John McPhee, a master of nonfiction storytelling, wrote an engaging article for The New Yorker this week about how he finds his ideas. Progression: How and What? (I've linked an abstract here--you can only get the complete article as a subscriber) is wonderful because he shows us how his mind works and how he approaches his projects.
There is a lot to learn from this article. First, is the importance of structure. For McPhee, the right structure is paramount to the success of a story. He gives an example of a couple of articles where he devised a challenging structure first and then built the story from there. Now, there's an idea I had never thought of. (And, maybe only McPhee can pull it off).
Second, is idea generation. One day, McPhee decided to make a list of all the articles he had ever written. He put a check next to the ones that had concepts that he was interested in as a child. He was amazed to discover that over 90% of them had checks. Now it's possible he was an extremely precocious child, or maybe he's revealing an important truth: The ideas are in us, we just need to tap them.
It all sounds so simple, doesn't it? Good idea + strong structure=New Yorker article. Ha! Not to use a cliche but...the devil is in the details.
... but it is the devil that compels us!
ReplyDeleteIIRC, I was given McPhee's book, "Coming into the Country," as a gift during Christmas break back in 1977. It was transformational for me. The idea that one could write create profound yet popular literature about geology and geography was a revelation. Nat Geo dominated the genre -- but its emphasis was on photojournalism.
Thank you for article review. We could all learn something about writing from McPhee.
I am just starting a series of books on human geography. At least one of the volumes will be dedicated to McPhee. As you state, McPhee is a master of the craft.
Cheers,
Lee