EDITOR’S NOTE: In the spirit of transparency, Korrina Duffy wrote this post after attending a weeklong writing workshop I teach through the Madeline Island School of Arts.

“The more specific, the more universal.” That’s a paradoxical truth about writing that a small group of writers struggled to understand at a recent nonfiction story craft workshop as the seminar leader — editor and story coach Jacqui Banaszynski — pointed to the bottom of a ladder she had just sketched on a large sheet of flipchart paper.

She was demonstrating what she called the “ladder of abstraction,” a concept adapted by some narrative writers from the theories of S.I. Hayakawa, a former U.S. senator and English professor. Hayakawa’s 1941 book, “Language in Action,” (later updated to “Language in Thought and Action”) was an exploration of the meaning of various levels of language, from common to rhetorical.

The ladder of abstraction, we were told, is a useful tool to consider the levels of language a writer can use in storytelling, with diction that goes from the concrete and specific at the bottom to the abstract and universal at the top. An example: At the bottom of the ladder, a story subject — whether it’s a person, place or thing — is made real through vivid description and detail. And, for some reason, the more specific those details, the more universal or relatable they become to readers. It was a new concept to me — one I was struggling to understand.

I wasn’t alone. After dinner one evening, several of my classmates and I puzzled over how this could be.

Then I thought about how I felt when I read Banaszynski’s “AIDS in the Heartland” piece in advance of the workshop. The specific details she gave about Dick Hanson, a farmer living with and dying of AIDS in the 1980s, made him feel real and even relatable, despite Dick and I having drastically different identities and experiences. In a scene from Dick’s funeral, Banaszynski described the memorabilia that represented his life included “a well-thumbed Bible,” “a grubby powerline protest T-shirt,” and “a splendid bouquet of gladiolas” that he had grown in his garden next to his farmhouse. He is at once a gay, religious, liberal political activist and a farmer with a love of fresh flowers. He is complex — a mix of contradictions, aspirations and everyday interests. Like us all.

And then it clicked for me: The more specific the details, the more that a character becomes real, and the more a character becomes real, the more that a reader can empathize with that character, and the more a reader can empathize with a character, the more universal that character’s story becomes — even a story far different from their own.

The science of empathy

As I considered all of this, I reflected on my PhD training in psychology and neuroscience and two important lessons that I learned about how empathy is evoked.

The first lesson is that empathy is built when someone is made real to us, and particularly when we come to know their heart and mind. Knowing that someone loves fresh cut flowers, particularly gladiolas, is endearing and sweet. Knowing what someone loves, hates, fears and desires allows us to connect with these universal human emotions.

The second lesson is that the more that someone is different from us, the more that we must come to see our shared humanity with them to build empathy. In the 1980s, when the country was gripped in a profound empathy gap for gay men dying of AIDS, Dick Hanson’s story is powerfully humanizing and heartbreaking, and for these reasons, I think, helped to close the gap, one reader at a time.

Specific, concrete details ground a story to, well, the ground. At the top of the ladder, the writer can help the reader see the bigger picture that only emerges when viewed from above, connecting the details of a story to their higher meaning. In her stories, Jacqui shows how this is done when she extracts the essence from the details. She writes that the statistics about the toll of AIDS:

… say nothing of the joys of a carefully tended vegetable garden and new kittens under the shed, of tender teasing and magic hugs. Of flowers that bloom brighter and birds that sing sweeter and simple pleasures grown profound against the backdrop of a terminal illness. Of the powerful bond between two people who pledged for better or worse and meant it.

This message makes Dick’s love of his partner, Bert Henningson, universal to anyone who has made a similar commitment. Top-of-the-ladder moments of a piece are often the most moving, compelling and influential because they are abstract and universal, exploring broad themes of the human experience.

The middle part of the ladder is generally explanatory, providing background and process and making connections. For example, in Jacqui’s piece, these statistics are not specific enough to be at the bottom of the ladder but not abstract enough to be at top either:

(Dick) is one of 210 Minnesotans and 36,000 Americans who have been diagnosed with AIDS since the disease was identified in 1981. More than half of those patients already have died, and doctors say it is only a matter of time for the rest. The statistics show that 80 to 90 percent of AIDS sufferers die within two years of diagnosis.

Writing is more transportive, more powerful when a writer climbs up and down the ladder throughout a piece, pulling the reader in with specific, concrete details to build empathy for a character and then zooming out with abstract language to suggest its universal message. Without being supported by the bottom of the ladder, the universal messages at the top could sound empty or clichéd. Without being elevated by the top of the ladder, the specific details at the bottom could seem unimportant, like word clutter.

So, the next time you write a story, be sure to consider moving up and down the ladder of abstraction so you build empathy for a character with telling details at the bottom, then leverage these details to reveal your message at the top.

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Korrina Duffy is an assistant professor and scientific writer in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado – Anschutz Medical Campus.

The post Climbing the “ladder of abstraction” to evoke empathy and elevate your message appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

Timer set. Pen poised. Go!

Free writing is for when you just need to write the damn thing already. If you like many have a bad case of blank page syndrome, free writing helps clear the mental constipation with verbal diarrhea. To free write, all you need is a pen and paper and a commitment to not stop moving your pen even if all you can think to write is “shit! I can’t think of what to say next.” Free writing forces a writer to get past the agonizing first draft in manageable chunks. Although you can free write as long as your heart desires, you can also set a timer so that you know when the agony will end. For this free write, I’m setting timers for 4 min, 3 min, and 2 min. When the timer goes off, it allows me to pull back from what I’m writing for a brief moment before jumping back into it. There are psychological reasons for why I think free writing is so effective. It forces the writer into flow state, an immersive experience that lets the writer feel as one with the pen and paper. It also lowers self-awareness by not letting me look back on what I’ve written and by defining the parameters of my writing. I’m mentally exonerated of my “shitty first draft”, a term that Anne Lamott uses in her book Bird by Bird to talk about how all great writing has to start with one very shitty first draft. By recognizing that there is –

Time’s up!

This nine-minute free write on free writing pushed me past the paralysis I often get when needing to put words down on the page for a first draft. Now, I’m going to rework my free write, putting into practice that the notion that good writing is really just good rewriting. Below, I’ve underlined phrases or ideas that came from my free write so you can see how I constructed the final piece from that loose beginning.

A revised free write

“When you just need to write the damn thing already, try free writing. Free writing is for articulation and exploration, whether you want to put words to an idea you already have or generate ideas through putting words down on the page. To free write, all you need is a pen, a piece of paper and a willingness to keep writing until the timer goes off no matter what — even if all you can think to write is ‘Shit! I can’t think of what to write next.’ Free writing is for writers who procrasti-clean to avoid getting started on writing a new piece, whose clean baseboards betray their first draft phobia. It’s for writers with a bad case of blank page syndrome, the panic that comes from staring down a vacant screen and a blinking cursor.

Writing a first draft can be agonizing when the task seems indefinite. Although you could technically free write for an indeterminant amount of time, setting a timer constrains writing into manageable chunks, a well-known technique for tackling challenging tasks. For this free write, I set a timer first for four minutes, then three minutes, and finally two minutes. Each time the timer goes off, I pull back from what I’m writing for 10 seconds, become conscious of the direction I’m going and pivot if needed.

Our very human ability to self-reflect helps us plan, organize, and improve our writing, but it also has serious downsides. “The self is at once our greatest ally and our fiercest enemy,” writes social psychologist Mark Leary in his book “The Curse of the Self.” The self’s ongoing chatter lies at the heart of its curse because incessant ruminating, rehashing, regretting and worrying impedes our ability to perform.

But we cannot simply quiet the self when its chattiness has lost its charm; deliberate effort also requires us to chat with ourselves. To quiet the self, a back door approach is needed, and free writing is one such method.

The requirement to keep writing no matter what words follow forces the writer into flow state, an immersive experience in which words flow smoothly and effortlessly. People often describe flow state as feeling like losing oneself in an activity. For the musician who is so focused on reading sheet music or the rock climber who is so fixated on finding the next foothold, there is no mental space for thinking about anything else. So it turns out that flow state truly is about losing one’s self. As such, flow state improves performance on tasks that are executed best without conscious thought.

Reducing conscious thought may not lead to high quality writing but it will lead to a high quantity of writing — the goal of a first draft. Free writing is like putting furniture into an empty house that you can then rearrange, reupholster and repaint.

The parameters of free writing all but guarantee a “shitty first draft” — to use the words of Anne Lamott in “Bird by Bird,” her best-selling guide to the messy journey through writing (and life). Although Lamott argues that all good writing is born from shitty writing, when writers find themselves constructing truly terrible sentences, this usually has them questioning their ability, their identity and maybe even their financial security. So if unhappiness happens when expectations fail to meet reality, we need to change our expectations to align with the reality that the shitty first draft is not only inescapable — it has tremendous value.

Events do not cause emotions, but interpretations of events do. A shitty first draft can either be seen as an inevitable and essential part of the writing process or as sign that you need to change careers. The first interpretation will allow you to give yourself grace as you spew bad writing; the second will lead you to catastrophize about what bad writing means about you and your future.

But free writing mentally exonerates you from any semblance of responsibility to write a good first draft. The stream-of-consciousness style of writing ensures that the exercise is a more of an opportunity to do a verbal data dump than craft elegant prose.

Generating a first draft is a vulnerable moment in the writing process. It’s when doubts are high and confidence is low. But free writing can free your mind and help you make it through.

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Korrina Duffy is an assistant professor and scientific writer in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado – Anschutz Medical Campus. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

The post How to free your writing with free writing appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Six mid-career freelance journalists who specialize in science and environmental stories offered takeaways from a weeklong workshop on nonfiction writing held at a guest ranch in Tucson, Arizona.

One thing we journalists tend to forget: There’s safety in numbers.

With time, we get good enough to get the job done, but maybe not as great as we dreamed we would be one day. We feel mostly alone in this journey. We have colleagues, bosses, rivals, friends and that jerk who always gets the story just ahead of us. But the road to the Big Story, the Great Story, feels like one we walk alone.

What I learned from a weeklong narrative nonfiction workshop is that we’re all on that path together. We stumble in the same ways, dawdle in the same ways, get lost and rediscover ourselves in ways that, while not identical, are so similar as to point to something beyond a personal failure.

That’s true of the bowel-tightening, headache-inducing, existential terrors of the job as well as the pettiest bad habits and oversights. One journalist at the workshop said she’d lost the joy. Gulp. Another had beautiful ideas but stalled on execution. Guilty. Slathering every sentence with tedious introductory dependent clauses? Me. Getting lost in the fog between reporting and focusing a story? Uh-huh.

But this week those admissions came with a surge of liberation.

It was a happy jolt to realize that your bad habits and flaws and soft spots, your frustrations and stumbling blocks, are not your unique failings; they’re occupational hazards. These are professional failings, just like a runner gets an Achilles glitch after years of training, or a baseball player gets the yips. It comes with the territory. They are things we all wrestle with as professionals, the result of trying to solve the same problems in similar ways.

But if the same challenges afflict many of us, the same solutions can help us make it to that Big Story. Below are just a few of the things my fellow word-travelers are taking away from the week.

~ Kat McGowan, Berkeley California

As a science journalist, I’m used to tackling a story — new or familiar — with an open mind, curiosity and a word count. My job is to get the details right every time. Whether it’s DNA heritability, the chemistry of polluted water or the speed of a new variant, if it’s off by 10x or 100x, it’s wrong.

These are the fundamental tools of science writing. But when do I analyze my words as closely as my sources’ findings?I didn’t. Until I was shown a way to examine my writing in a logical, stepwise process: All it takes is a print-out of my copy, a highlighter and a methodical approach to seeing my writing habits, one part of speech at a time. It’s quite scientific, really.

I can highlight how many adjectives I’ve used, and then I can see whether they are all bunched in the lead or (hopefully) spread throughout the story. Do I use “that” way too often, like a demented twitch? Do I rely on too many questions in an attempt to keep the reader engaged? These are all crutches if overused or misused. Once pulled apart, they are revealed as such.

Writing can be an art, but first, like any art, it’s a craft. You have to know how the pieces fit together. And you can’t know that until you dissect it.

~ Starre Julia Vartan, Bainbridge Island, Washington

Imagine your dream backpacking trip, maybe the Camino de Santiago or the Pacific Crest Trail. You think about the friend you’ll hike with, where you’ll camp each night, what you’ll eat, the spectacular landscapes and sunsets, what you’ll eat. Everything is going to be perfect and you can’t wait to start.

That’s the “maximum” approach to planning, whether it’s a backpacking trip or a reporting project. For a reporting project, imagine everything that would make your published story match your ambitions. Every source says yes, gives you all the time you want: “Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything else” You have funding for travel anywhere you need to go to capture perfect scenes and description. You have time to shape a compelling story structure, then massage it to a perfect flow. Lean into your enthusiasm and make a list of everything you need and want for that ideal story.

Now take a deep breath and plan for potential obstacles. Are there rivers you might need to ford? What about sources who might not return your calls? What if China closes airports to international travel and you can’t get to Shanghai?

Don’t abandon your enthusiasm now. But be realistic. If everything doesn’t break your way, what’s the most you can do with what you know you can get? Is it enough? This is the place to think hard about whether you can make your plan work.

~ Jennie Dusheck, Santa Cruz, California

Sensory details make the characters in your story real.

Characters can be people, places, or things. The details used to describe your characters should not only activate the senses (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch and even emotion), but also be relevant and meaningful in the context of your story. For example, telling the reader that your character is a “35-year-old woman with childbearing hips but no child” makes sense in a story about a woman freezing her eggs but not if the story is about a woman scientist studying dog cognition.

In short: make sure the ornaments on your Christmas tree each have a special meaning and never overload it with tinsel!

~ Korinna Duffy, Edgewater, Colorado

I often find myself stuck at the same point when I’m working on stories: trying to find the focus.I started with a good idea and reported the hell out of it. I’ve got good stuff in my notebook. But when I sit down to write, my notes are a jumble of ideas and issues competing for my attention, and I struggle to identify the key point of my story. I always manage to somehow muddle my way through to some clarity, but it’s a slow, frustrating process that doesn’t feel like a process at all.

Sound familiar? Here’s a strategy to help find that key point: Ask yourself where you are trying to take the reader. If someone gets to the end of your piece and walks away with just one thing in their mind, what should that one thing be? Or, to mix a metaphor, which strand of spaghetti do you want to stick to the wall?

Shifting from thinking about what you want to say to what you hope the reader will hear should help that key point rise out of the morass.

~ Betsy Mason, San Francisco Bay area, California

Put metaphor and simile to work in making the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic.

Metaphor and simile can be one slip of the pen away from cliché. Like most writing techniques, they should be used sparingly and to powerful effect. One of the most impactful uses of these literary tools is to help readers see something in a new way.

On one hand, metaphor and simile can help the audience understand something they might never have thought they could relate to. This can be used to connect someone to a deep emotional or cultural experience that previously seemed completely foreign or simply to give a handhold onto a technical term: “A centrifuge works like the spin cycle on a washing machine.”

Metaphor and simile can alternatively shine a different light on a familiar topic or concept, illuminating hidden facets that lead to an “aha” moment when a reader discovers how to articulate an experience they knew but never could quite describe.

Consider this metaphor after a weeklong writing workshop: Writers are all trying to navigate a lonely, obstacle-filled road. No one can make the trip for us, but maybe we can share some maps.

~ Chloe Page, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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A version of this post was first published as a Storyboard newsletter on Friday, Jan. 13, 2023

The post Guidance on the lonely road of writing appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.