Narrative Energy

Many beginning writers shy away from creative nonfiction, fearful that their lives are not interesting enough to keep a reader’s attention. They worry that only death, murder, addiction, and disaster can propel a narrative. Other beginning writers feel that creative nonfiction writers need only expose heartbreaks, loss of loved ones, failures, affairs, and crimes in order to write great narratives. But wild, traumatic experiences are not the only subjects worth exploring. Some of the best creative nonfiction is about nothing more (on the surface, anyway) than quilts, fishing, or sitting on one’s terrace. The seemingly mundane often yields incredibly compelling narratives, once we active them with our emotional and intellectual curiosity.  

These trepidatious writers confuse plot for interest, drama for energy, and action for tension. The seasoned writer learns that everything contains tension and suspense when given proper attention. By employing certain craft strategies, we can transform seemingly innocuous material into riveting reads. These narratives are not compelling for their subject matter alone but because these writers have mastered narrative energy, which is the reader’s engagement with the material on the page, regulated by control over language, tension, pacing, stakes, and rhythm. 

A: Tension

At its most elemental, tension is trouble or conflict, and wielding it effectively is essential for reader investment. In life, and on the page, we must push against something to see the world in a new way. Not only does tension keep the reader engaged—because two or more forces are colliding—but, more critically, it’s the only way that change occurs. Without tension, people will continue to move in the same direction and with the same perspective. But good creative nonfiction demands change. Without it, there’s no reason to tell the story. With few exceptions, creative nonfiction is driven by human desire. […] 

Often, the most successful creative nonfiction cultivates tension on more than one level—there is surface tension (What will happen next?) and below-the-surface tension (What will it mean? What’s at stake?) 

But tension must be crafted. It can easily be overdone, which will not have the intended effect. The more highly charged the subject matter, the more the writer must control the language. Inherently dramatic situations lose energy when we don’t manage the release of information and the way it’s rendered. Too much drama and the reader feels overwhelmed. Too much action and the reader loses sight of the more complex troubles that sustain our essays. The most effective tension is often a slow boil, just under the surface, threatening our characters in subtle, menacing ways. 

B: Stakes  

While tension is a kind of collision or trouble, stakes are what stands to be lost, gained, or changed in the future. All good creative nonfiction has stakes because without them we have empty tensions.  This is what makes creative nonfiction so interesting to compose, this parsing out of tension and stakes. Tension and stakes occur across a continuum of time, which means that we always have at least two time periods in creative nonfiction. There is the moment of tension, which is an experience in the past. Then, in some near or distant time period, there is the moment of reflection, which is when the writer wrestles to uncover the stakes. So the key with tension and stakes is to consider that the narrator is dealing/has dealt with the tension while the writer is dealing with the stakes.

Stakes are one way we begin to refine the central questions into a knot of meaning. The more clearly the stakes are articulated on the page, the more the central question forms a knot of meaning. We can think of the central question(s) as the threads that form the knot. 

C: Pace

Most humans are attracted to movement and variety. Without variety, we grow bored. The same holds true on the page. We are lulled to sleep by prose that maintains a single pace, whether high-paced or plodding. The trick is to vary the pace. Rollercoasters would become dull if they consisted only high-speeds. They are designed to vary their pace. This is what keeps the experience energized: the variety, not just the breakneck speeds.  

We can control narrative energy by paying attention to the beats of our sentences to increase or decrease pace. Think about music. Many of the best songs vary in tempo and rhythm. They might build slowly, pick up the speed toward the crescendo, only to slow down again, building up tension, waiting to unleash the crescendo. The best writers, like musicians, use a full spectrum of speeds to sustain the reader’s interest and point to the knot of meaning. A fast-paced scene might convey adrenaline, anxiety, and fear, whereas a slow, meandering scene might suggest a sense of tenderness, close attention, a focus on idea, or awe. Often long sentences share complex ideas or images, which slow down the reader. Alternatively, short sentences pack power. They can explore a single idea or moment quickly. They are easy to digest. The reader reads faster. 

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Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writers' Guide and Anthology offers expert instruction on writing creative nonfiction in any form-including memoir, lyric essay, travel writing, and more-while taking an expansive approach to fit a rapidly evolving literary art form. From a history of creative nonfiction, related ethical concerns, and new approaches to revision and publishing, it offers innovative strategies and ideas beyond what's traditionally covered and is now from Bloomsbury.com.

Sean Prentiss is Associate Professor of English at Norwich University, USA. He is author of Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave (2015), which won the National Outdoor Book Award for Biography/History. He is also co-editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre (2014).

Jessica Hendry Nelson is the author of the memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions (2014) which was selected as a best debut book by the Indies Introduce New Voices program, the Indies Next List by the American Booksellers’ Association, and named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska, USA in Omaha.