How to Integrate Research and Narrative
Navigating the challenges of weaving information and story. (Part 2!)
I’m glad to be back this week to talk about another way you can approach integrating research and narrative: sections, or chunking! Last time, I wrote about how to bring research into narrative in a deft, clear way—blending the flour and butter, as it were, by using some of the writer Joan Didion’s techniques. This time, I am going to talk about pivoting in larger chunks, or using section breaks to alternate sections of memoir and sections of research. When you do this, you will be using the “palimpsest voice” that we worked on earlier to pivot between sections of the character in scene and sections in which the later-in-time, reflective writer is now sharing information from a more knowing vantage.
One basic tool of magazine and essay writing is really helpful here: