On Narrative Nonfiction
This has to be brief.
Much like the real thing, the education of journalism in its later stages, piles deadlines upon deadlines, so there isn’t much time to opine on the philosophical underpinnings of pedagogy.
I am writing mostly narrative nonfiction these days. It is an exercise in psychology.
Narrative functions not on the level of events and factoids, but on the personal realities those things create, destroy, affect and inform. Narrative nonfiction writing is telling the story of your subject.
This is not to be confused with a short news story on an action. This is a longer, in-depth view of the motivations behind such action. Narrative, in short, takes the motives found in literature and applies it to real people in real situations.
It asks a lot of the journalist. The process is to locate the mind behind the news, to understand the “why.” It is an existential search, in a way, trying to find the authenticity behind the edifice.
The coursework at Columbia is overwhelming. Far more demanding than the first semester, the second delves into the elements of human nature, into the soul. It asks us, the writers, to search ourselves, bare our fears and desires, in search of those same things in our sources. And our fealty?
While we must remain accurate to our sources, our loyalty is to the story, to the theme, to the truth of situation that we discern, isolate and relate. We make the connections. We comprehend the reasons why.
In narrative nonfiction, the story is not simply retold or reformulated. It waits to be discovered. Where it goes from there will remain on the conscience of the author forever.
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