As far as I know, there is no generally-recognized name for the kind of writing in this collection. Therefore, following Truman Capote's lead in calling "In Cold Blood" a "non-fiction novel," I call the three articles I will be discussing here (Murder in the Math Department, Two Tales of One City, and Adrift on a Troubled Sea) "non-fiction short stories"--"non-fiction" because everything in them is true and "short stories" because, like short stories, they all have beginnings, middles and ends; they make extensive use of scenes, dialogue and a strong narrative thread; they deal with people, not issues; they are told from the points of view of the people involved; and, as is usually the case in conventional storytelling, the author neither explicitly injects his opinion nor makes any judgments.

Although I could have written all the stories in this collection as articles, I chose to write them as stories in the hope this would give them both greater impact and a longer shelf life. The first piece of these three stories ("Two Tales Of One City") was written in 1980. And yet, at least in my opinion, it is still as readable as the last one ("Adrift On A Troubled Sea") which was written in 1986. In contrast, even newspaper articles which stunned the world when they first appeared are often unreadable today because they deal only with news, which once it is known, is of no further interest.

Unlike most magazine articles, non-fiction stories tend to have a specific architecture. Early in the story the writer raises a question which the story will answer. (At the Los Angeles Times where I worked after journalism school, this is called the "nut graph"-- the place early in the story where the writer says, or better yet, implies, in a nutshell what the story is about.) But it goes beyond mere summation. When used with sophistication, the nut graph establishes a contract with the reader. It sets up lines of tension which stretch from the beginning of the story to the end and it promises the reader a resolution at the end. At the same time, it places a responsibility on the writer to make good on his promise. When well done, the story ends with a sense of completeness and closure, in contrast to most newspaper articles which just tend to trail off.

In a non-fiction story, there are no heroes or villains -- just people. Consequently, in these stories I have taken care not to stack the deck, indicate a preference or otherwise put my own special twist on the ball. I haven't tried to expose anyone, right a wrong or make the world a better place (always a bad idea for a writer; your real job should be telling the truth and let the reader deal with it as best he can). My goal instead was to stand in the shoes of the characters, feel what they feel and tell their story from their point of view without bias or distortion.

Because I don't explicitly judge the people I write about, the readers are free to drew their own conclusions, which they largely do. This does not, however, mean that these stories are free of bias -- only that I didn't consciously slant them one way or the other. The unconscious bias rather came out in what I chose to write about, and which facts I thought were important to mention and which ones I ignored (you can’t put everything you know in a story; you need a criterion to weed out the excess). Because these were unconscious biases, I wasn't generally aware of them until an editor pointed them out (one reason for a good editor).

In contrast to most magazine journalists, who either write profiles or articles about public issues, in these stories I have generally avoided writing about issues per se and instead have sought out people on opposite sides of the same conflict. Although the three stories in this collection are steeped in larger issues (perennial students, landlord-tenant relations, and the conflict of cultures), they are still basically stories about people immersed in those issues, not stories about the issues themselves.

The best subjects for non-fiction stories, I have found, are two people (or two groups of people) in conflict. In conflict, there is drama. And conflict brings out both the best and worst in people. My goal in telling these stories has been to make the best possible case for each side. The resulting story shows both sides with such sympathy and plausibility (or at least tries to) that the net effect is an implicit argument for toleration--life is more complex than we initially suspect; situations are never black and white; and it's a mistake to judge until you've heard both sides of the story (and it may be a mistake afterwards as well).

Despite the power of the non-fiction story format, there is in some quarters more than a little prejudice against such writing--it is seen as mere entertainment and the writers mere gossip mongers who cater to the readers' desire to wallow in emotion rather than think about an issue. Even when critics recognize the power of the technique, they often don't regard it as worthy in its own right and instead see it as a kind of narrative hook to trick the reader into digesting the really important stuff—the facts, figures and issues that the reader will need to better agitate for social change.

To me, such criticism is unreasonably narrow-minded. For one thing, writers of non-fiction stories don’t have the same aims as traditional journalists. A traditional journalist interviews all parties concerned to establish objective truth and, oftentimes, right a social wrong. In this collection, on the other hand, I have taken the point of view that in any situation involving real people there is no such thing as objective truth. A person's memory of some event rather depends on his experience, biases and emotional state. Besides, in these three stories, it wasn't so much the basic facts that were in dispute as the interpretation of the facts. To say it another way, it isn't so much knowing what happened that concerns me as knowing how my characters felt about what happened and were affected by it.

My approach when interviewing is simply to try to understand each person's point of view as well as I can without attempting to say whether I agree with it, or even whether I think the story is true (I always do, at least at the time I am doing the interview, which is perhaps one reason I am (usually) able to get his story in the first place.) And, in fact, I've discovered, there is usually amazing agreement on the facts--though not on what the facts mean.

None of this is meant to imply that the writing of non-fiction stories permits taking liberties with the facts. In my experience, non-fiction story writers usually take the same care (or certainly should take the same care)that any reporter does in researching any story. In any case, there isn't any need to alter quotes, make up dialogue or the weather, invent scenes, attribute thoughts or attitudes, or even describe something that certainly must have happened (a leaf falling or a cloud passing in front of the sun). In my own case, I operate from the assumption (and fear) that I will someday find myself sued for libel and thus I want to be able to point to a source for every word.

Although editors tend to think if a subject has been widely covered in he media it is of no further interest to the readers, I prefer to write about matters that have had wide prior coverage. This way the reader starts off with a basic familiarity with the story and, as a result, the impact is that much greater when he discovers how much the real story differs from the one he thought he knew.

For example, in "Adrift on a Troubled Sea," which was the story of two young Palos Verdes women who drifted for three weeks on a tiny boat in the Indian Ocean, most of the prior press and TV coverage simply reported the story as a simple survival tale. My story, in contrast, dwelt on their difficult and frustrating relationship with the guides who, as devout Muslims, had taken the point of view that insofar as Allah had willed their deaths there was nothing to be done, while the women, as middle class Americans, were operating on the assumption that the lord helps those who help themselves.


AFTER I PUBLISH an article, it is not unusual to have people ask me how I ever managed to find such a story, as if the story was just hanging out there, like sheets on a clothesline, and all I did was come along and take it all down. What they generally don't realize is that in most instances there was no story out there and that I created the story in much the same way that a novelist might have. The difference is, my basic building blocks are actual dialogue, incidents and scenes rather than imagined ones.

When a writer begins work on a non-fiction story, he starts off with thousands of facts none of which particularly hang together. But gradually, he gets a notion, finds a thesis, and discovers how to put the material together in such a way that it comes to make moral sense, which is to say, the story implies, however indirectly, that whatever happened, happened for a reason, that there is an order to the universe that rewards virtue and punishes evil.

There is nothing particularly new in any of this. Fiction writers have always done it. It is the basis for most myths and much fiction. Nor is it unknown in the non-fiction world. Barbara Tuchman has specifically written about this phenomenon in the writing of history. And anthropologists have long been aware that the best way to write a compelling book of the sort that Margaret Mead did about Samoa or Bronislaw Malinowski did about the Trobriand Islands is first to lose your field notes--this way you don't have to deal with trying to fit inconvenient truths into one coherent story.

Still it is understandable why all writers feel a need to try to make sense of their experience even in situations where what happened was unreasonable and inexplicable. Whether true or not, people like to believe that the universe is not a cold and arbitrary place and that, when things happen, they happen for a reason. And, in fact, this is the problem with using a chronological narrative structure. It implies cause-and-effect relationships that may not exist in the real world. Although novelists do this all the time, I'm not completely sure that journalists (or anthropologists) should allow themselves the same latitude.

Still, this isn't so much a reason to avoid the non-fiction story as warning to be aware of potential limitations on the method. Because such limitations are built in, the prudent writer of non-fiction takes a humble attitude toward his work, keeping his approach cautious and the scope of his thesis no wider than necessary to make his story work.