An Impromptu: Fiction in Nonfiction 1
In this impromptu we start moving in the other direction from the way we have been moving—instead of worrying how to include factual components in a fictional story, we’re going to worry about using fictional techniques to amplify and heighten a nonfictional narrative. In this case we’re going to give an anecdote or incident from your own life the weight and density and development of a scene in a novel.
Think about the incident or episode from your life you want to be the center of this impromptu. Before you start writing try to remember or imagine the setting in which the incident took place, the appearance of the characters, their behavior, the ways they express themselves. As you start to tell this incident see if you can’t reveal character through speech and action and appearance and make the moment you’re recounting as vividly alive as if you were imagining it for the first time.
Write this scene for awhile and then stop, come back to it, and either read it aloud or read it silently in a way that lets you imagine what it sounds like. Does it sound like the scene you created in your earlier fiction? Does it approximate (but not necessarily imitate) the sound of Mary Karr’s storytelling in The Liar’s Club? Try to heighten the dramatic narrative of the story.