When it comes to similes...

Stuever talks about this at length in the foreword to Off Ramp, his collection of newspaper stories, but I truly love the fact that he finds so much joy in writing about what most people consider America's cheesy and mundane. There is a story in that book about those storage-for-rent places, a subject that on the surface could not be more boring, but if I remember correctly he turns it into a metaphor for our inability to let things go in this country, and talks about how we form emotional connections to old couches and picture frames (We've been through so much together!), and we feel like we're abandoning them by throwing them away, so we pay 35 bucks a month to store all our junk in row after row of ubiquitous, anonymous storage units. It's both sad and beautiful really. People always moan and quip about low-culture and how the strip malls, Wal-Marts and other box stores spreading across the America are somehow inauthentic, and that they represent an ethos we should roll our eyes at, but Stuever almost always proves, I think, that the opposite is true. That's the REAL Americana, regardless of how much it pains some of us admit. He always does such a nice job showing the dignity of the people who inhabit those worlds. He's not above poking fun at aspects of it -- in fact it's almost a requirement in his eyes to truly appreciate it -- but it's ok because he usually finds that universal theme most readers can empathize with. Of course, as you say jgmacg, the interpretation is the most important part, and probably the most difficult.

I was talking with a friend of mine recently -- someone who is probably more talented that I am, though we've had similar upbringings, ambitions and, to this point, careers -- and he said he realized early on he had no interest in writing professional sports because he felt like so many more people could relate to stories about athletes who couldn't throw 96 mph or run a 4.3. He wasn't talking about a 10-inch gamer on deadline of course. He was talking more about 80-inch takeouts that used high school sports or small college sports to address universal themes. And sport is, in the end, just the stage for life's big drama in those pieces. It's obvious that the most talented writers can do similar things with professional athletes, politicans and entertainers, especially if they get the time to observe, report, interview and mull over WHAT IT ALL MEANS, but it's certainly harder. It was interesting to think about anyway.

In regards to empathy though, I wonder sometimes, at least with my own reporting and writing, how far I can go attempting to get in someone's head and then using what brief time we spent together (even if it amounts to hours or days) to, in some ways, summarize that person's existence. Let me explain: Recently, I've written a lot about inner city kids, which is to say African Americans, many whom grow up in what most of us would describe as abject poverty. I am as white as the driven slush. And even though I did a considerable amount of reporting, after I wrote the story, I worried that the world I grew up in was so vastly different than the one I was writing about, it was in some ways dishonest to try and convey the level of intimacy I was shooting for in the writing. I worried that the subjects would call me after it ran and say: This is bullshit. You can't really understand what it's like to be poor and black and to lose your best friend because of some stupid street beef. We shared many conversations about the things we had in common, like sports and music and love and ambition, and ultimately, I think (as you said jgmacg) what ended up making me feel alright about it was that had the important things in common that transcended race or economics.

I'm just curious though: Has either of you (or anyone else really), written a story where the subject, after the story ran, felt like your interpretation of them rang false? Not inaccurate, but inauthentic? I wrote a story once about a coach I had covered for a couple years, and he had a complicated relationship with his father, also a coach. Like most men, I guess, I too had/have a loving but complicated relationship with my dad. The coach and I spent several days together on the road, discussing he and his father for a story, and I shared some stuff with him about my own father, and he really opened up about his desire to constantly prove himself in the eyes of the old man, even thought the old man had been dead for some time. I wrote a long profile about the coach, and used his relationship with his old man to frame the piece. When it ran, his wife of 30 years loved it, and thought it perfectly captured how difficult it was for the coach to feel like he could never measure up. The coach though was kind of uncomfortable with it. His wife said she thought maybe it was a little disarming for him that I could get into his head like that. But the coach, I think, thought I was reaching a bit, and that I was assigning significance to things in his life that didn't, ultimately, have larger meaning. Oddly enough, I saw him again two years later, and he told me how much he liked the damn thing, because in the end it made him think of his dad. So who knows.

Again though, thank you all for this thread, regardless of which direction it goes next.

 

Sounds like you wanted to get into the coach's head about his dad more than he wanted to. Which is something else that many of us can relate to, but that's another story for another thread ...

I think, with the empathy thing, especially your story about the inner-city kids, is that it's not so important that you know what it feels like to have had those experiences of poverty and racial disparity ... because that's a laughable idea. You are who you are, and you can't change how you came into this world. You'll never be a part of that world. You can't have every experience. But that's OK.

The important thing, as a writer, is not that you completely immerse yourself in someone else's shoes (although that works, too, like with Jones' Ricky Williams story), but that you make the effort to empathize. An honest effort, which means being honest with yourself just as much as being honest with your subject(s).

Sure, somebody can always come back and say, "This is bullshit. You don't get it." And sometimes, they'll be right.

But if you make the honest effort ... more often than not, you'll get their empathy, too. Especially if they're honest with themselves, like the coach who came back to you two years later and told you he liked it despite his initial discomfort. You reached a place he didn't want to go; when he accepted the truth of that, there was nothing he could object to. It was authentic -- whether he liked it or not.

 

I can't think offhand of an instance where a subject called me on a story... There have been times, of course, where I felt like I had trouble relating, where the ice took a little longer to pool. Like you said, DD, race is a tough bridge to cross sometimes. That's just the truth of it. I definitely felt like the honkiest honky who ever honked when I went out with Clinton Portis; that experience -- that sort of night out, clubbing, champagne, women in concentric circles -- was damn foreign to me. But because he let me live it beside him, I felt like I got it. I felt like I understood why he enjoyed that kind of time out. He was very generous about it, his time, I have to say.

Celebrities, too, can be tough to crack. Scarlett Johansson, God love her, as hot as she is -- we did not connect at all. I didn't really know what to talk to her about. I don't have a lot in common with smoking 19-year-old girl millionaires. But you do your best to muddle through.

Obviously, there are degrees here, a range of possibility. Some guys, you hit it off with right away, and the story is a success as a result. That's the ideal. But some guys, you lose in the first few minutes, and you'll probably never get them back. That's when you're stuck, usually, trying to write something profound about a guy you hate a little. (Colin Farrell comes to mind for me.)

If it were all the same, it would be boring, I guess.

But as for that coach, it sounds like you caught him a little better than he thought you might. That story sounds like a success to me. Wives and girlfriends, if they like a story, you've generally hit it square.

Or you've blown their man better than they ever could. Either way, it means you did good work somewhere along the way.

 

I've been lucky over the years. I haven't yet been called out by a profile subject for inauthenticity, or for overreaching in search of motive or personal psychology. Empathy doesn't mean that I try to psychoanalyze 'em, or break down their actions into some sort of neat linear equation of cause and effect. I think that's an important thing to note here for young writers. Don't try to project yourself - or god forbid, Freud or Ann Landers - onto a subject. In fact, I may widen my focus a little bit at crucial moments in the story - the big game, the big catch, the big contract, the big night out - to avoid that. Rather than trying to cobble together some sort of half-assed map of the principal's subconscious - even if I feel the general contours match my own - I try instead to create a rich enough context for the subject's actions and decisions that readers can make judgments and draw conclusions on their own.

Which is not to say that I haven't been inundated with a spectacular range of other colorful complaints.

As to DD's coach: Frankly, I think that's the reaction I want most from a subject. It's not anger, strictly speaking. It's more like that moment when we hear a recording of our own voice for the first time; or see ourselves in really sharp relief, as if in one of those beautiful, unforgiving portraits by Avedon. "That's me?" It's the awkward shock of honest recognition as much as anything.

I think the notion of empathy as a working strategy is especially important across racial and cultural and class divides. I'll never know what it's like to be super rich or truly poor, to be a woman or an African-American, to be Iraqi or Iranian. But I do know what it's like to be scared or sick or in love or hungry or ashamed or suspicious or tired or happy. Not everything can be reduced to those simple human impulses, certainly, nor should they be used to blithely explain things away in a pleasant haze of fellow-feeling.

But remembering the things we all share in common as a species can be a terrific antidote to ignorance, and an innoculation against prejudice.*






* Not guaranteed to work on Colin Farrell.

 

Ringo Starr was once quoted as saying the Beatles found out in a hurry that they were doing themselves no favours if they tried to play or write while stoned, but they had already learned by then how to crystallize their drug experiences afterward and turn them into killer music. Or, if not "killer music" per se, something very interesting to listen to whether you yourself are stoned or sober (such as "Tomorrow Never Knows," from "Revolver").

 

Someone once said not to worry about dazzling people with your turns of phrase. If you're impassioned about what you're writing about, that will come through in the finished product.

If you don't have a curveball, throw a slider. If you don't have either, learn a palmball. Or a split-fingered pitch.

 

Writing is like baseball, ...

 

Man, I've enjoyed reading this thread. Even the tangents have been worthwhile. And thanks to buckweaver, I was able to re-read that great old DD essay, which might be the best post I've ever seen on this site. Talk about empathy...

On the original topic, 21's suggestion about leaving it and moving on is something I often use. Almost every time I write, I type something like, "It was as dark as a XXXX" (with the XXXXs), and end up coming back to it later. And usually, the moment your mind starts thinking about something else, the perfect word or phrase hits you. (As a word of caution, I would strongly suggest using the XXXXs, or some other kind of easily identifiable symbol. I used to use ellipses, until one time I forgot to come back and fix it and it ran that way in the paper.)

As for being called out for inauthenticity by a subject, one experience comes to mind. Several years ago I did a feature on a well-known older gentleman who is no longer with us. I spent the better part of a Sunday with him, and I loved every minute of it. On the plane trip home, I already was thinking it was going to be one of the best pieces I'd ever written. But when I was finished, I was worried about it, because he was a simple guy, and I made some dangerously grandiose connections between things he said and the world around him, even if he might not have necessarily meant them that way. Stuff about the significance of the pictures on his wall, and his orthopedic shoes, and the way he talked to his dog. And I'd promised to mail him a copy of the story when it published.

So I sent it off, and a week or so went by, and I just knew he had received it and hated it. Then I get a letter in the mail. It's from him, and in his old fragile handwriting, he wrote, "Nice job, but I don't wear orthopedic shoes."

The day he died, I thought about that and laughed. In the end, people care about you getting specific details like that right more than they do about your larger meaning.

 

With this thread, I feel like a young Jeremy Schaap, sitting at the dinner table, noshing on some bagels and lox, as his dad, Jimmy Breslin and Shirley Povich talk shop.

When I was an editor at my college daily, I told my writers to come on SportsJournalists.com precisely for these threads. Man, this is better than any journalism class I ever took.

Regarding similes: The best way I can put it is, can you completely picture what you're saying? Jones' line about Zito's curveball dropping like a broken heart...Shit...How can that be written better? I literally picture the ball falling along with the batter's face.

Think about this:

"Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep."
(Carl Sandburg)

Everyone can picture an onion. Everyone knows that you cry when peeling an onion. Sandburg takes the connection about life -- childhood, adulthood, retirement, death -- and boils it down into one sentence...

 

I don't agree that Sandburg's is a good simile. If you have to explain the simile to the reader, then it doesn't work for me.