Today we continue the series in
which award-winning nonfiction authors discuss the joys and challenges of
writing narrative
nonfiction and expository nonfiction with an
essay by Anita Silvey. Thank you, Anita.
I grew up near farm country in Indiana. Except for public
library visits with my grandmother, I depended on a tiny school library for all
of my reading. I can still remember where my favorite books were located—the
orange-spined Landmark History Books. I felt that Sterling North’s Abraham
Lincoln was the most satisfying book I had ever read.
But then in seventh grade I found John Kennedy’s Profile
in Courage, narrative nonfiction at its finest. Given a chance to move to
Boston after college, I packed my car and drove east—to Kennedy’s shining city
on the hill.
No one suggested, until I entered my fifth decade, that I might
be able to create children’s books. But one day Dinah Stevenson of Clarion said
to me:
“You love history; you love storytelling; and you love
children’s books.” Why don’t you try writing information books for children?”
Late in life, I began a new chapter in my children’s book
career—telling true stories about things that really happened. In those books,
I adhere to four cardinal rules that guide me and also keep me from slipping
into fiction. I fear my childhood favorites, the Landmark series, relied
largely on imagined dialogue and scenes. But writers today have to observe more
rigorous standards.
1. I can’t
invent anything—even if it would create a more compelling story.
Recently, I published the final book of the Trimate trilogy
about the “Ape Ladies”: Untamed (Jane Goodall), Undaunted (Birute
Galdikas) and Unforgotten (Dian Fossey). I began my account of Dian with
details about her running away from her home in San Francisco. One of the early
readers enjoyed this vignette but wanted more.
How did they find her?
How did she feel when she was returned home?
If I wrote fiction, I could elaborate. As a nonfiction
writer, if I speculate, I no longer have material that can be checked against
existing sources. As much as I wanted to expand this incident, I couldn’t.
2. I can’t
use any material unverifiable in reliable sources.
Early in the project I began to realize that Dian Fossey
rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story. She could be trusted when
it came to comments about gorillas, but she was an unreliable narrator when it
came to her life.
Dian had been forced to flee her first research camp in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. Over the years, her stories about the
experience had grown more and more
exciting. As much as I longed to include them in the book, I began to distrust
them. Research in secondary sources suggested that her colleagues didn’t
believe most of what she said about this journey. So, I had to send these
inaccurate and over-dramatized accounts to the cutting room floor.
3. Through
original research, I can fill in important pieces of my narrative.
When Jane Goodall reviewed the first draft of Untamed,
she wanted me to leave out a sentence about her divorce. I wrote back, arguing
that this detail was important for the book. Then she gave me a gift; she wrote
the perfect ending to the chapter Celebrity Scientist:
“Jane had come a long way from being an untrained girl from
England, but she had paid a high price to get there.”
I myself could not have written such a succinct summation
of her life.
Birute Galdikas still lives in her camp in Borneo, but when
she returned to Canada to teach, I was able to interview her at length. After
she read the first manuscript, she mentioned that I’d left out some important
incidents in her life. She then wrote several paragraphs about receiving death
threats and needing to travel with local police protection. By this point, I trusted
Birute completely as someone who did not exaggerate, and I used her accounts in
the book.
4. I can,
and should, use all the tricks of a seasoned storyteller.
Foreshadowing, cliff hangers, character development. I need
to find the perfect arc of the story and an overall structure that pulls the
material together.
For the books about Jane and Birute, I used Campbell’s Hero
Cycle for the story arc. I framed Dian’s book as a tragedy, much like Romeo (gorillas)
and Juliet (Dian). The book opens with a section entitled “Holding Hands,” which
shows a young gorilla reaching for Dian’s hand. It ends with Dian buried at her
research station in the gorilla graveyard she had established. The last lines
quote her tombstone: “No one loved gorillas more.”
In my books, I do everything I can to keep readers turning
the pages. I tell true stories about things that really happened because I know
so many young readers want, and need, this type of book. Just like I did. Just
like I still do.
Anita
Silvey, former Editor of The Horn Book Magazine and
Publisher of Children’s Books at Houghton Mifflin, teaches in the Children’s
Literature Program and Library School at Simmons College.
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