Forum / Using names in cnf short stories

Ann Bogle
Jan 09, 08:38pm

Anyone have training in creative nonfiction? What are the rules/laws about using people's real names? Rules/laws about telling real stories with or without names?

Jane Hammons
Jan 09, 10:40pm

Ann, I don't think there are any strict rules about this. For me, it depends a lot on the situation I'm writing about. If it's a "public" story--one that is verifiable in newspapers, for example (like the first example below), I use real names. If it is something I'm doing from memory that involves people I know or family members, sometimes I make up names (third example) or use only the names of famous people (second example) and not, for example, the names of my X or my chhildren.

I teach creative nonfiction, and I've never found hard and fast rules. But I also think Lee Gutkind (whose book on cnf is sort of the bible of cnf) is a bit more liberal than I allow myself or my students to be. I don't think compressing characters, for example, is a good idea, and I do think you have to be careful about names. But I no longer ask people for permission to use names. If while I'm writing something that involves interviews and the person asks if I'm going to use their name, I'll ask if they want to give me a pseudonym. Some do. Some don't. I think you have to trust your best instincts. I tend to focus on the "nonfiction" aspect of the genre just to be on the safe side.

I would call this piece narrative journalism (but it often overlaps with cnf), I used all real names. The names were in the news, and I interviewed the murdered boy's mother.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-01-27/living/17150905_1_school-supplies-school-year-students

For this I left out the names of everyone but famous or otherwise "verifiable in the news" people

http://www.mothersmovement.org/features/07/11/hammons_1.html

For this, I used "Sally Macintyre" instead of the real person's name. This falls more in the "creative" realm of cnf--I made part of it up--imagining what Sally was doing--signaling that with italics. And also this was published in a literary magazine, so I assume the readers can go with the "creative" aspects. So I guess your intended audience is important to think about also.

http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1102

Sorry to go on and on--but I spend a lot of time in both my writing and teaching wrestling with your very questions.

Ann Bogle
Jan 10, 03:02am

Jane, how I appreciate this explanation. Thanks and for the links as well.

Marcus Speh
Jan 10, 06:20am

thank you both, most interesting thread. i like me a technical discussion among experts.

Ann Bogle
Jan 11, 04:15am

My stories, lately, both unwritten and written seem to come directly from life: present, past, and little of the future. I keep feeling I should write the stories, and what holds me back is privacy of others, especially, and also the truth that I do write fiction, too. It is frustrating to be read as autobiographical when the story is fictional -- as if I can't make up a story. I might "pull out the stops" and tell a well-crafted version, even a booklength story, of my life keys, yet a story is not a story with one person in it (mostly) (as I see it). It may give an impression of narcissism to confess to one's own situation exclusively or excessively, yet it is protection of others that concerns me most in avoiding the stories of others. I wonder if telling stories of others with a resolute affection for them (sometimes hard to summon!) is the way to go.

Jane, your writing is always so pleasantly readable, and these essays are no exception. The second one, especially, is amazing to read. Thanks for posting.

Jane Hammons
Jan 11, 05:21am

Thanks, Ann. You know when I was doing a lot of writing about my incredibly wretched divorce, I worried a lot about the privacy of my children. We don't have the same last name, and I haven't ever used their names. But still, I didn't want to exploit them or their experiences in order to write about mine. But then my youngest son saw something I was writing, and he said, "Hey, that really happened to us" and didn't seem at all bothered. Now they both write, and I have told them that their life is their story. Our life is our material--sometimes in fiction, sometimes nonfiction. And that they shouldn't ever worry about anything they might write about me (I may regret that :)

But I agree that it is harder when you start thinking about old friends, family you are less close to, etc. But my life is my story. If someone else has a different version of whatever events I write about, he or she is just as free as I am to write it. I know that Erica Jong has had a lot of hostility from members of her family about her nonfiction. But I think it's just a risk you have to take. I'm struggling now with a story I've been trying to tell for about 30 years. I can't decide whether or not to "check" with people, not so much as a way of getting their approval, but more just to let them know that I'm ready to write this (it's related to Headstone up here at f'naut). I think that's as far as I'd go in terms of "protecting" anyone (though maybe you mean something else or have other concerns). And I do worry about it. But I'm not sure I worry about it so much that I won't write the essay or memoir.

It's great to have a discussion about nonfiction! And it's interesting what you say about the "autobiographical" comment on your writing. Maybe because a lot of your writing mentions history and important movements, events, etc.? I think it's fascinating for that reason. It feels "real," though I don't think I'd automatically assume it's autobiographical.

Marcus Speh
Jan 11, 04:51pm

ann, for what it's worth, i always read you as fiction writer with a strong mastery of your very own (life-like) material including autobiographical information. i think it is a form in its own right - at least, though i don't have the critical background, this is what i feel when i read your always highly original work. jane, ditto but differently so. yes to "my life is my story" or rather, in your case "so many stories". i would have put both of you in that twilight zone of writing where the difference between fiction and non-fiction is rather blurred...in a good way because i think it translates into good tension and stimulation for the reader. also, of course, you're both wonderfully clever and intelligent writers and that's enough cuddling now ;-)

J. Mykell Collinz
Jan 11, 07:56pm

Stimulating discussion. Thanks. Fiction overlapping nonfiction, that's how I conceive most of the stories I write. Even when I stay mostly nonfiction, I use fictitious names, except for a novel I'm still working on that begins in 1935 and includes my parents with their real names. Got me writing in the first place. I even include myself being born and as a child but that's where it waits for me to go back and continue. I'm not sure how, yet, so I fictionalize it. Which is not to say I'm a good fiction writer. I'm not even sure what that is: but I enjoy doing it. Naming names and being specific about time and location, I need more work on that.

Ann Bogle
Jan 12, 02:41am

Thanks for the feedback on my line areas (between fiction/non-), helps. Confirms. What I have in mind to do is not memoir (I think of memoir as a dream of the past) but autobiography (I think of as factual). I'd like to try something really specific, dates, names, events. I've been "rehearsing" it by speaking it (alone). Then I was reminded of Nabokov's Speak, Memory, a book I haven't read but have read about. Jane, I think you're right that the decision to write from one's (life) material is the main one, even though it may meet with resistance. In my rehearsal, I have, for example, demonstrated (physically) sex I had one night with an interim Unitarian pastor I met on internet dating. I resorted to demonstrating it twice. The third time I described it verbally without use of the couch. The pastor collapsed his weight on top of me and didn't move. He didn't hold up his own (considerable) weight in any way. His penis was not erect. I poured it inside me as if with a trowel. I wore thigh-high support stockings and crooked wire bifocals. I think he told his superiors in the UU church that there were *schizophrenic* women in the Midwest, no eligible partners (he was divorced from a barren anorectic and seeking a *stripper* with a Ph.D.) as a way of pressuring the church to find him a permanent, full-time job, something they suddenly did, in Charleston. A week before that he had said he'd have to move to an interim appointment in Vegas. There's a polite way to write the three-date story without the so-called sex, without my supposition that he used our interview as a career move, given that he was a very talented pastor (in fact) and a gifted writer on spiritual matters. He pulled my astrological chart, glanced at it, and said I was supposed to have been a literary critic. I learned quickly and much from him about the denominations, Unitarian and Presbyterian (as I was baptised) in particular. I prepared for the first date at the salon, where I told the hair stylist of my enthusiasm for dating a pastor. If my *life* were a day, this small series of events might consume two minutes.

Ann Bogle
Jan 12, 02:26pm

There are more ways to tell the story than that one. That was one way. It doesn't unroll as a narrative (as occurring) but as a summary, a hastening to add details after the fact. The people at the church -- people in general -- may look at dating adults and wonder "what the sex is like." JR says never to tell it (in writing). It occurs to me. Why did I believe that the pastor used our interview to leverage a job promotion -- giving false information about *my* mental health -- without naming me, so that *I* was an anonymous blip in the Midwestern landscape of church geography?

Joani Reese
Jan 13, 04:30pm

Great thread. I've been working on chapters that straddle memoir/creative nonfiction for a few months and have had two accepted for publication so far, but it does worry me sometimes to play fast and loose with some of the details from twenty or more years ago. I remember the key scenes, but have to imagine the small stuff on occasion. A few of the pieces are extremely close to straight reality and for some of the individuals about whom I write, it may not be acceptable to tell their stories without using pseudonyms. Some of the ideas you've shared here will be extremely helpful as I revise and imagine final forms for this collection. Thanks for being so generous with your advice.

Ann Bogle
Jan 17, 04:31pm

My initial concern in posting this thread was in using real names or if not real names then in telling real stories and stories in what detail. It makes me cringe to tell it sometimes (so don't may be the answer) or do but only to myself. The rehearsal of the stories -- tellings to myself out loud in my house or on the walking trail -- are amusing! Not only. In life I am a person who rarely describes or discusses sex in detail. In life I am a person who has spent many years alone, certainly without a partner, and at times, stretches of time, without hetero- or other socializing. I had thought of organizing a book around sex encounters and relationships, yet it would surely give an impression of a person so concerned and obsessed and not with the other person (me) who has bowed to social and other pressure to conduct myself alone. It all could be told. What appeals to me is the idea of a "written record." Setting the record straight is an aspect of it, though with whom it is unclear, a few people. Do I write a book of my life for those few people who have not clearly understood? who remember things in off or missing detail? (Leading up to the question of self-publishing, one that is becoming exhausting and not enervating.) Leading up to the question of writing without publishing, writing to rid oneself of untold stories pushing to get out, perhaps a purging (performed elegantly) to allow a space for fiction. Leading up to the question of publishing autobiography/memoir for money.

Reading up a bit on creative nonfiction. It is a relatively new art form. What I have found through internet searches (so far) has not liberated or guided me. I searched "creative nonfiction short story" and found nothing except a reference or two to a children's literary category, not one very developed.

Jane Hammons
Jan 17, 05:56pm

Ann--These questions about writing without publishing, creating a record, really interest me. I have the "records" of my great-grandmother (who was "raised" in the Cherokee Seminary Orphanage) and my great-aunt and one of my grandmothers. They wrote letters and kept extensive diaries. I make use of them in my writing all the time (so in a sense excerpts have been published), but for the most part the enrich my live and my understanding of where I come from.

Do you know the literary journal Creative Nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind? If not, maybe take a look. Also here are 3 books (2 I've read and used in teaching, but not the third).
The Art of Creative Nonfiction, Lee Gutkind
The Story and the Situation, Vivian Gornick (I love this book)
Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know about Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction, Gutkind (I suspect it won't answer your questions).

Jane Hammons
Jan 17, 05:58pm

correction: Gornick's book is The Situation and The Story

Ann Bogle
Jan 17, 06:08pm

Jane, thanks for these suggestions. Your ideas and experience are invaluable to me.

Pamela J. Parker
Jan 18, 10:32pm

Ann and Jane - This discussion was fascinating and informative. Thank you so much for all the helpful info!

Lena Vanelslander
Jan 20, 10:38am

Ann, the only thing I can contribute, is keep it real but don't mention full names, emails etc. You'ld think that is self-evident but trust me, some people really don't know to distinguish the borderies.

Kait Mauro
Jan 27, 07:44pm

Anne Lamott has said, "If people don't want novels based around it, then they should behave better."

Ann Bogle
Feb 01, 01:05am

Something I read at FB by a former classmate who has published at least a dozen books by now: exaggerate the bad behavior of others when you write fiction. In nonfiction, that would not hold.

Today I was thinking that I drop my own guard when I write about myself but I keep up others' guard when mentioning them. I thought about the ways in which that is and isn't true. I thought of other sports and games where to strategize that way would be "suicide." I thought what if the reverse were true and someone wrote about me and I read it in a public forum, would I mind? No names, it seems essential, unless the story is a very good one. It wouldn't have to be flattering, but it would have to be loving if unflattering and funny -- entertaining -- to justify itself. And somehow accurate.

David Ackley
Feb 02, 02:33am

From Witold Gombrowicz,("Ferdyduke"):

Once at a meeting of writers, when prescriptions--or maybe proscriptions--were being offered as to what ought to be written, and about whom, an older poet stood up in the back and told the following story:

" A boy is walking down the street arm in arm with his blind grandmother. A passerby notices that every few feet, the boy tells his grandmother," Hop, Grandma, there's a crack in the sidewalk, " and the poor little old lady hops in the air, though there's not a crack to be seen.

The passerby says, "Stop teasing her, boy. It's disrespectful and cruel."

Unrepentant, the boy says, " Mind your own business. She's my grandma and I'll do anything I want with her."

The poet concludes,"That's the way it is with my work. It's mine, and I'll do anything I want with it."
You must log in to reply to this thread.