A Note to the Publisher...

My blog post this week will explore the appeal of my final piece to both the public and publishers. I have completed this research by examining recently published creative non-fiction works, and researching best sellers.

The human species are intrusive by nature, and through no fault of our own. The media thrives upon this dependable of aspect, and feeds us reality television, soap operas, and fly on the wall documentaries. As a species, we have an undisputable urge to know what’s happening around us. I believe that it is this insatiable thirst for personal knowledge that will create an audience for my piece.

Via my research of recently published works of creative non-fiction, I can see that true-stories about real people and life-changing events are currently reaching the top of creative non-fiction ratings and sales lists. Personally, the feedback I have received when explaining my idea to people off-course has also been largely positive. 

On a personal note, regardless to whether or not the story would attract interest of readers and publishers, I feel like the research that went into writing the piece, and the story as an entirety, was worth both my time and my attention. I hope I can convincingly convey to my readers how important this story is to every person out there who has ever experienced abuse. And help those suffering to know that things do get better. You just have to get out.

Trials and Tribulations.

During the proceedings of researching John’s story, some of the hardest problems have been as follows: Distancing myself from the story, so as not to let my personal opinions shine through into the story. This was made increasingly more difficult when one of the central characters of the story announced that she refused to give her side of the story to a ‘bitch’ like myself, and that I could write ‘whatever the fuck’ I wanted. After informing John of this conversation, he resigned to be as honest and unbiased as possible so as not to jeopardise the legitimacy of my research. This incident also contributed to the decision to write the dramatization from John’s point of view.

Deciding on a suitable time frame in which to focus the creative piece was another issue that arose quite early on in my research. Although the timeline of the couple’s relationship spans 3 years, majority of those days were extremely repetitive and routine. This being said, the 3 significant events are spread throughout the timeline, creating the task of finding a way to span through them all.  It wasn’t until the topic of ‘framing’ was discussed in my week 9 lecture, that I decided my story could be adapted to fit a convoluted timeline. This would enable me to overcome my personal problems writing transitions in time, as well as enable me to skip forwards and backwards and cover the majority of scenes I had endeavored to include.

One final problem I have been wrestling with throughout this research process is the question of whether or not my final piece will be one that readers actually want to read. And whether the content will be deemed too controversial for publisher’s interest. This is a problem that I will be researching and resolving in next week’s blog post.

So here's the plan:

I aim to develop a meaningful narrative from my research by adopting the narrative perspective of John, and walking the reader through the day he decided to leave, and the day he left. This narrative works well with the research I have been able to gather from my interviews with John, and will also help to evoke sympathy towards his character from the readers. I chose to use a first person narrative, as it enables an in depth perspective from the source of majority of my research. As one of my biggest worries throughout the entirety of this research has been maintaining an unbiased story, I believe that taking John’s perspective will enable me to tell his side of the story, whilst maintaining the facts of the events.

The framing of my piece will be largely convoluted. This is because although the main story-line will follow John as he drives home and packs his bags, various objects around his surroundings will spark flashbacks in which he will recall a scene from the past. I have chosen to frame my story in this way, as I believe unlike chronological and manipulated timelines, the convoluted offers more freedom for necessary time skips and flashbacks, without the need for a complete ending to the story.

I will be choosing the scenes for my story by looking back through the interview sessions between myself and John, and picking not only scenes of intense conflict, but also of high emotion and adrenaline. These scenes will then be linked into the main story via trigger items, a technique used in fiction such as Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Next week I will go into further detail discussing problems I have encountered during my research process, and explain why I have had to take one character’s perspective of the events.