Fiction is . . . Fiction

Academics shouldn’t criticize fiction if they don’t understand how it works.

As part of the research for Creating Esther, I have been reading Learning to Write “Indian”: The Boarding-School Experience and American Indian Literature by Amelia V. Katanski. While I agree with her overall thesis (too complicated to explain here), I find that much of her reasoning and “evidence” are faulty. I’m going to cover one example in this blog.

My Heart is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl is set at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1880 and is one of the early books in Scholastic’s “Dear America” series. It was written by Ann Rinaldi, who is white. In my copy of the book—and apparently in Katanski’s copy, as well—the author’s name is not on the cover but is on the title page. The book—as is true of all the books in the series—is written as if it were the title character’s diary.

I’m a big fan of the “Dear America” series in general, although I have varying reactions to the individual books. Based on the research I have done so far, I think that My Heart is on the Ground paints too humane a picture of the Native American boarding school experience. I don’t attribute that treatment to any kind of cover-up, however. I assume that Rinaldi did the best she could with the information she had.

Katanski isn’t willing to make the same assumption. According to Katanski, “Whether the voice [Rinaldi] manufactures for her protagonist, Nannie, comes from her own anti-Indian politics or from research that relied too heavily on [the school administration’s] representations of life at Carlisle is uncertain.” This willingness to attribute Rinaldi’s voice to possible anti-Indian politics is based on “evidence” that shows Katanski’s ignorance of both the “Dear America” series and the art of fiction.

Katanski’s first “evidence” is that My Heart is on the Ground doesn’t have Rinaldi’s name on the cover page, so the only “author” listed is a fictional Native American girl. Katanski concludes that this is an attempt to “appropriate” a Native American identity. In reaching her conclusion, she ignores two important facts.

• When the “Dear America” series first came on the market, none of the books had the author’s name on the cover, although they all identified the real author on the title page. At least that’s the case for the three early books, including My Heart is on the Ground, in my collection. One of these three books is about an Irish mill girl, so racism is unlikely to be the reason for leaving the author off the cover. I also have four books that were published or re-released after the series was revised, and they do carry the author’s name on the cover. However, the distinction appears to be based on publication date rather than on the character’s or author’s race.
• Even third-grade readers know that the “Dear America” books are fiction written by someone other than the character whose name is on the diary. There is no danger that anyone would be misled.

Another piece of “evidence” Katanski uses to “prove” that Rinaldi is promoting a white agenda is Rinaldi’s use of names she found in the graveyard at Carlisle—a practice Rinaldi readily admits. But Rinaldi used them because they “were so lyrical that they leapt out at me and took on instant personalities,” not because she expected anyone to believe that her characters were the actual people in the cemetery. What fiction writer hasn’t done the same, especially when trying to be authentic to the time and place?

Finally, Katanski charges that Rinaldi “stole situations from the autobiographies of former boarding-school students . . . changing the presentation and context of those memories (most of which relate to moments of resistance) to provide fake evidence of acquiescence in the values of the boarding schools through the narration of ‘good student’ Nannie.” Excuse me? Where does Katanski think novelists get their ideas in the first place? From a vacuum? As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” And fiction may provide evidence of the nature of fiction, but it never provides evidence—fake or otherwise—of the “facts” within it.

Can fiction be written as propaganda? Of course. But Rinaldi uses conventional fictional devices that are common across races and subject matters. To construe them as “evidence” of possible racial politics is ludicrous.

Or is Katanski saying that we shouldn’t try to understand and write about any race except our own? But then she’s violating her own rule, because she is a white academic evaluating Native American literature and boarding school experiences.

Maybe Katanski should evaluate her own bias.

__________

Katanski’s discussion of My Heart is on the Ground is found at pages 92-93 of Learning to Write Indian.

__________

The picture at the head of this post shows the students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania around 1890. It is in the public domain because of its age.

The Greatest Show on Earth

Did you know that it snows in the desert? Well it does. In some deserts, anyway.

When writing Desert Jewels, I wanted my readers to understand the environment—including the climate—where my characters were confined. So I added a scene showing their reaction when it snowed in the Utah desert.

I asked several middle grade students to comment on the manuscript, and a fourth grader said the book “kind of jumped around.” Unfortunately, I had to agree with her. I was trying to cover too much, and at times that desire took the story on a tangent. So when I edited the manuscript to respond to beta reader comments, that snow scene had to go.

But I still wanted my readers to know that the Japanese Americans at Topaz had to deal with snow out there in the desert. My solution? Tell, don’t show.

When I was done, I ended up with this:

December brought cold and frost and snow. But the snow melted quickly and turned the dusty streets to gooey mud that tried to suck the shoes off Emi’s feet.

Even so, I’m still a big fan of the admonition to “show, don’t tell.”

That’s why I’m reprinting a September 4, 2013 post I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog.

The Greatest Show on Earth

Why could Barnum and Bailey bill their circus as “The Greatest Show on Earth?” Because it was a feast for the eyes. They let the performers show the world what they could do. If Barnum and Bailey had turned it into a radio show, their fame would have been fleeting at best.

That’s also the difference between showing and telling when reading or writing fiction. Although the words are on a page rather than in a ring or on a stage, the reader still wants to “see” the action in his or her mind’s eye, not merely “hear” it with the reader’s inner ears. Or, as writers phrase it, “Show, don’t tell.”

Actually, this is a good technique for all writing. But it’s essential in fiction and creative non-fiction.

In Revision & Self-Editing, James Scott Bell describes the distinction this way.

Showing is like watching a scene in a movie. All you have is what’s on the screen before you. What the characters do or say reveals who they are and what they’re feeling.

Telling, on the other hand, is just like you’re recounting the movie to a friend.

Here’s an example. Let’s assume you are writing a children’s story about two boys who start out as enemies but later become friends. It’s near the beginning of the book, and the two boys get into a fight. You could write it this way:

Brian was angry at Jason and beat him up.

Or you could write it this way:

Brian rushed at Jason, knocked him down, and repeatedly punched him in the face. By the time a teacher separated the two boys, Jason’s nose was bleeding and his left eye was swollen shut.

In the second example, I didn’t tell you that Brian was angry at Jason. Nor did I tell you that Brian beat Jason up. But you knew it because you saw it.

Which is more interesting? I’m willing to bet that you preferred the second.

Of course, every writer needs to tell at times. Otherwise, novels would be longer than the Great Wall of China.

So how do you know what to show and what to tell?

If a scene is important to either plot or characterization, you should show it. To quote James Scott Bell again, “the more intense the moment, the more showing you do.”

Telling usually works better for transitions between scenes. As readers, we may need to know that your protagonist left her office and went home. But you don’t usually need to show her walking out the door, waiting for the bus, climbing into the bus, watching for her street, getting off the bus, and walking in the door. “Jean left the office and went home” is telling, but it gets her from one place to another without boring the reader along the way.

Don’t get fanatical about the distinction, however. Even most showing scenes include some telling. In the example above, why do you know that a teacher separated the boys? Because I told you. Another option would have been to say “a teacher pulled Brian away,” and we could spend years debating whether that phrase is showing or telling. There is nothing wrong with telling something in the middle of your scene if the reader needs to know it but it isn’t otherwise important to the story.

Ron Rozelle’s book Description and Setting explains the purpose of showing as “to let your reader experience things rather than to be told about them, to feel them rather than have them reported to him.”

That’s why Life of Pi is one of my favorite books. As I was reading it, my mind saw the violence of the wind and the waves on stormy days and the brightness of the sun on calm ones. But it went even deeper. The stormy days also had me hearing the roar of the wind, tasting the salt spray as the ocean pummeled the boat, and trembling as the small craft rose to the crest of each towering wave and dropped into the seemingly bottomless trough between them. And the calm days had me sweltering in the heat and smelling fish rotting in the sun. That’s what your writing should do.

Too much telling can make a good story boring, and knowing how and when to show can make a mediocre story great.

So go out and write the greatest show on earth.

* * * * *

The picture at the top of this post is a painting by Italian artist Gaetano Lodi, who was born in 1830 and died in 1886.

Lies Encouraged Here

I recently listened to a speaker practice for a tall tales contest using a story from her own life. Tall tales (as in Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox) thrive on exaggeration, but this was an ordinary story with no embellishment. Although the way she told it made it interesting, it was not a tall tale.

Novice writers often write about their own experiences but change the names and call their stories "fiction." Members of my writers' critique group would suggest changing the facts to make the action more compelling. The usual response? "It didn't happen that way."

Calling a story a tall tale or fiction makes it okay to change the facts. So get a little creative, folks.

I'm not suggesting that a writer take a recognizable person and give him or her traits that could hurt the real person's reputation. Just changing someone's name and labeling the story "fiction" isn't enough to protect a writer from a defamation lawsuit. But changing events and adding new characters are all part of what makes fiction fiction.

I've known for years that the Little House books are only loosely based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's life, but I didn't know the first two are out of order. I discovered that only recently while researching a road trip.

The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, is set in the woods of Wisconsin when Laura is about four and her sister Carrie is a baby. That fits. Laura did live in the woods near Pepin, Wisconsin at that age, and Carrie was born when Laura was three.

But the second book, Little House on the Prairie, has a slightly older Laura on her way to and then living in Kansas Territory, and Carrie is with them when they leave Wisconsin. In real life, the Ingalls family made the trip from Pepin to Kansas Territory when Laura was two and moved back to Pepin when she was four, and Carrie was born in Kansas. So these books are not in the same order as Laura's real life.

Laura altered her life's chronology for her first two children's novels, and she probably changed other facts, too. But that's okay, because even though it's common knowledge that Laura based the Little House books on her life (and even used real names for her family), the series is labeled and sold as fiction.

So here's my message to all tall tale tellers and novice fiction writers: if lies make your story better, use them. Because they aren't really lies when it's fiction.