of life:
Though shrouded in memory and mystery, the arch’s fate stands as an invitation to reflect upon the eternal cycle of birth and death that characterizes not only our planet, but our entire universe.
I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget our side trip to Arches. My sister was a character encountering the new at a time of profound life change, negotiating a plot map while driving a truck packed with her entire backstory. She and her sidekick engaged with this author’s deep perspective as they headed up the final 1600 feet of elevation, unsure of whether the truck’s engine would be strong enough to reach the summit, and came back braver and wiser for the experience.
The only thing I love more than stumbling across great writing is when it fits into a metaphor for the entire novel-writing experience.
And to think: I got all of this from reading the back of a map.
Have you ever run into great writing in unexpected places? What were the lessons you took away?
[coffee]
Kathryn Craft (she/her) is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her forthcoming book, Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward, draws from decades of experience as both a story consultant and a movement specialist/dance critic. Learn more on Kathryn’s website.
“Make important plot events personal…We want to know why things happen, yes, and what that means for us.”
You’re right on target, Kathryn. Finding meaning–personal meaning–is what makes earthquakes shake us and doing the dishes wash us clean. Whatever you choose to have a protagonist notice, remark upon, ponder or mention, it is how it relates to self that makes it matter.
Who wrote that wonderful essay?
Don–it kills me that there was no byline, especially since it felt so personal. Work for hire, I guess. Governmental appropriation. But I want to do what this essayist did, for all the reasons you mentioned.
Now you’ve done it! I’m going to remember this trip to Utah – and I wasn’t even there! And the arch-destroyer’s essay (doesn’t that sound like the title of a book?).
We understand cataclysmic events in how they affect us.
And thanks for the tips; coincidentally, I have to write an essay and I’ve been chewing on the concept, but now I know how to give it form.
Oh that’s awesome Alicia! Great timing!
Many people must have read that map, but it took your writer’s keen observation to translate it and generosity to pass it on to us. Many thanks, Kathryn.
You’re welcome, Veronica. Always in the lookout for great writing!
This was an absolutely beautiful post from you, Kathryn. I have to hope somehow this column works it way back to the writer of that essay so he/she can relish the fact that their talent was noticed and appreciated by a wider audience than they might have imagined. And aren’t we lucky that it was Kathryn Craft that turned that map over and filtered that story through her own prism of wisdom. Thanks for sharing this.
Wow Maggie, you made my day! And it’s a lovely thought that I may have made the uncredited writer’s as well.
The map writer’s essay is amazing, the Wall Arch was inspirational and I’m sorry you missed it. Although I’m so happy you snagged the map and put together this moving (maybe because I visited the Wall Arch and remember its impossibility) and wonderfully applicable piece.
I saw you, you saw the arch–only two degrees of separation! I can only imagine how amazing it would have been–thanks for your testimony, Wila. Glad I was able to point you toward the essay!
Wow Kathryn
This was a fantastic read today. Thank you very much.
Glad you enjoyed it James. Hope you can make good use of some of these mad skills.
On a rambling “let’s see it all as long as we are here” trip in 1988, after Mesa Verde, Brice and Zion–my husband and brother went off to Arches and my sister-in-law and I took the children to the motel pool. I missed something. My husband does have photos. Thanks always for your MAD SKILLS, Kathryn, and for sharing this essay. And we must SAVE OUR NATIONAL PARKS.
Amen to saving our parks, Beth! Once I become a lady of leisure (LOL) I’d love to rent a camper and spend a month in Utah to “see it all.” What an amazing state!
This one is a keeper, Kathryn. So often a scene I read, or write (shudder), could benefit from a stronger dose of personal investment on the part of the narrator.
Show me why it matters by showing me how it moves your character. And in doing so, draw me deeper into their world.
Hey John, I know what you mean. While consumed with what happens next, I often catch myself having to go back and layer in the more interior, personal connection in a later draft, hoping my subconscious has the situation in hand, lol. Huge problem with that: the personal filter is what should be INFORMING what comes next! So hard to keep it all in the ole noggin at the same time. That’s why I like to focus on small aspects of craft at a time.
The great essay about Wall Arch was written by Ranger Rob Lorenz.
Julie I’m so glad you saw this post and could tell us who wrote the essay! It’s amazing how the universe works sometimes, isn’t it?
Thanks for this post, Kathryn. You’ve shown ways we can add depth to our work.
I wanted to see what the arch looked like and found this press release: https://www.nps.gov/arch/learn/news/news080808.htm
I thought the fourth paragraph sounded similar in voice to the essay, but Julie answered the mystery.
Anyway, the before and after photos add to the story.
Thanks for the link, Mary. The essay enhances the poignancy of the photos as well.