Category: Writing Life

One of my goals as a narrative nonfiction writer is to make my readers to feel as if they are there, seeing the events about which I am writing. In order for that to happen, I have to evoke the readers’ interest and convey to them a sense of my reliability, letting them know that either I was there observing (and now they can watch through my eyes) or at least that I did thorough research. Lillian Ross is a master in this genre and I often try to analyze her work in search of techniques that I might employ. Her ability to capture dialogue without aid of a tape recorder is truly amazing (and something I may never be able to do as skillfully as she), but there are a few techniques I can emulate.

Get out of the way. Ross uses the words “I,” “me,” and “we” only a few dozen times throughout the entire book. Her presence is thoroughly established in the opening chapter, where we readers are most acutely aware of her presence and participation in the scenes with John Huston and Arthur Fellows at the hotel suite and restaurant outing. After that, Ross uses only the occasional I/me/we to re-orient and reassure the reader that the knowledge is first-hand.

Tell the story, without bias or judgment, as if talking to a friend. At the end of the very first paragraph, Ross clearly defines herself as an observer who wishes to learn about “the American motion-picture industry” by following the process of the making of this one particular movie. This implies the role of both student and reporter, roles that are inherently unbiased and nonjudgmental (at least they were at that time). What she doesn’t state directly, and indeed it is not necessary to state, is that what she really is interested in is not so much the industry, but the people in the industry. She never verbalizes her/our questions, but by laying out the answers, the questions are implied throughout the narrative. It is as if she is a friend telling me about this movie project, and I can hear myself saying, “You’re kidding! Then what happened?”

Juxtapose and illuminate seeming contradictions to give a fuller picture. Her choice of what to include/exclude belies her fairness and compassion. There are no moral interpretations or judgments, just the facts and enough narrative to place actions and words within a full context. Ross juxtaposes Huston’s physicality with his sensitivity, perception, and intelligence. He’s 6-foot-2 with “long arms and long hands, long legs and long feet,” he drinks hard, plays hard, lights his matches with his thumbnail, and “the bridge of his nose is bashed in.” Yet he adopted an orphaned boy and knows that 12-year-olds are more intelligent than they are given credit for, he loves the quality of the dusk light, and he sees Audie as a “little, gentle-eyes creature.”

Descriptions become sharper and more memorable with the use of contrasts and comparisons. Ross uses contrast as a descriptive tool throughout – for example, contrast between a person’s inner and outer characteristics, and between one person and another. Similarly, she uses comparison, but it is never overt. By putting two characters/descriptions within proximity she ‘invites’ the reader to see the deeper contrast. For example, when Spiegel arrives during filming at the ranch, we see Huston, “his face blackened by smoke and his shirt and trousers stained with sweat and grime” being greeted by Spiegel who was “immaculate in brown suede shoes, orange and green Argyle socks, tan gabardine slacks…”

When many characters are involved, introduce each on his turf and include as much action as possible. Picture begins with a series of scenes, each of which introduces the main characters in appropriate locations. First John Huston in New York, then producer Gottfried Reinhardt in his office full of status details, then MGM’s production VP Dore Schary at Chasen’s Restaurant, and finally Louis B. Mayer in his huge cream-colored office. Keep up momentum and variety throughout the book. The next scenes take us around the studio lot which keeps us in motion as we continue to meet other players and discover the commissary, projection room, wardrobe, casting, and other dept offices, all the while getting back story and details about the movie process. The longest sustained scenes throughout the rest of the book tend to be the shooting scenes, but the pace is varied by the many other shorter scenes, brief conversation snippets, and reprinting of primary source materials such as memos and letters.

A little detail goes a long way. The moviemaking process can be tedious; full of retakes and long waits. To recreate the process fully yet not bore the readers, Ross compresses time without losing content. For example, she covers a few hours of rehearsal time with one single paragraph, but this conciseness is balanced with details of magnitude (“ten thousand five hundred lunchboxes would be served at a cost to Metro of $15,750—one of the smaller items in the picture’s budget”) and details of minutia (prop man asks Huston to choose which one of the three small, squealing pigs is to be stolen from the farm girl).

And last but not least, the story must be about more than the specifics – good stories address broader issues and themes. On one level this is the specific story of the making of one movie, “The Red Badge of Courage” based on the Stephen Crane novel about the Civil War, and of the individuals involved. On a second level it is about the world of movie making – we learn a bit about music scoring, recording the music to film, dubbing sound, filming, cutting/editing, and even the preview process. On a third, much broader level, the more abstract message is that the more things change, the more they stay the same…and life goes on.

Note: Da Capo Press published a 50th anniversary paperback edition of Ross’ “Picture” in June 2002.

“The people will bring the places alive.” So says Bill Zinsser, author of the classic On Writing Well, Mitchell & Ruff: An American Profile in Jazz, Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs, and American Places, to name just a few. He said that while teaching a nonfiction writing course he calls “People & Places.” It’s been more than a few years since I sat in Zinsser’s classroom, but I remember him, and the room, quite well.

The wood strip coat racks that line two of the walls have jutting protuberances on which to hang one’s garments — some straight out like nails with super large heads, others at upward angles like single handle water faucets. They are all bare due to the temperate weather of a pleasant Fall evening. The walls appear pale gray, either because they are, or because the florescent lights overhead cast a dingy shadow on aging off-white paint. There is the faint hum of a fan; the air is dry, odorless. Zinsser is spry, trim, with glasses sporting square-ish lenses. His brow is furrowed, perhaps from editing too many student pages filled with passive and not so passive clutter. He is wearing a green striped jacket, white shirt, dark grayish-blue slacks with a brown belt, dark socks, and tennis shoes. Putting down his canvas bag with blue trim, he loosens his blue polka-dot tie to get comfortable. By way of introduction, he tells us that he’s “a fourth-generation New Yorker with roots deep in the cement.” His mother was a “mad clipper” of newspaper articles, so perhaps it should not be surprising that he always wanted to be a newspaperman at the Herald Tribune, and thought that the Herald was put out just for him. “I set out to get an education and have an interesting life,” he tells us.

It was in Zinsser’s class that I first began to really appreciate short but revealing people sketches. Here are a few descriptions, read or re-read in more recent years, that I like a lot. (If the first one sounds familiar it’s because I quoted the first sentence earlier this month.)

Mrs. Reed in Walt Harrington’s At the Heart of It: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives:

At ten in the morning, heading out the front door, Mrs. Reed is a vision of vitality in slow motion. She wears a simple blue-flowered dress and a white spots jacket, opaque stockings, white flats (she wore short heels the other day and vanity cost her a strained muscle that hurt so bad she could barely walk until she doctored herself with Ben-Gay), and a pretty turquoise beret, beneath which she tucks her short dark-gray hair.

Four of the workers in Gay Talese’s The Bridge

Cicero Mike, who once drove a Capone whiskey truck during Prohibition and recently fell to his death of a bridge near Chicago…
Indian Al Deal, who kept three women happy out West and came to the bridge each morning in a fancy silk shirt…
Riphorn Red, who used to paste twenty-dollar bills along the sides of his suitcase and who went berserk one night in a cemetery…
the Nutley Kid, who smoked long Italian cigars and chewed snuff and use toilet water and, at lunch, would drink milk and beer – without taking out the snuff…

Mrs. Clare in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood:

Her celebrity derives not from her present occupation but a previous one—dance-hall hostess, an incarnation not indicated by her appearance. She is a gaunt, trouser-wearing, woolen-shirted, cowboy-booted, ginger-colored, gingerly-tempered woman of unrevealed age (“That’s for me to know, and you to guess”) but promptly revealed opinions, most of which are announced in a voice of rooster-crow altitude and penetration.