Writer to Reader — The Unspoken Contract
by Debra Koontz Traverso
Copyright 2002-2012 Debra Koontz Traverso. All rights reserved in all media.
The content of this article may be forwarded in full without special permission provided it is used for not-for-profit purposes and full attribution and copyright notice are given. For all other purposes, contact Debra Koontz Traverso at Debra@DebraTraverso.com
It happened again.
At the request of a client I'll call Karen, I read her article about her experience at a week-long painting retreat in New England. It was crammed with statistics, interviews and descriptions of other people's experience during the retreat. All interesting information, but lifeless.
Besides offering the insight that she might have sold the piece before she wrote it, my immediate reaction was, "It's well-written, but where are you?"
By keeping herself absent from the activity in the article, Karen left out the true flair of the piece.
I've seen this happen many times with authors, including — ahem — myself. For most of my writing life, I produced reportorial pieces full of objective observations, research, and interviews, and I kept myself discreetly and professionally invisible. I'd rationalize that I was a true professional, having come up through the ranks as reporter, columnist, editor and I proudly displayed two degrees in journalism and communication on my walls. I would not lower my standards to inject myself into the pieces I was writing.
My thought process sounded noble; it even convinced me for a while. Inside, however, I knew the truth — I was brought up to be a private person. It wasn't in my family's genes to subject others to my faults and foibles and learning experiences. To the outside world, I was supposed to appear to be a finished and polished product from the get-go.
Problem is, the release I was hoping to secure through writing was left unfulfilled. I was being stifled in my expression and my creativity by my own fears of revealing my thoughts with the masses.
Then, after more years than I care to admit of writing in this stilted manner, I was working on a book that demanded an example or two of my own experience because I just could not find anyone else who had the same experience I wanted to describe. That opened the floodgates. One example led to dozens more and the final product was filled with first-person examples, anecdotes and experiences. It has been my most successful book to date, prompting more positive e-mail from around the world than anything I've ever written.
It was still several years before I learned that most writers don't open up for different reasons. When I first began to coach writers and encourage them to include more of themselves in their work, I told them of my experience. I quickly learned that most writers had a healthier ego than I used to have. Being willing to share their experiences was not their problem; instead, most writers did not open up because they didn't think they had anything out of the ordinary to say. They suffered from terminal sameness — their world was made of the same job, same children, same parents, same neighbors, same history and ailments as they have always had.
As writers, we must move past this belief that change is the only thing worth writing about. Each of us sees the same things through vastly different filters. My filters will see, hear, smell, touch, taste and experience the same events that you do, in a very different way. You must own your experience if you want to write well about it. And, you must share that experience through your own filters if you want to experience the release that you are hoping to achieve — and isn't that why you're writing in the first place? Personally, I'm as pleased — if not more so — with an author who validates my feelings or experiences as I am with one who introduces me to new things. It's this feeling of validation, this sharing of one's self, that Joan Frank may be describing in the July/August 1990 Utne Reader when she describes certain writing as, "a two-way mirror, prompting a startling moment wherein writer and reader each recognize some aspect of themselves in the other and come away from that moment transformed."
Just to bring this full circle, let's look again at Karen's piece. Without Karen's personal experience in the piece, I — as reader — never felt that I was given the truth of the piece. You see, when we read quotes from other people in an article or book, we sometimes have in the back of our minds that what people say and what they think or believe aren't necessarily the same. In other words, they might be saying these things merely because they're being quoted. But when an author shares feelings and insights, we tend to believe them because they are making the sacrifice of opening up. There's an understood and comforting unspoken contract between writer and reader that the truth is going to be shared.
And what is the truth? Well, that's another article entirely; however, suffice it to say that your truth is whatever you feel or learn. Good stories carry a point, so your point is generally the insight you've found through the experience. But how can we, as readers of your work, ever know what you've found unless you share it?
Honor your unspoken contract with your reader — open up about your own experience if the piece demands some first-person truth.
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Debra Koontz Traverso, M.A., is a creative and commercial writer, public speaker and consultant, having published several books and hundreds of articles. She also serves as a guest instructor at Harvard University and as adjunct faculty at her local community college. She can be reached at Debra@DebraTraverso.com.