Finding the Story

WRITING AN INTRODUCTION
Writing an Introduction
A story is not merely a series of events; it is a series of events with a
compelling sense of momentum that carries the reader toward the
conclusion. We call this momentum the narrative arc, and writers
achieve it by having strong characters who experience challenges
and conÀ icts and undergo changes as a result. In creative non¿ ction
writing, choosing the right character and the right conÀ ict is an
essential part of starting your story
Choosing Your Characters
 Writers need to think about how to keep a narrative
in motion. Some of the engines that move a narrative
forward include subtext, stakes, tension, character
conflict, scene, setting, good beginnings, and
satisfying endings. Achieving any of these often
requires revision.
Narrative Arc
 Once we start to see things on the horizon, we are
thinking about narrative arc—where this story is
going, what its forward momentum is.
Teasing Out the Details
 If we were fiction writers, rewriting this story would be
simple, because we could fill in the missing facts. In creative
nonfiction, however, we cannot invent everything.
 If you already write fiction, you may be feeling hemmed in
by the weight of fact. However, there is more than enough
for a story in our scenario. Creative nonfiction stories also
offer something fiction cannot: the power of true human
experience.
Teasing Out the Details
To keep the nonfiction contract with the reader, you
will need to gather as many details as possible,
because details are at the heart of character. In this
case, facts can include nonverbal cues and logical
inferences drawn from what we find in front of us.
Teasing Out the Details
 Think about the woman’s red lipstick and the high heels, for
example: What can you infer about her hopes or expectations for
this meeting? How would you be con¿ dent in describing her,
knowing nothing else about her? The same kinds of facts—such as
his words, his accent, his observable demeanor—tell us about the
man’s character as well.
 Once you have tried revising these minutes to create a narrative
scene, as you did with the argument in the boardroom in the last
lecture, double check that you did not invent anything. Make sure
you did not give in to the “it makes a better story this way” impulse.
Focusing the Lens
 When characters meet, something happens, but
there is a difference between something happening
and telling a good story. However, since you cannot
change what happened in creative nonfiction, where
does that leave you as a writer trying to craft a
compelling narrative arc?
Focusing the Lens
 You cannot invent dramatic moments, but you can choose the order
in which you present the real moments to the reader and thus
control the focus of the story.
If you begin the scene describing the woman’s red lipstick, you invite
the reader to think about romance and attraction.
 If you begin with the phone conversation she had with her boss just
before the man arrived—the one that drove her to order the vodka
—you invite the reader to think about tension instead.
The Three Keys to a Story
1. It needs a narrative arc. Something has to happen. A
series of events filled with dramatic tension must keep the
reader wanting to reach the conclusion, even if he or she
already knows what happens—as, say, when you are writing
about a famous historical event
2. It needs dramatic confl ict, or tension. Again, even if we
know the outcome of a historical event, a story is dull unless
the main character faces some opposition and struggles in
reaching his or her goals
The Three Keys to a Story
3. It needs a character to experience these events and conÀ ict and,
ultimately, to undergo a transformation. A lot of the time, your
stories will be about conflicts between two characters with different
goals.

The things that make a character interesting are the same things that make people interesting in real
life: complexity, uniqueness, internal conflict, passion, ambition, strength, and weakness. We can love
or hate these characters, but the writer’s job is to make us believe they are real and to make us care
about what happens to them—even if we are hoping they meet a bad end.
Writing Great
Beginnings
Writing Great Beginnings
 Great beginnings need exactly what great stories as a whole
need: character, conflict, and narrative arc. By examining great
beginnings in both fiction and nonfiction, you will find that
these three characteristics are interrelated: Interesting
characters are conflicted; characters with conflict have come
from somewhere and are going somewhere. Learning to write
beginnings well involves choosing the moment when conflict
drives the character to act and presenting it so that the reader
wants to know what follows.
The Power of Secrets
 There are ways to keep the nonfiction contract with the
reader and still leave room for speculation and
interpretation. In fact, when there are things we cannot
know about the past, it is sometimes our only option.
 One of the hardest parts of telling a story is beginning it.
Once you commit to a beginning moment, from that
moment certain things must follow. Any writer might find
that daunting.
The Power of Secrets
 It is actually pretty simple to ¿ nd out whether you have a
great beginning or not. Think back to Maxine Hong
Kingston’s example: “You must not tell anyone, my mother
said, what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a
sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well.”
The Power of Secrets
 How do these sentences hook you? This particular story
begins with a secret. Secrets are always tantalizing. Plus, the
nature of the secret is highly dramatic, and human drama
captures our attention as readers, too.
 In addition to the secret her family keeps from her, there is
the secret Hong Kingston is (temporarily) keeping from us:
Why did her aunt kill herself, and why does the family say it
as if she had never been born? Who is this family, anyway?
Character—What Makes One
Interesting
 Not every story can begin with a secret. But secrets are one
example of what all great openings have. What a secret does is put
two or more characters into some kind of conflict. Someone does
not want someone else to know something.
A secret also implies that something has happened before this story
begins. It also implies where the story in part might be headed—the
fight to keep or to learn the secret. That means what we have is a
narrative arc, a story already in motion.
Character—What Makes One
Interesting
 In Lecture 2, we said every good story needs
character, conflict, and narrative arc. A good opening
needs to establish all three in the first few sentences,
and a secret is one efficient way of doing that.
Character—What Makes One
Interesting
 Here is the opening sentence to Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar,
from 1963: “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they
electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in
New York.”
 The clause “I didn’t know what I was doing in New York” tells us we
have an internally conflicted character. The connection between her
story and a pair of infamous spies suggests conflict in the external
atmosphere. Even the word “queer”—not a word typically applied to
“summer”—heightens this sense of discomfort.
Conflict—What Motivates Characters
… and Readers
 First of all, we seem to have established that the core of an
interesting character is some sort of conflict—be it internal (with the
self) or external (with other people). In fact, conflict, as we will see,
is the key to telling an interesting story in general.
 Conflict can be presented straightforwardly or subtly. Sylvia Plath’s
narrator tells us outright that she does not know what she is doing.
Eustace, on the other hand, may not even be aware of his own
conflict, even though the narrator sees his mixed good and bad
qualities.
Conflict—What Motivates Characters
… and Readers
 These two characters are complex characters. The opposite
of a complex character is a stock character. These are
characters whose qualities are fixed and static. They never
change; they have no real life or personality. They are not
the characters to begin your story with, not if you want the
reader to be interested.
Conflict can be presented straightforwardly or subtly.
Conflict—What Motivates Characters
… and Readers
 What makes a character interesting is the thing that
does not seem to fit or does not meet our
expectations about who this person appears to be.
Perhaps it is a character who does not know his own
motivations. Perhaps it is someone who is irritating
yet somehow charming. Perhaps it is a character who
is out of her depth.
Narrative Arc—Character in Motion
 What does the term “narrative arc” really mean in
practice? Narrative arc is when action implies
consequences. Something happens, and the reader
knows something else must inevitably follow from
that event. If there is an action from which nothing
follows—if there are no consequences—then there is
no story.
The Three-Sentence Beginning—A
Writing Exercise
 Step one: Write a sentence where the reader wants to read
the next sentence that is going to come after. In other
words, write a sentence that has character, conflict, and
narrative arc.
 Step two: Write the sentence that comes after your first
one. Make sure this one also leaves the reader wanting to
read the next one.
 Step three: write one more sentence after that.
The Three-Sentence Beginning—A
Writing Exercise
 After you have written your three sentences, reread
them and ask yourself the same questions we have
been asking about good beginnings throughout this
lecture. Do your sentences establish character,
conflict, and narrative arc? If not, revise them until
they do.
The Three-Sentence Beginning—A
Writing Exercise
 If you are having trouble getting started, do not worry; that
is normal. But it is important that you practice these skills.
Here are some story starters to work with:
◦ Think of a secret. It could be anything, mundane or important.
Then, imagine you were not going to tell someone this secret but
you wanted to drop a hint that there was a secret you are keeping
from them. (Remember, when working with secrets, less is often
more.)
The Three-Sentence Beginning—A
Writing Exercise
◦ Imagine that two people are having a terrible phone
conversation. It could be about absolutely anything, but
it is an upsetting conversation. Now, imagine that you can
only hear one side of it—the side of the person who is
mostly doing the listening Describe what you see and
what he or she says and does.
ANY QUESTION?