Fiction, facts and storytelling

Offentliggjort 04/13/2005

Af Mikkel Hvid

Journalism must be true. Writers of literature are allowed to lie.

That is the key message in Roy Peter Clarke's essay: “Between Fact and Fiction: Navigating Treacherous Waters.” The essay deals with narrative journalism and the way the genre uses literary expressions and techniques such as descriptions of scenes; dialogue and summaries of what the main characters think. The techniques blur the lines between journalism and literature and with the essay the Poynter-based researcher dives straight into the debate about the relationship between the two.

In the essay Roy Peter Clarke attacks what elsewhere has been called the false dichotomy between literature and journalism. The distinction between journalism and literature should not be based on presentation, he argues. Without any problems journalists can be inspired by great authors of fiction who in turn are allowed to borrow techniques and facts from journalists. Inspiration is not a one way street. Authors steal from journalists too.

However, he continues, there are fundamental distinctions between journalism and literature, between journalists and authors of fiction. The distinctions are based on the criterion of truth.

In other words: Journalists are only allowed to use literary techniques on topics and in ways that live up to traditional journalistic criteria of respect for truth. What the journalist writes must be true in the sense that it can be documented by reference to named sources or actual circumstances.

Fiction writers on the other hand have the privilege of inventing and making up stories and this is where the line between journalism and literature is drawn: Journalism presents truth in the sense of facts and reality. Literature does not have to be true to any outside reality.

The ethics of narrative journalism
In other words: The main distinction between journalism and literature is based on contents. Journalists must present facts – whether they are using the genre of narrative journalism or any other journalistic genre. Journalists must research their stories. Writers of fiction on the other hand are allowed to add, invent and construct their own worlds. Journalists can not.

In his essay, Roy Peter Clarks lists a range of ethical demands on the narrative journalist. You can not add anything to your story which was not present in reality. You can not write different scenes into one, and you are not allowed to merge a number of real characters into one. You must respect the real timing of events. And finally there is the ethical demand which is perhaps the most important even if it sounds mainly as a kind request: You must strive to provide as honest and correct an account of the reality you describe as is humanly possible.

The message in journalism is explicit
Roy Peter Clarke's essay is important. Partly because it rejects the false dichotomy and points to the real distinctions. And partly because Roy Peter Clarke offers a set of ethical guidelines which specify the demands we can and should make on narrative journalism.

But that does not conclude the discussions about the relationship between journalism and literature. Narrative journalism hightlights some conventional differences between literature and journalism which are important to address for anyone taking up the challenges of narrative reporting.

Firstly, there is a fundamental difference between how the genres express their messages. In journalism the message is clear and explicit. In literature the message is far more implicit.

If you read a modern novel, short story or poem you will rarely come across a clear and defined morale of the story. Even if you understand the individual scenes and have a clear appreciation of the storyline and the relationship between the main characters it can be difficult to come up with a precise answer as to what the message is. What does the text mean? What does the author want to express? Why did he write this text? Why is the text relevant? In what context should we understand this text?

Most literary texts can be interpreted in a number of different ways, and it is only after careful analysis or discussions with others you realise the main dynamics of the text.

Journalism does not work that way. In journalism the message is explicit. Quite often it appars in the first paragraph of the text where the journalist makes the logical conclusion of his own research or quotes an expert or another source who in this way is allowed to formulate the main point of the article. Whichever way, the message is direct with no room for interpretations, ambiguity or misunderstandings.

The difference between the two types of text can also be traced to the ways in which we talk about the texts. We interpret literary texts. We argue about how they should be understood and emphasize differents parts in the text and therefore reach different conclusions. In short: We disagree about the text.

We do not disagree about journalistic texts. Not if they are well written. Instead we either agree or disagree with the texts. We can easily discuss journalistic texts but we do not discuss what they mean but how we relate to the contents of the story. We get the message but have diffent opinions about it.

You can easily write journalistic texts that do not have a clear and explicit message. That would be the easiest thing in the world to do. However, it goes against the journalistic conventions. Journalistic convention demands an explicit message and clear relevance for the reader. And if you as a journalist hand in an assignment which leaves too much to the reader's own interpretation, you will normally get it back (and probably for good reasons) from your subeditor with a huge red question mark: What is the story? Clear it up!

Two types of readers
It follows that journalism and literature have different ideas about their readers and what you can demand from them

Journalism presents readers with a complete package they can immediately relate to. Readers of literature will have to unwrap the package themselves. They have to interpret and analyse the text to work out what it means for them. Getting the message is an active process which demands a fair amount of work on the part of the reader.

In journalism, on the other hand, it is generally not acceptable to present readers with such a dilemma. The readers have a right to demand a clear message. They should not be left in the lurch or be expected to work in order to find out what the text means. The work has already been done by the journalist. The journalist knows the meaning of the text.

The relevance of the text
There are also different criteria for relevance in journalism and literature.

We read literature to experience other worlds, lives, and people. We mirror our own lives in those of the characters we meet in literature. We compare our own experiences to theirs and in that way we gain greater insights into our own lives through what could be called experience by proxy. It is enough for us as readers that we learn about our own lives. The text is true when it is true and meaningful to us.

In other words: Truth and relevance are decided in the meeting between the reader and the text.

Not so in journalism. In journalism it is not enough that the text is true in a factual sense. Truth is a condition for journalism but not the only condition. The article must also be relevant.

A journalistic story is relevant when it teaches the readers something new and important about the world they live in. Readers want to learn about the world so they can manage their lives better. So in journalism truth and relevance are not only determined by the relationship between the reader and the text – the relationship between reality and the text is just as important. The text must point to important factors in the world outside the text and the reader. The readers should be able to get a clearer appreciation of reality through the journalistic text.

The journalistic text serves as a link beween reality and the readers, and therefore you must distinguish between two sets of criteria for truth and relevance: Literature must be experienced as probable and relevant by readers whereas journalism must be true to the reality it purports to describe.

This distinction is fundamental but lines are also blurred because some literature is based on the premise of giving accurate descriptions of reality. Literary genres like realism, naturalism and – particularly – social realism constructs reality in the sense that it constructs a frame for debate by describing contemporary society. In that sense literature moves closer to journalism. However, when the relationship between literature and reality becomes too close and direct, critics will warn that this is not literature but journalism. So there are limits even in a grey area.

Storytelling with three strands
The extra criterion for truth and relevance means that in the presentation journalism has one more layer than literature.

Bascially, literature consists of two elements: Action and background. Action is the key: It keeps the readers hooked and collects the text into a whole.

However, action is not enough. In order to understand the action readers need certain kinds of information in the form of background. It is background information when the author describes the environment where the action takes place, builds up the characters and points to important connections in the text. Background information is provided whenever the author stops the action to make room for supplementary information.

Background is included in the text because it necessary in order to appreciate the action. We only understand the actions of Lykkke-Per when the author, Henrik Pontoppidan, provides us with details from his background: He grew up in a strict and sombre family of priests.
So background information is necessary in literature but also presents authors with a problem. It slows down the action and drains the energy from the main story. Therefore background information is presented quite differently in modern fiction than in classic literature.

Writers of classic literature (and their readers) had far more patience than we have today so they took their time when giving background information. Just think about Tolstoy's “War and Peace”: Without its background information the book would be very slim indeed. Modern authors use background information more sparingly and integrates it into the action in order not to bore their readers with pages of background descriptions.

The development becomes very clear if you compare “Harry Potter” to “The Lord of the Rings”. J. K. Rowling provides almost as much background information as Tolkien but she does it in small glimpses so the readers do not forget the main action. She integrates.

Just like literature, narrative journalism consists of action and background but it also has a third layer: Facts. It is not enough for the journalist to provide background information. The journalist must also provide facts which help readers to understand the world they live in.

Where the role of background information is to give readers the tools to understand and imagine the action, facts are meant to inform the reader. When providing facts the journalist steps out of the role of storyteller and becomes a teacher. He adopts an analytical approach to the story: How is this story typical? What development is it an expression of? What do you do if you end up in a similar situation? Why is it relevant?

That is the main purpose of facts: To provide perspective and explanation – to reflect on the journalistic story.

An example: Two journalists, Kim Faber and Flemming Christiansen, from the Danish national paper, Politiken, wrote a compelling narrative series called “The shadow” which took its starting point in a traffic accident. The story is intensely moving and deals with grief, despair and crisis. It shows how different people deal with crises: One – the woman – breaks down and her life falls apart until her friends help her get professionel help. The other – the man – grits his teeth and continues to work. Until grief and crisis hit him from behind.

A fantastic story. But it did not have to be true if the story only dealt with what I summarised above. It would be just as thoughtful and throught-provoking if the journalists had made it up. In that sense it functions just like literature: We identify with the story and relate to the characters in the story.

Regardless of the two journalists' storytelling skills it would probably not have appeared in a national newspaper like Politiken, if it had not been put into perspective by adding a layer of classic factual journalism. How many traffic accidents happen in Denmark each year? How many are killed in traffic? What are the legal consequences of killing someone in traffic? What are minimum and maximum penalties? How do you survive loosing a child? How do you handle loosing a family member? What help is available for victims of trafic accidents and their relatives?

Answers to many of these questions were provided to the readers of Politiken in conventional background articles which provided the relevance and journalistic justification for the narrative series. Without them “The shadow” would probably not have worked as a journalistic article.

There is a very interesting place in the series where the journalists balance on the border between facts and background. The father and the mother of the child who was killed in the accident find it difficult to relate to each other because they react so differently to their grief. The mother is grieving openly whereas the father closes up and focuses on his job. In order to make the readers understand his reaction, the journalists describe parts of the father's life story (which is background). But once – and this is the only time it happens in the whole story – the journalists step out of the role as storytellers and quote an american poet, Robert Frost, who has lost a child himself and subsequently has written about how men and women react differently to grief.

This is getting close to conventional provision of facts: We go outside the story in order to put it into a wider context of similar experiences, similar patterns. Facts. It is not necessary in order to understand the story as such but it might be necessary in order to understand why the story focuses so much on the relationship between the two because it is an example of a much larger problem: namely how men and women react to crises.

The third way
Roy Peter Clarke also looks at the relationship between literature and journalism in another essay: “Two ways of reading; three ways of writing.” The point of this essay is that we read literature to be part of the story whereas we read journalism (and other forms of factual writing) to take something away from it. One we read for the experience, the other for information. To learn about ourselves and to learn about the world around us.

In practical terms this means that there is a difference between what is a good story and what is a good journalistic story. Journalistic stories must be qualified by figures, insights, facts.

In terms of presentation it means that it is not enough with two strands in narrative journalism – action and background – you must also integrate a third strand of facts into your text even if it takes you further away from the storyline and the action readers love.

In other words: If Kim Faber and Flemming Christiansen's articles had not been part of a bigger journalistic theme about traffic, they would have been forced to integrate a third layer of facts into their story in order to give to it journalistic relevance.

The frame and the contents
Conventional journalism has no real action and like literature it mixes only two ingredients – in this case background and facts. But in portraits, features and interviews where journalists often experiment with different ways of telling the story there are three layers or ingredients.

What is interesting to observe is how the different layers are utilised in journalism and literature respectively. Writers of fiction use their best and most seductive image making techniques on the most interesting parts of the story. They use the strongest means for the strongest parts of the story. Here is dialogue, clear descriptions of characters and imagery that allow the readers to picture the action. However, background information and less important parts of the story are outlined in a quick summary. A clear and conscious strategy on the part of fiction writers.

Journalism does the opposite – when you discount consistent features such as “The shadow”. Here the biggest creative efforts are found in the descriptions of the story frame – a secondary part of the story. For instance: The journalist describes in a colourful and interesting way how he parks his car in a very quiet neighbourhood, how he walks up the gardenpath – listening to the way the gravel crunches under his feet – how he drops his pen and paper out of sheer nervousness when the door opens and he suddenly meets the celebrity he is here to interview. “Please come in!”, she says, and the journalist includes it in his article because he knows scenic dialogue is good reading.

The story continues with the journalist's description of how the celebrity takes him through the house to the living room and the coffee table where coffee is served, and then – just as the real story is about to begin and where we as readers are prepared to be swept away by a riveting description of the celebrity's interesting life or witness first hand interesting episodes which give meaningful clues to her personality and character – just here where narrative techniques are really called for in order to make the story colourful, memorable and interesting, the journalist reverts to classic techniques such as summaries, interviews or other boring forms of storytelling.

There us an unlimited supply of stories like that in newspapers and magazines. Exciting narrative intros and then when the real story begins: words, words, words. Talk, talk, talk. Qoute, quote, quote.

In journalism the creative narrative techniques are used on the frame of the story or in the introduction that leads into the main story whilst the story itself is presented as a summary or direct quotes.

Here journalists could really learn something from fiction writers: Use your best techniques on the best parts of the story and deal with the boring stuff quickly using less conspicuous techniques.

Epilogue
The relationship between literature and journalism can not be reduced to the difference between fiction and facts. That is a fundamental difference but in addition there is a number of conventional and traditional differences: There is a difference in how explicit the message must be; how much should be left to the reader's own interpretation; whether the relevance and the truth of text is determined in the relationship between the reader and the text or whether it is determined by the relationship between the text and reality; and whether the story must integrate two or three layers.

Are these differences only conventional? Most of them are. You could write narrative journalism without an explicit message. It would go against the norms of the profession and current practice but it would be possible and challenging for both journalist and reader. And as narrative journalism becomes more established you could (16:19) (16:38) imagine that readers and the media get used to the idea that journalism is not always clearcut.

Those differences are not sharp or fundamental.

It would not be possible or desirable, however, to challenge the other difference. Journalism and literature should have differenct criteria for relevance and truth. Good literature does not have to mirror or put a perspecive on contemporary events – just ask Potter and the Hobit. They may reflect something contemporary at a symbolic level but you can easily read Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings as good stories without any reference to outside reality. But that should neither be allowed nor possible in journalism. Journalism must – whether it is narrative or not – put a perspective on principal issues in contemporary society and if you give up on that expectation you might as well give up on the demand for truth because then there is no point in demanding that the articles should be well researched and documented. That only makes sense if you insist that the article must relate to a reality outside itself – when it makes reference to events outside itself.

In his introductin to the important anthology “The New Journalism”, Tom Wolfe writes that new journalism emerged in the vacuum that arose between literature and journalism as authors in the 1950's gave up on realism and started experimenting with modern forms of storytelling. As writers of fiction no longer seemed to have the courage to describe contemporary events in a fictional form, young journalists took up the challenge: As journalist they stimulated debate on contemporary events but they used literary techniques in their journalism.

This duality is important in terms of understanding narrative journalism. And it is important to hold on to the dualily to avoid that the creative efforts of narrative journalism are not reduced to a question of style and entertainment and thus creates a new vacuum.

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