Writing Secrets: A story needs to go somewhere
Just because something is “true”, just because it happened, doesn’t mean it’s a story.
This came up recently because we were assessing a manuscript – a memoir – and had to give the writer advice of this kind.
Lists of events, simply because they fit chronologically in your life, do not make for interesting reading. Even fascinating vignettes and scenes from your life do not yet constitute a story. You need to use your skill as a writer to turn them into something worth reading.
A story needs to go somewhere. It needs to lead irrevocably onward from one event to another, until it reaches a climax of some kind – even if that culmination is infinitely subtle, and consists of no more than a grand realisation.
Each part of your story, each scene, must be linked in a chain of events which has some logic. She discovers she’s pregnant, so she calls the father … or she books an abortion … or she cancels a trip. There’s a chain of logic from one event to the other. Each event from your life, which you choose to use, should carry the story forward.
To do that, you need to decide what the story is. It’s not enough to think: well it’s the story of my life. Is this the story of how you became a teenage mother and survived? How you made your millions – and were finally humbled? Is it the story of escaping an abusive relationship or learning to fly in order to escape across the world?
Those events which happened – but which don’t take your story forward – you simply leave out, along with the many times you might have brushed your teeth.
As writer David Peace says: “you cannot write every single moment in a person’s life. Therefore you must select the bits to tell.”
We read a story differently if we believe it to be true. But in the end, both novels and memoirs have to be judged for their interest as stories. And for that, what counts isn’t honesty but narrative skill.
You will need to fashion a story out of the raw material of real life. Only then will it elicit empathy and become a credible truth.
Read Richard’s latest blog: ‘Monday Motivation: In your end lies your beginning…‘
