Welcome (back) to the Scarlet Quill Society!

This year at YeahWrite our free workshop focuses on everything BUT the writing, with an editorial series that’ll take the words right out of your mouth and put them on the page. Of course, we’re also including some tips on writing so that the eventual edits to your story won’t be the heartbreaking kind where you have to remove an entire character or plot arc and re-evaluate every interaction in your 300,000 word novel.

Check out the bottom of this post (and every post) for a roadmap to the year. We’ll be updating it with links each month as the posts go live, so that you can navigate through easily. And speaking of navigation, don’t worry: our Navigating Prompts workshop from last year hasn’t gone anywhere. You still have a handy tool to refer to when you’re stumped by a prompt or need help on how to approach it or what judges might be thinking as they read your story.

The biggest bonus of the Scarlet Quill Society is that there are actual club meetings. That’s right! Once a month (usually on the Second Sunday) we’ll get together with you and talk about that month’s subject, answer questions, and record the chat for posterity. So if you have an easier time taking in information that way, or if you’re left with lingering questions after a monthly topical post, you’ve got a chance to get the full picture! Check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.

How true is the truth?

Nonfiction writing can be unexpectedly seductive. After all, it’s still writing, you still get to use your voice and techniques and get published and have accolades, but you don’t have to do ANY of the worst parts of writing: coming up with characters, figuring out a plot, and coaxing your characters through the plot. So it should be easy, right?

Wrong. Nonfiction has all the same pitfalls as fiction, you’re just approaching them from a different direction. Michelangelo famously said that to make a statue you start with a block of marble and take away all the parts that aren’t the statue. That’s the same process as nonfiction writing: you take all the events and people and cut away everything that’s not a story. But approaching writing from a subtractive, rather than additive, perspective has its own set of traps. That’s what we’ll be exploring this month as we figure out how not to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

What is nonfiction?

You think you know what nonfiction is, but do you? It’s easy to treat “nonfiction” as a genre like “fantasy” but just like fantasy there are so many subcategories of nonfiction that it’s a little bit brainbreaking. Nonfiction can be creative or academic, short-form or long. And it can be a melding of all of these categories. The one thing that’s true for all of it, though, is that it should still tell a story. Let’s walk through a few of the types of nonfiction and how they relate to storytelling before we jump into how to edit them.

• Memoir
• Personal essay
• True crime
• Journalism
• Food writing
• Academia: research papers, whitepapers and studies
• Theses
• History

As you can see, nonfiction is broad and varied. So even if memoir isn’t your jam [Ed’s note: I’ll be honest it’s not mine. /rbg] there’s probably something for you in nonfiction. And as usual, as an editor? While it’s nice if you enjoy the writing, that can actually get in the way of doing your job!

Creative Nonfiction

What do memoir, true crime, personal essays, and foodblogging have in common? They’re a category called creative nonfiction. In creative nonfiction it’s not as critical if you get every word in a bit of dialogue correct, or if you’re sure that something happened on a Wednesday. While it’s important that you don’t misrepresent verifiable facts or do purposeful harm (on the other hand, as an aside, while Anne Lamott hasn’t always been the person one could have wished, her advice that “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” stands the test of time), within the boundaries of creative nonfiction it’s ok to take some, well, creative license.

Back in the days when YeahWrite was “yeah write” we had a description for creative nonfiction: mostly-true stories. That’s a great way to think about CNF, in fact: the real anchor points (what year it happened in, who was involved, what the outcome was) need to be verifiably true, but you can be more flexible on the details as long as you’re clear that’s what’s going on. Think about the difference between “He said” and “He was like…” when you write or edit CNF.

As an editor of CNF, your job is to do enough fact checking, but not insist on every word. What does that mean? It means that verifiable events should be represented as they happened. If you’re editing a personal essay about being in an earthquake, things like the date and time and magnitude of the earthquake should be correct. It doesn’t matter how pretty a visual it would make to have someone snatching at falling glass in front of a sunset-lit window if the quake took place at 2pm. On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter if there were four or five Hummel figurines tumbling off the end of the shelf; nobody is going to be able to verify that one way or the other and as far as the story is concerned the effect is the same: many precious things falling to a hard floor.

Here’s a hard truth about memoir: things are not interesting just because they happened to you. Conversely, you are not interesting just because things happened to you.

How do you handle that problem? The same way it’s handled in fiction. You’ll need some worldbuilding, a reason for people to invest in the characters, and a plot arc. The major difference, of course, is (please say you read the intro paragraph) that this is a subtractive process. So as you edit, you should always be keeping in mind “what else can I take away while leaving enough for the reader to understand what’s happening?” Here’s a quick checklist of traps!

• Relax about getting the day exactly right and consider leaving that part out. In the vast majority of cases it doesn’t matter if the thing happened on Wednesday or Thursday.
• Not everything has to be in chronological order, and not every event affects your plot. Consider leaving out: meals, errands, the birth of a child (unless that’s what the story is about or the child becomes relevant to the plot later), what people are wearing (again, unless it’s relevant) and so forth.
• But make sure the reader has enough backstory to understand why things happen in your story! If the whole story hinges on the muffler falling off your car while you take your partner to the hospital, it may well be relevant to understand how you got the car and why you didn’t have it fixed sooner (were you 22 and had never owned a car? could you not afford it?).
• Not every person who was in every conversation has to be named and described. If the important thing is a quick exchange between two characters in a corner at a party, you don’t need an exhaustive list of all the partygoers (unless one of them is relevant later because they overheard the exchange, for example). It’s enough to say “there were maybe fifty people in the room…”
• What is the interesting thing here? Is it the writing? Make sure that has room to shine instead of trying to polish every sentence into a quotable quote. Is it the events? Make sure the writing stays out of their way and lets them flow.

And finally: a peculiar problem of foodblogging. What’s the problem? Recipes aren’t copyrightable. And yet, to protect one’s work, it’s not a terrible idea to surround the recipes with copyrightable material: bury them in a story, add pictures, etc. But then you bump into a new problem: someone coming to get your recipe for potato rösti doesn’t actually care about your grandmother- they just want to make dinner. There are a couple ways to get around this catch-22. You might separate out the recipe and make the story about your grandmother separately interesting. You might talk about the food instead of your grandmother. You might give the list of ingredients early and then make the narrative portion a discussion of how to prepare the dish. Heck, you could even put in the discussion of your grandmother there! Just don’t separate them out and then make the grandma story a pro forma narrative with little to engage a reader.

Journalism and History

It’s funny how phrases stick with you (and society) long after where they come from is forgotten. For example, how many people who say “just the facts, ma’am” ever watched Dragnet? My name’s Friday; I carry a pen. Badge. Whatever. And as an official member of the Fact Police (it is, for example, a fact that all cats are beautiful), I’m here to talk to you about just the facts.

First off: let’s rid ourselves of the notion that there’s such a thing as unbiased or neutral journalism or history writing. Any human created content is subject to the biases of the author and, often, the publisher. AI created content can be even worse. But? that’s not a bad thing, inherently—so long as you’re putting in the bias you want to put in, deliberately, and you know what it is.

So let’s talk about bias! And facts!

When you’re writing about news or history (and what is news but “history that is still happening to us”) you’ve got the same problem that you do in CNF. How do you include the relevant facts and not too much more, while still telling a story? But where CNF ultimately asks “is this entertaining” now you have a new question: how neutral do I want to sound about this, and how is my viewpoint affecting the way I describe events?

Look. Bias isn’t inherently bad. We’re biased against, say, murder. And slaveholding (well, many of us are). Saying those things are morally wrong in a news article or historical account does add evidence of bias in the account, but does it detract from what the reader needs to know? Often, our point in writing about abhorrent acts is to influence readers to not commit these acts, or to denounce people or states that do. On the other hand, historical accountings must be well-sourced, verifiable, and contextualized. Which, again, isn’t the same thing as unbiased.

Here are some things to think about when looking at historical and journalistic writing:

• Is enough context provided to understand the story? In some cases this can be as little as a byline; in others you might need to devote a chapter to the history of the feud between the Orsinni and Colonna families.
• Is enough context provided to understand why the story is important? This isn’t the same thing as the point above. You may need to make sure there’s a discussion of what the facts presented affect.
• Are you telling a story or presenting the reader with facts and suggesting they draw their own conclusion? Both are examples of persuasive writing (more on this in a second) but you’ll want different framing and word choice.
• If you are suggesting the reader draw their own conclusion, are you sure it’s the conclusion you want them to draw? Make sure you know your point and have selected the facts that fit it, while not ignoring major facts that counter your narrative.
• How have you presented your facts? Have you used language that will engage the reader? Depending on your readership and the point you want to make, the same person might be accurately described as: a felon, a teen, a child, a young man, a drug dealer, or a thug. And that’s not even touching the racialized term there. How you describe the characters in the story deeply affects the reader’s reaction to them.
• Are you aware of racialized or otherwise loaded terms in your narrative? “Thug” or “welfare queen” or “malingerer” or “convict” all carry negative weight in the reader’s mind. (Hey, be aware of this while you’re reading the news, too!)
• If you’re new to journalistic or historical editing, grab a media bias chart (there are many out there of varying accuracy) and take sources from various points on the chart. Review their coverage of the same event and see which terms they use. Looking at heavily right-wing opinion pieces can help prevent recycling those talking points inadvertently in a piece for a more moderate or progressive audience.
• Have adequate sources been supplied or reviewed to ensure that all relevant facts are included and provable? For example, is the author writing a story about an event using only the police reports from the event, or have there been bystander interviews?

And, as usual, you’re telling a story with these facts. Keep in mind that any story should have a point, not leave the reader asking “so what?”

Academia

In my day job, I’m an academic editor, so you’d think I’d have a lot to say about this topic. But honestly, it all boils down to a few things, and they’re all about the quality of the story you’re telling about your research and data.

See, it’s not enough to say “data exists.” In academic writing, the reader needs to know why it matters that the data exists. (If you’re APA I apologize, but we’re CMoS and data is singular.) And that? That’s telling a story.

THE PARTS OF AN ACADEMIC STORY ARE:

• This is a question I had
• This is what I thought the answer was
• These are the other people who have considered the question and what they think (the answer might be none but it probably isn’t)
• This is how I planned to confirm what I thought
• This is what I found out along the way
• Therefore, I was right/wrong and here’s what you can do with that information!

This applies whether you’re looking for the commonalities between people suffering from long Covid or the rate of births of white squirrels in a population of black squirrels.

As you can see, this is a different sort of story, but it’s still a story. As an academic editor, you have a couple jobs to help people tell that story.

• Did the author do enough research? That is, are the major points and counterpoints in the field covered?
• Are there obvious holes in the data or conclusions? That is, if the author was researching increasing numbers of white squirrel births did they at least address all the clearly possible causes? Or did they ignore “are white squirrels the ones giving birth to more of the same”?
• Are citations correct for the format of the final paper? The author should know what that is (it will depend on where they’re publishing) or have a style guide for you if it’s a unique style for that publication.
• Is data presented clearly and completely? Do charts have appropriate labels? Is the data presented with parallel structure that makes it easy for the reader to compare apples to apples?
• Did the author “show their work” or is the paper conclusory?
• What kind of publication is this paper meant for? Is it a persuasive whitepaper or for publication in a journal or an informative web piece that can have links instead of citations?

Don’t be afraid to ask questions in academic papers, and don’t be worried that the topic of the paper is out of your usual milieu. If the author can’t explain it clearly and adequately to make you – an intelligent reader whose entire job is interpreting what people say – understand, it’s not ready for publication.

In conclusion…

Subtractive storytelling isn’t necessarily easier than additive storytelling. As an editor it’s your job to tell the author what they need to take out (or put in) to make the story as clear as possible. In addition, word choice deeply affects how facts are presented and received, so you need to be even more sensitive to that than if you were reviewing fiction. All writing displays author bias in what we choose to write about and how we write about it, and it’s important to be able to recognize (and help authors recognize) how that bias can work for and against them. Still, nonfiction may be some of your favorite writing to edit: it’s been written to a specific prompt on a specific timeline in a closed universe. It’s easy to verify and supplement the worldbuilding where necessary, and you’re likely to cut more than add. If that’s your jam, grab your red pen and meet us online this month!

Your turn!

Got questions? Let’s continue this conversation in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord. And keep an eye out for the next face-to-face (face-to-Zoom?) meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society. 

Join the Scarlet Quill Society!

Live Scarlet Quill Society meetings take place on the (usually; we’ll warn you!) second Sunday of every month at 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time. This month’s meeting will take place on Sunday, August 14.

Each month, paid Society members will receive an email with a link to the Zoom meeting. If not every topic interests you, you can also purchase one-time access passes to each month’s meeting via Ko-Fi. If you can’t make it to the meeting, or you don’t like to speak on camera, you are welcome to submit questions before the meeting that our editors will answer in the meeting.

• $5 one-time access to this month’s Zoom session
• $5 monthly subscription: Access to all the live meetings and recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors!
• $3 monthly subscription: Access to the meeting recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors!

A week after the meeting, recordings will become available to all at no cost, but if you find them useful we encourage you to leave a tip in our tip jar—it helps keep the lights on over here and allows us to keep bringing you the high-quality workshop content you’ve come to expect from us, as well as acquire some exciting guest panelists.

Rules of Order. Order of Rules. Something like that.

Wondering what the next meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society will be about? Here's our club agenda for the year.

September:

• Read: Editing nonfiction: how much is enough?
• Watch: September meeting

October:

• Read: Line- and copyediting: getting picky
• Watch: October meeting

November:

• Read: Finishing touches and final checklists: more than just spellcheck!
• Watch: November meeting

December:

• Read: DIWhy? what you can (and can't) do yourself
• Watch: December meeting

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me

About the author:

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me

About the author: