Chip's Writing Lessons #60
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Pat Barker on outrunning your inner critic
Interview | 4 Questions with Ellen Gabler
Craft Lesson | Braiding your narrative to tell a complete story
Writing to Savor | “The Jessica Simulation: Love and Loss in the Age of A.I.” by Jason Fagone, San Francisco Chronicle (A Nieman Storyboard annotation)
Tip of the Week | Strengthen weak adverbs and adjectives
WRITERS SPEAK
“The really good ideas are generated in the process of writing, and only if you’re working at white heat. You don’t get those ideas if you’re worrying about the commas and making it all look pretty on the page. What you’re doing in effect is outrunning your inner critic.” — Pat Barker
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH ELLEN GABLER
Ellen Gabler
Ellen Gabler is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Since joining The Times in 2017, she has covered health and medical issues in addition to reporting on sexual harassment. Ms. Gabler previously worked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as a reporter and deputy investigations editor. At The Times in 2018, Ms. Gabler was part of a team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of sexual harassment and misconduct. She has also received the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in National Reporting and shared with colleagues the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, Scripps Howard, Gerald Loeb, and National Headliner awards, among others. A native of Eau Claire, Wis. Ms.Gabler has a bachelor of business administration from Emory University and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She began her career at the Stillwater Gazette in Stillwater, Minn. and has worked at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal and the Chicago Tribune.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
To not be a wimp about it. Writing well is hard. It takes planning, dedication, re-writing, thinking about your reader, and listening to those who edit/read your work. I’m often stunned by the amount of drafts I go through on some of my most important stories. The re-reading, re-writing and re-thinking of ledes, sections, endings, transitions and everything else can be exhausting and maddening. But, that is often what it takes to pull together a really strong piece.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
The biggest surprise ties in with the biggest lesson. I’m surprised that writing can still be pretty challenging, despite the fact that I’ve been a reporter for nearly 20 years. But the good thing is, now I KNOW it is challenging, and remember that I just need to power through. And every story is different. Some come easier than others. I’ve also learned to enjoy the process more, and think of it like I’m training for an athletic event. I swam competitively through college, and we spent years practicing our starts, turns, finishes — really fine-tuning every part of a race. Writing is the same. The training never really ends, and every time you do it, it is going to be kind of hard. So you have to accept that and jump on in.
if you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why?
To me, writing is a lot like building a snow fort AND putting together a puzzle. To build a snow fort, you need enough snow. To write a story, you need enough “stuff” or reporting to build the story. Often times when I’m having trouble writing, it is because I don’t have enough “stuff.” Getting all the snow to build your fort can be a pain. The same is true with reporting. But, you need to do the hard work of getting all of the “stuff” before you can write.
As for the puzzle part, that’s pretty self-explanatory. Even though it is ALSO often a pain, I do love the part of writing where you get to take all of your reporting and make it fit together. I like being surprised by how it turns out, and really delight in the little moments when you find the right transition or perfect place to put a quote.
What’s the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
To remember that you are telling a story, not writing a research paper. I think a lot of times as investigative reporters, we can be boring. Your story doesn’t matter if no one reads it, and so it is really important to try to write in a compelling and approachable way.
Although to be honest, there isn’t just ONE best piece of writing advice. I have gathered up little pieces of advice over the years from listening to other reporters talk about their work, and simply from reading. The more you read, the more you notice what works and what doesn’t work. Then you can apply it to your own stories.
CRAFT LESSON | BRAIDING YOUR NARRATIVE TO TELL A COMPLETE STORY
More and more, as I read and closely study excellent narrative nonfiction, I’m struck by how many talented writers rely on braided structures, moving smoothly between two or more storylines in the same story.
Another term for this approach is digressive narrative. This is a stylistic device that writers employ to provide background information, describe the motivations of characters and heighten suspense. They’re detours, sometimes quick, other times lengthy, from the primary story arc.
I became aware of it after binge-watching Aaron Sorkin’s “The West Wing.” This must-see network series, which ran for seven seasons between 1999 and 2006, dramatized the Democratic presidency of liberal Joshua “Jed” Bartlett and his young, idealistic staff.
Sorkin uses the tool throughout the series, but its power is especially evident and instructive in the first two episodes of the second season. In a February 2020 essay for Nieman Storyboard, I focused on this telling example: the attempted assassination of the President and the severe wounding of his deputy chief of staff. The plot digresses to follow the creation of an upstart campaign that launched an obscure New England governor into the White House. (The essay features links to the episodes on YouTube along with the scripts for the two-parter. I also showed how novelists employ digression, using as an example J.D. Salinger’s classic novel, “The Catcher in the Rye.”
With journalists in mind, I also found that many narrative nonfiction writers digress from their primary story arc, braiding multiple storylines, to tell a complete story.
Here are two examples of braided narrative nonfiction worth studying.
“The Jessica Simulation: Love and Loss in the Age of A.I.” by Jason Fagone of The San Francisco Chronicle. The story tracks the journey of a grieving man who decides to use a unique Artificial Intelligence program to have a “conversation” with his dead ex-fiancee who is transformed into a chatbot that responds to human prompts. Fagone weaves the computerized conversations with profiles of the couple and an accessible explanation of artificial intelligence and the pitfalls of its use in this context.
Her Time,” by Katie Engelhart, published in The California Sunday Magazine, tells the extraordinary story of an Oregon woman’s underground journey to die on her own terms before dementia left her unable to take the needed action when she was ready. Engelhart braids that with the history of the right-to-die movement and the contentious debate about whether patients with dementia should be allowed the legal right to die, with assistance, before they are deemed incompetent. One braid tells the personal narrative. The second provides the context essential for understanding.
Not everyone, as I wrote, is a fan of the device. “It’s really hard to jump back and forth in time without giving the reader whiplash,” says New Yorker contributor Jennifer Kahn. Alice Mayhew, the legendary Simon & Schuster editor who died in 2020 at 87 after a storied career bringing best-sellers to print, wasn’t a believer, either. She was known, according to a 2004 profile, for “unsentimentally pruning away digressions, even when — especially when — they are hundreds of pages long. Mayhew’s faith in chronological organization is said to be nearly religious.”
Yes, you can overdose on digressions, as you can with any writing technique. But used judiciously and with skill, they can engage readers who may welcome these temporary departures from the main plot. They’re certainly worth examining and emulating when conditions call for a detour. You can start a master class with The West Wing’s “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen,” “The Jessica Simulation” or “Her Time” and then experiment with your own stories.
WRITING TO SAVOR | “THE JESSICA SIMULATION” BY JASON FAGONE, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. (A NIEMAN STORYBOARD ANNOTATION)
In this week’s Craft Lesson, I recommended reading Jason Fagone’s exploration of an Artificial Intelligence program that allows a bereaved man to “talk” with his dead ex-fiancee. I suggest checking out my behind-the-story annotation for Nieman Storyboard as well. Our conversation delves into Fagone's writing, structural and revision techniques, his rich relationship with his editor, Lisa Gartner, and plumbs the ethical dilemmas posed by artificial intelligence. Little surprise that a filmmaker has already bought the rights to this riveting longform story for a limited series. (The annotation, like the series, is broken up into three chapters.)
TIP OF THE WEEK | STRENGTHEN WEAK ADVERBS AND VERBS
When the well of inspiration runs dry, my go-to-solution remains “What If?” by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.
Although the guide is aimed at fiction writers, I find that its craft lessons--from beginnings and writing tools to characterization and the importance of revision-- enormously useful for writing in nearly every genre. Usually, I just flip through the 25 chapters, as if I were shuffling a deck of cards until I settle on an appealing topic. Today’s was “Taboo: Weak Adverbs and Adjectives.” The chapter begins with a critique attributed to the French writer Voltaire: “The adjective is the enemy of the noun and the adverb is the enemy of the verb.”
This doesn’t mean they should be erased from your prose. However, "Adverbs are not meant to augment a verb—as in he walked slowly—but to create friction with the verb or alter its meaning,” Bernays and Painter write. Pair verbs, they suggest, with different adverbs to witness how their meaning changes: chastely, relentlessly, inadequately.
As for the adjective, their role is to bolster, not weaken a noun.
Consider these examples of judicious usage.
Toni Morrison: “When Sula first visited the Wright House, Helene’s curdled scorn turned to butter.
Shirley Hazzard: “She reached again for the door and kept her eyes on him, like a captive who edges watchfully towards escape."
Each chapter ends with an exercise: To ward off this taboo, the authors assign students of the craft to “circle every adjective and adverb in a published story and decide which ones work. Then, exchange all the weak ones with strong ones of your own. Consider omitting them altogether. Now do the same exercise with one of your own stories."
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May the writing go well, and may you be well.
Nulla dies sine linea / Never a day without a line
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