Dramatic Design

Since Aristotle, perhaps, prose writers have thought about narrative as a beginning, middle, and end, organized by time, rather than space. Mostly, we believe that our experience began at this moment, and then moved to this moment, before ending in this moment, all occurring chronologically. This makes sense since so much of our lives are dictated by doing one thing before another. We attend elementary school, junior high, and then high school. We go on a first date, we commit to a relationship, get engaged, and then get married.  

While chronology has a role in all creative nonfiction, [...] dramatic design includes all the ways we can intentionally choose to organise and shape our creative nonfiction—through either chronological movement or associative movement—to reinforce and contribute to the central question and knot of meaning. Dramatic design is a way to organize creative nonfiction to allow the reader to see meaning in the artful juxtapositions of focus, content, ideas, time, or imagery. 

A: Chronological and Associative Movements  

Before we analyse less traditional dramatic designs, we’ll explore the most traditional one: chronology. All creative nonfiction narratives (or at least 99.9 percent) of them must have a temporal frame—some movement through time. Without movement through time, there can be no change in or narrator or characters—and this change is essential to the success of creative nonfiction. Without movement through time, creative nonfiction is little more than static images. But as soon as ‘the writer’ offers the reader some chronology, two different versions of them begin to emerge. First, we see the writer as a character in action. We also see the writer as someone reflecting on those actions; this is our narrator.  

As far as temporal frames go, the human lifespan is our most obvious, physically and psychologically, so it is no wonder we so often defer to chronology to tell our stories. We are wedded to our understanding of the human lifespan, so we perceive the past as constantly growing and the future as constantly shrinking inking. This movement from past (the writer-in-action), to present (narrator), to future provides inherent tension as we get nearer and nearer to our creative nonfiction’s ending. 

The key for creative nonfiction writers is to consider when to hold onto chronology and when to relinquish it, and why. Writers are often trained to write as if a dogged adherence to chronological time (this happened, then this happens, then this will happen) is the most meaningful way to organize our work. Anything that breaks with chronological organization is too often considered “experimental,” outside of the boundaries of traditional meaning-making. We borrow terms from other art forms (lyric, collage, braided, which we’ve already discussed) to describe these achronological narratives, which are creative nonfiction works not arranged in chronological order.

Further, though we often expect creative nonfiction to be told chronologically, we, often do not remember our lives in sequential order. Think how many times you’ve tried to tell a story from the first moment to the last but kept having to say something like, “But, well, before that, x happened” or “Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you about.” Or think of all the times that we tell stories that jump from year to year as we gather similar moments. 

B: Leaps & Juxtapositions 

If we stick too doggedly to the timeline, insist on holding our reader’s hand through time, we are often left with a series of plodding plot points, what we might call the toothbrush syndrome, wherein the writer narrates a painfully slow series of uninteresting actions rather than simply skipping to the next interesting moment: I get up to the sound of the chirping alarm. I walk to the bathroom and pick up my toothbrush. It’s still wet from the night before. I put the toothpaste onto my toothbrush. I brush my teeth and my mouth tingles. A few minutes later, I finish brushing my teeth and turn around etc.  

Eventually, we get to the funeral parlour with a six-shooter and a digital camera (now it’s getting interesting!), but it sure does take a while. And what was the point of that toothbrush stuff again? The “toothbrush syndrome” is the opposite of leaping. It contains too many uninteresting details, too much chronological overkill. It attempts to capture an all-encompassing experience of time. Everything is predictable and staid. Even when our creative nonfiction is more or less chronological, not everything will be connected to the knot of meaning. Cut any filler. Be ruthless about what creates energy and contributes to meaning, and what doesn’t. Move from interesting image to interesting image, or complicated idea to complicated idea. 

Another way to cultivate associative movement is through flashbacks and flash forwards. Flashbacks are when a character or narrator re-experiences an earlier event. Flashbacks are different than reflection in that reflection is thinking about a past action while flashbacks are past experiences in scene. Flash forwards are similar to flashbacks, except that the writer is speculating about a possible future event, often creating an imagined scene to show it.  

There are two kinds of flashbacks and flash forwards that help writers move around in time: prolonged and anecdotal. While both function like wormholes in time, revealing a scene from the past or future that’s intended to elucidate or complicate the characters and/or surface narrative, the prolonged flashback takes its time to develop. When skillfully inserted, flashbacks and flash forwards add texture to our creative nonfiction.  

Prolonged flashbacks and flashforwards are fully fleshed-out scenes that slow the chronological movement of our creative nonfiction to a halt as we either relive a past experience or imagine a future one. These prolonged flashbacks and flashforwards can either add tension or release it, depending on how well the flash is used. 

Anecdotal flashbacks and flash forwards may be no longer than a few words or a quick summary of a scene. Anecdotal flashes can blend more seamlessly and provide opportunities to quickly establish metaphors and resonance—a satisfying sense of pattern across time. This might be as simple as weaving a casual detail from the past into the present exposition. 

The most obvious place to insert a flashback or flash forward to increase suspense is in the middle of action. This delays the resolution of the action at hand, which keeps the reader reading. But the risk of this placement is that it often feels gimmicky and/or distracting. Instead, try inserting flashbacks and flash forwards in moments of psychological suspense, rather than physical suspense. 

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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.