The Benefits of Asking “What’s It About?”
I found myself standing in front of a memoir-writing class with a hunk of manuscript in my hand, asking, What is this all about?—and the answer came back, It's about this dysfunctional family in Cincinnati, and I said, No, no. What is it about?
–Vivian Gornick, The Story and the Substance
Last weekend a friend attended the memorial service for a well-known artist from his town. I asked if he'd known the man. No, he said, he just wanted to honor him. He also hoped to learn more about him. However, my friend added, in spite of the fact that there were many eulogists, he learned very little, as most who got on stage spoke mainly about themselves. "One guy carried on about how they used to go fishing."
My friend was more puzzled than disappointed as he waited for that speech to have a larger point … but it was only ever about the fishing.
This is the first in a series of posts inspired by Gornick's book, which I reviewed here. I plan to explore how memoir differs from personal narrative, the relationship between the self who writes and the self who is the narrator in the book, how a writer may stay motivated during the writing and editing process, and perhaps other topics as they occur to me (or if a reader suggests something).
We're going to start with the question "What is it about?" This matters for any type of storytelling and especially for memoir. In fact, it matters so much that we'll spend a few weeks just exploring this topic. Today, we'll identify three reasons why it's important.
Benefit #1: It helps transcend the risk of merely relating events; of sharing glorified fishing stories.
"What's it about?" pins a personal North Star in the sky. It moves the writer away from their own story and also draws them deeper into it. It helps them to draft a path through their own dense, upward and downward terrain of experiences, reflecting, crossing out, adding, and rewriting in order to discover a sort of ley line that marks a path more profound than the simple passage of events. In this respect "what?" is actual a form of "why?"
Benefit #2: It helps identify what might interest other humans, which can lead to a more appealing and resonant tale, not just for readers but for the writer.
Many topics are inherently interesting to people, but even if the writer is an actor or extreme athlete or field biologist, it's still worth taking the time to ask "What is it about…for readers?" Sure, "It's about what happened to me" has a certain baseline appeal, but too much of that, without a relatable thread to grab on to, can be both boring and alienating (consider: how many celebrity biographies are there, and how many are you inclined to read?). Identifying a deeper about can make the journey of the story more unique, more universal, and more compelling.
Benefit #3: It helps when deciding what stays and what goes.
Per Gornick, "[A] narrator … causes the [writing] to move steadily forward, driven by an internal impetus that the reader can spot on page one: the obligation is to use the narrating self only to shape those associations that will provide drive and lead on to inner resolution" (p. 30, emphasis added).
One very useful application of the question "What is it about?" is that it helps to identify what stories serve the larger story, and which ones don't. This is crucial during revision and editing phases as it helps the writer build up and signpost the one true path, so that wherever the narrator takes readers (even onto a fishing boat), everyone shares the conviction that it is leading somewhere important.
Next week we'll dive into practical applications for writers of "What is it about?", beginning with a couple of tips on weeding out false trails from a narrative.
In the meantime, if you write or edit memoir, consider your own experiences. What's a time when you experienced one of these benefits? Have you encountered other rewards when asking this question, and if so, what were they?
Source:
Gornick, Vivian. The Situation and the Story. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.