By Susan Campbell Bartoletti
My 11th grade English teacher,
Mrs. Walsh, was a tough battleship of a woman. She navigated our classroom like
a man-of-war as she led us through the steps of planning, researching, and
writing our first research paper.
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Mrs. Walsh
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I didn’t expect to enjoy the process,
but to my surprise, I did. The library! The card catalog! The MLA index! Index
cards! Pencils! Paper! Taking notes! Scissors! Tape! Footnotes! Bibliography!
That high school assignment would prove
to be a lesson that I would carry to college and to grad school and to each of
my nonfiction projects today.
I share this anecdote because I want you
to know: if you’ve ever written a research paper – even way back when – and if
you love a true story, then you have what it takes to plan, research, and write
a long-form narrative nonfiction book.
If you didn’t have a Mrs. Walsh or if
you want to refresh your memory on the basics, you’ll find some useful sites at
the end of this blog.
THE PLANNING STAGE
1. Prepare
physically – and mentally. You’re going to need stamina, determination, focus,
passion, and time. A long-form nonfiction book takes a long time, sometimes years.
You need physical space. When I started
writing, I claimed a corner of our family room. Now I have a dedicated home
office, but I’m still a horizontal space usurper.
You’ll also need mental space to hold
and juggle facts and details and ideas as you’re researching and writing. You need
space to allow your mind to wander. Sometimes discoveries and connections
happen when I’m driving or walking my dog or folding laundry. Sometimes they
happen at 2 am, when I pop awake with a solution to a story problem.
2. You
need an organizational strategy. For your own mental health, don’t wait until
you’re halfway into your project or – gasp! – at the end.
Software programs are available, but I
prefer to take notes by hand. My supplies include a marble-covered composition
notebook, pens and pencils, sticky notes, index cards, an index card file box,
file folders, a milk crate, and a bulletin board.
Whatever your strategy is – high tech or
low-tech - make sure it’s consistent. Even a bad system will work, as long as
it’s consistent.
THE RESEARCH STAGE
1. Feeling
daunted? Join the club. I always feel daunted at the beginning of a new
project. To settle myself, I determine my research questions.
Research is about inquiry. It’s about
asking probing questions and looking for answers.
2. Determine
your story’s focus. Once you have your story’s focus will help you determine your
research questions. Your focus will direct your thinking and make your
note-taking more efficient and productive.
3. Start
collecting your sources. Think of your narrative nonfiction book as a true
story that you’re going to tell. You’re going to base your true story on verifiable
facts and information that you’ve gathered from a vast number and variety of
sources.
You’ll find important sources in the
bibliographies and source notes and acknowledgments and photo credits in books
already published on your subject.
You’ll scour primary and secondary sources
that you’ve found in the customary and usual places: the library, on the Internet,
in special collections, on specialized databases, and in archives. In addition
to established image collections such as the Library of Congress, I also hunt
for vintage images and ephemera on eBay and other such sites.
In your search, you’ll seek out the most
up-to-date thinking and research from reliable and reputable sources. You might
scout out syllabi from university professors to see the texts they require in
their courses. You might interview experts in the field. (If you interview and
if you intend to quote the experts, I recommend getting written permission.)
4. As
you’re researching, you’ll find that others have already published books about
your subject. Never fear! Remind yourself that there’s always room for a good
one. It’s your job to push yourself, to examine your subject in a fresh way,
perhaps a new slant.
Remember this: good ideas don’t come in
the beginning. They come as you burrow down – deep dive - into your research.
When it’s time to write, you’ll use your voice to tell a true story in the way
only you can tell it.
5. Once
you’ve determined your subject and you’ve done your preliminary reading, free write
a response to each of these questions: What is the story you want to tell? What
is your personal experience with the subject? What is your emotional
connection? What is your intellectual connection?
Your connection doesn’t necessarily mean
that you’ve experienced the exact subject yourself. Do some time travel. Let
your memory take you back to a time when you experienced a situation or an
emotion that touches on the subject or the people or the events you’re writing
about.
Trust the power of these questions and the
power of your research. Trust that there’s a reason why you’re drawn to the
subject – and if you don’t know the connection from the start, that reason will
reveal itself as you move deeper into the research and writing process. Revisit
these questions as you move through your draft.
6. A
marble-covered composition book becomes an important assistant: in its pages, I
fret, I obsess, I keep lists of contacts whom I’ll want to include in the acknowledgments,
I
summarize and discuss what I’m reading, I argue with my sources, and I argue
with myself. The composition book also helps me track permissions and usage
agreements.
7. Double
– and triple-check your facts. As you do, you might find mistakes in the work
of others. For example, in The Autobiography of Mother Jones, labor
activist Mary Jones mentions an eleven-year-old factory girl, Gussie Rangnew,
who accompanied her on the 1903 march from Philadelphia to Oyster Bay, Long
Island, New York.
Through my digging, I located Gussie’s
grandson. Gussie, it turned out, was Gus Rangnow, a boy who grew up to become a
Philadelphia police officer.
This factual mistake raises an important
question: Does this error of fact change the truth of Mother Jones and her crusade?
Does it change the truth of the other published accounts written about this
march?
I don’t think so. As much as I like
“fixing history” and getting the facts right, I know there’s a difference
between what is true and what is truth.
8. Don’t
raid a primary or secondary source. Read all of an important source so that you
have an understanding of the spirit and context of the quote or information.
Try your best to track each and every
quote and detail of fact back to its original source. You might discover that
the quote or fact was misquoted or used out of context, or even worse, that it
was invented or misattributed or gasp! that horrid invention called “an
alternative fact.”
9. Travel
informs my work. I try to visit the places I’m writing about for several
reasons: to gain experiences that I can’t find in books, to gain an
understanding of the physical and emotional landscape, to gain a better sense
of the spirit of the place and people, and to collect sensory details.
10. Read sources that support your story –
and those that do not. It’s good to know the opposition. It will help to inform
your story and strengthen your argument. Read, too, the reviews of other books
published on your subject, both professional reviews and reader reviews.
THE WRITING STAGE
1. Narrative
nonfiction writers use the same literary devices as fiction writers: we use our
research to develop plot, to create scenes out of real events, to flesh out our
characters, to create setting, and more.
The difference is this: nonfiction
writers can’t invent. We cannot invent dialogue or any detail of fact. We can’t
presume to know what our subject is thinking or believes. Every fact, every
detail must be verifiable, based on the facts and on reason.
2. Think
about the shape of your story. How will you arrange the information into an
order -- a plot -- that will best serve your story? How will you move your
character(s) through time and space? Remember the rising-and-falling-action story
structure (Freytag’s Pyramid or often called a “plot mountain” by some) you
learned way back when?
3. As
you prepare to write, think about the voice and tone of your story. What
“attitude” will your narrative convey? Will the attitude be one of
identification or one of distance with the subject? Will it be judgmental or
sympathetic? Will it be humorous or serious? Or something else?
4. Think
about your story’s pacing. (Plot and pacing are not the same thing.) At what
speed and what rhythm will the events of your story unfold? Do you want your
story to unfold like a fast-paced thriller or adventure story? Or a leisurely
epic?
5. Think
about sensory details. It takes at least three senses to breathe a story to
life. Can you work verifiable senses into your story?
6. Research
can become a sophisticated form of procrastination. You’ll know it’s time to
begin writing when the facts begin to repeat themselves and you’re no longer
learning anything new.
But this doesn’t mean you’re finished. Expect
that your research and writing will continue, side-by-side as you find more
opportunities to lean in, to flesh out your story, to deepen your story and its
meaning, and to breathe it to life -- right up until you’re ready to hit send –
and beyond.
7. As
you write, cite.
8. Don’t
lose sight of your subject. For example, if you’re writing about Abraham
Lincoln, try to keep the camera on him at all possible times.
9. When
you near the end of your writing, you may find leftover bits of research. You
may be able to use the leftovers in your captions or source notes.
10. Be generous. In the spirit of true
scholarship, we share our research in our bibliography, acknowledgments, and
source notes. It’s not to show off how hard we worked (that would be like
leaving a price tag on a gift!). We want to show readers where our facts come
from. We want to help the writers who follow us. For them, our back matter
becomes a trusty road map, a how-to-guide.
In case you’re wondering, I earned a 90%
and a compliment (“Your material is excellent”) on that first research paper.
She passed before she could see the writer I became. Thank you, Mrs. Walsh, for
the lesson that made a difference in my life.
ACTIVITY
Examine one of the following sites:
