{"id":411,"date":"2007-02-16T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-16T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2007\/02\/16\/natural-narratives\/"},"modified":"2024-10-29T18:18:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T18:18:38","slug":"natural-narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2007\/02\/16\/natural-narratives\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Narratives"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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[Editor\u2019s Note: These comments are adapted from a talk given by Michael Pollan at the 2006 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Book by book, project by project, it\u2019s usually hard to say who you are as a writer or what your long-term subject is. But with hindsight you start to see threads. By my third book I realized that I was always gravitating back to nature.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Nature, by the way, is what science writing is about. Science is one of our tools for understanding nature.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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But I don\u2019t like to approach nature the way most people do \u2013 which is in<\/em> nature. I\u2019m a nature writer who doesn\u2019t like to go camping. So I look at nature much closer to home: in backyards, on our plates, with respect to our everyday lives.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I think our usual understanding of what constitutes nature writing is narrow and constricted. The usual narrative about nature is a \u201cMan and Nature\u201d story, the person in the woods having big thoughts or encountering adversity. I needed to find some other way to tell stories about nature, and I found there\u2019s enormous potential in moving beyond convention.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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So here are seven principles for writing about nature and science in ways that depart from the usual approaches:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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1. Get beyond the \u201chumans-doing-stuff\u201d\u00a0definition of narrative.<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Whether we\u2019re writing about nature or anything else, we can expand our concept of what narrative is. The more traditional definition is that narrative is made up of characters and their actions, set in scenes. This is true, but I\u2019d argue that the characters don\u2019t have to be human.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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You can build narrative out of systems: You can tell the story of how water gets from one place to another. You can build narratives out of other species. I\u2019ve certainly done that; I\u2019ve told stories about plants or animals and their history and used their point of view to animate a story. In my most recent book [\u201cThe Omnivore\u2019s Dilemma<\/a>\u201d] I use corn as a character to thread a path through the whole history of agriculture. I could have told the story from the point of view of people, but it was more interesting to tell it from the point of view of corn, and very animating.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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You can also construct a narrative out of arguments, ideas. One of the more challenging pieces I\u2019ve written was \u201cAn Animal\u2019s Place<\/a>,\u201d about animal rights, published in The New York Times Magazine in 2002. The piece is an essay of ideas, but it\u2019s also a narrative about an argument. It\u2019s a play with Peter Singer, the animal rights philosopher, and me as characters. The first line of the piece is, \u201cThe first time I opened Peter Singer\u2019s \u2018Animal Liberation<\/a>,\u2019 I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium-rare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Here\u2019s the whole drama of that piece: Do I finish the steak or not? Can I continue to eat meat while exploring this person\u2019s ideas? (This is a principle of suspense I\u2019ll come back to later.) I set up a drama of me, the narrator, grappling with Singer in my head. A narrative can also be people thinking stuff, or people learning stuff. When you\u2019re stuck, when you\u2019ve mastered a whole subject and don\u2019t know where the narrative thread is, your fall-back is always your own education, your learning process. That\u2019s a narrative, too \u2013 often a very useful one.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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These approaches don\u2019t have to be fancy. I organized \u201cPower Steer<\/a>,\u201d a piece about beef and the industrial livestock industry, simply by telling the story of one animal. The story is a biography with a very simple arc.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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So think about doing narratives of ideas, of other species, of other systems. Think about narrative in the broadest sense.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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2. Follow systems.<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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During Watergate Woodward and Bernstein learned to \u201cfollow the money.\u201d This is a very useful principle in writing about government and politics. There are other things we can follow, too. If you use ecology as a narrative principle, you can follow nonhuman systems. Ecology is not just a subject; it\u2019s an approach, a way of thinking. The system could be energy. Or carbon. Or a chemical. Or water. One of the wonderful things about ecology is that it provides you with all your transitions. When you follow an ecological system you\u2019ll find yourself being carried from place to place to place. It\u2019s a wonderful organizing device.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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When you follow systems, be sure that you:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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3. Follow your \u201ccharacter\u201d\u00a0all the way.<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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What I mean by this is avoid shorthand. I was recently re-reading Rachel Carson\u2019s \u201cSilent Spring<\/a>,\u201d which is a wonderful piece of journalism. She\u2019s the first person I can think of in the tradition of environmental journalism who truly thinks ecologically. She follows nonhuman things really effectively.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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One of the things she does is follow things through to the point where they really matter. She doesn\u2019t just say, \u201cthis organic phosphorous insecticide is a neurotoxin.\u201d That\u2019s the kind of dull language you find in most environmental journalism. OK, it\u2019s true, but I want to know how it works. Carson follows the organic phosphorous insecticide until she is in a brain cell explaining how acetylcholine enables communication among our synapses. Acetylcholine, a chemical transmitter, is supposed to vanish very quickly. It\u2019s like serotonin; it\u2019s supposed to disappear from the system quickly once it does its work, or you get too many messages going back and forth. She writes that the insecticide stops the acetylcholine from breaking down or being taken up. So you get too many messages; it\u2019s as if you could never remove e-mail from your queue when you\u2019re finished with it.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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In \u201cSilent Spring,\u201d \u201cneurotoxin\u201d comes to mean something. You can see it and you understand the havoc it wreaks in your brain.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I use this technique in \u201cPower Steer.\u201d I follow the cow through its whole life cycle. But I also follow corn. In my reporting I learned that one of the most significant things about the way we raise cattle in this country is that we feed them a diet of corn. It\u2019s not something they\u2019re evolved to eat. So I write about what corn is doing in their rumens.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I follow the corn from the cow\u2019s rumen to the farm and what corn is doing on the farm and all the fossil fuel it takes to grow it. Then I follow that carbon all the way back to the war in Iraq and what we\u2019re doing in the Middle East to keep our steaks coming, our corn-fed meat. It\u2019s all connected.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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So ecology can take you from the rumen of a cow all the way to the Persian Gulf, then forward again from the cow and the meat to our bodies and what that meat does to us.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Following a thing through a system is a powerful tool. It accomplishes something your editors are always driving you crazy about: Why should readers care? This technique can answer that question. All of us are in this ecological web, this food web. Following the web gives you a means for going wherever you want in pursuit of your subject, then traveling back to your reader, your reader\u2019s plate, brain, experience, etc.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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4. Use first person strategically.<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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The first person is often badly used, especially in newspaper journalism. I tend to rely on it heavily, but if you look at my work you\u2019ll find that, even when it\u2019s there, you learn very little about me. I use it not in confession but as a narrative device.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The key is to realize that once you\u2019ve made the decision that you\u2019re writing a first-person piece, you\u2019re not done. There\u2019s a second decision: Which<\/em> first person? You have many identities when you\u2019re writing. For example, I could approach a piece as a gardener. Or as a Jew. Or a son. Or father. As someone who lives in Berkeley, Calif. As any number of identities. When you\u2019re writing in first person, you\u2019re not using your whole identity. You\u2019re choosing what is useful to your story.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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With \u201cPower Steer,\u201d I wrote as a carnivore. This was an important choice. Because if I\u2019d written about the meat industry as a vegetarian, nobody would have read what I wrote. I needed to start where my reader was. And odds were that my New York Times reader was a carnivore. It\u2019s also much more interesting to find out what happens to a carnivore after he\u2019s gone into the heart of darkness of the modern American meat industry than what happens to a vegetarian. Because you know exactly what would happen to a vegetarian: He\u2019d say, \u201cSee, I told you so.\u201d That\u2019s not very interesting.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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So choose your first person deliberately. Too many newspaper first persons \u2013 and a lot of magazine first persons too \u2013 are written in the voice of the neutral feature writer. They\u2019re the voice of the Journalist. That is the least interesting first person you have. Nobody cares about journalists. They\u2019re not normal people. So choose a first person that draws on a more normal side of your personality. And think about which one will help you tell the story. You\u2019ll see that in very subtle ways it will shape your point of view and your tone and unlock interesting things.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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You may find as you\u2019re writing that you\u2019ve chosen the wrong first person; in that case you need to try again. Early in the story you\u2019re establishing your character. And you as narrator are a character. Not that you\u2019re making anything up when you shape that character, but you\u2019re being selective \u2013 you\u2019re creating a character on the page.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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So eschew the Journalist. Also reject the Expert. This brings me to pillar No. 5.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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5. Write as an idiot. (Or at least as an amateur.)<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Journalists often write as people who have mastered subjects and are telling you about them. That\u2019s a real turn-off for readers. In my work I often begin as a naif. It\u2019s a good place to start because it\u2019s a lot closer to where your reader is. Instead of starting as someone who knows the answers, you begin as someone learning about something. That\u2019s a good way to connect with readers.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I often underscore my ignorance in the beginning of pieces. By the time I write my lead I\u2019m not ignorant, but I can begin my story at the point where I was. I\u2019m not lying; I\u2019m playing up where I was when I started. This way I\u2019ve got the drama, as I said above, of learning.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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6. Humor is important.<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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You would think that, in writing about nature, humor is hard to do, what with the environmental tragedies unfolding all around us. But finding the funny line is an important way to engage your readers. You can look at nature as this grand tragedy where we\u2019re screwing things up, or you can look at it as a situation of amazing absurdities and ironies, of nature pulling the rug out from under our feet all the time. Nature takes our fondest conceits and arrogant ideas and puts them in perspective, ironizes them.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Depending on how you choose your first person, there will be humorous possibilities. That\u2019s part of the reason to write as an idiot. You\u2019ll be a fish out of water, doing things you\u2019re ill-equipped to do. You will be falling on your face, and that\u2019s often funny. In my own books I often have adventures where I do things I\u2019m not equipped to do. In \u201cPower Steer,\u201d I bought a beef cow. I became a sort of baby rancher. I didn\u2019t know anything. In the piece I go to a feed lot and try to find my steer, walking around through the cow manure. In other work I\u2019ve gone hunting. I\u2019ve had a war with a woodchuck. I often do things in my stories, and it doesn\u2019t always go well.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Choose the right first person, or the right narrative conceit, and you will open up some prospects for humor.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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7. Build suspense.<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Suspense is a principle of all narrative, of course. But we can misconstrue what suspense is. Simple things can give you suspense. In \u201cAn Animal\u2019s Place\u201d the suspense is, \u201cWill he still be able to eat meat? Is he going to eat the steak?\u201d It\u2019s very simple.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Your structure can give you suspense. Where the piece starts can give you suspense. In the Odyssey, Homer doesn\u2019t start at the beginning but in medias res<\/em>, in the middle of the story. He starts at Odysseus\u2019s court; Odysseus is gone and suitors have taken over and chaos has broken out. Odysseus\u2019s son is moping, and suitors are coming after Odysseus\u2019s wife. His world is threatened. But the story is not going to stay there; it\u2019s going to show Odysseus, who\u2019s got to get home. So the suspense begins as, \u201cHow is Odysseus going to get from where he is to that place we just saw?\u201d That\u2019s the suspense. Showing us where we\u2019re headed lends tension to the narrative. We wonder how we\u2019re going to get there.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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So sometimes when you choose to start your narrative not in the beginning but somewhere along the way, you create energy or suspense. There are other ways, too. One is to pose a really good question. If in your opening you pose a question, people will read along to get the answer.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The question \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen?\u201d can be posed in the world of thoughts, too. \u201cWho\u2019s going to win this argument?\u201d \u201cWho\u2019s going to come out on top?\u201d It\u2019s very important in the beginning of such a narrative that you set such a question up. Because that\u2019s what will determine whether people will keep reading or drop you.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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One of the important keys to narrative journalism \u2013 and it flies in the face of most newspaper training \u2013 is that you have to withhold. You can\u2019t put all the best stuff in the first column. No one\u2019s going to read to the end once you\u2019ve used up all your best stuff. It\u2019s a tricky principle: How do you withhold and<\/em> get readers interested, hooked? Plus, how do you avoid being coy? This is a real challenge, but you have to hold off some important information \u2013 and signal what you will get if you come along for the ride.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Editor\u2019s Note: These comments are adapted from a talk given by Michael Pollan at the 2006 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.] Book by book, project by project, it\u2019s usually hard to say who you are as a writer or what your long-term subject is. But with hindsight you start to see threads. By my third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[47],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-on-craft","authors-michael-pollan"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNatural Narratives - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2007\/02\/16\/natural-narratives\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Natural Narratives - Nieman Storyboard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[Editor\u2019s Note: These comments are adapted from a talk given by Michael Pollan at the 2006 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.] Book by book, project by project, it\u2019s usually hard to say who you are as a writer or what your long-term subject is. But with hindsight you start to see threads. 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