World-Building Through Narrator and Voice: Advice on Creative Nonfiction

I. Take Agency

My first piece of advice: You, the writer, decide who is telling the story, and how much information they, as the storyteller, are supposed to know and expose. 

II. What Do You Observe? 

My second piece of advice: the writing process doesn’t stop when you leave your desk. When you’re out and about in the world, pay attention to how people say certain things, so you can replicate those styles in your writing. 

I prefer hanging out by myself, even when I’m out of my apartment; I like to go to public places — parks, bars, cafés, museums — and listen to the conversations of strangers around me. People-watching is one of my favorite things to do. It helps me flesh out my characters from scratch. 

III. Record Yourself

When figuring out how to infuse your writing with a certain character’s voice (either in dialogue or narration), it’s often useful to read aloud your work, record it on your phone or some recording device, and then play it back, listening carefully to see if the language sounds organic — if it sounds like a real human voice. 

IV. Consider Fuentes: A Case Study in Narratorial World-Building

Many useful examples of voice can be found in the work of Carlos Fuentes. His direct address is always very well-executed. Check out Aura, and you’ll see what I mean! 

Here’s the opening paragraph: 

You’re reading an advertisement. An offer like this isn’t made every day. You read it and reread it. It seems to be addressed to you and nobody else. You don’t even notice when the ash from your cigarette falls into the cup of tea you ordered in this cheap, dirty café. You read it again. ‘Wanted, young historian, conscientious, neat. Perfect knowledge colloquial French’.

Let’s analyze this! We don’t know who the narrator is yet, but Fuentes is building his world by making us the character in the story through direct address. Despite the brevity of this passage, we’ve been given a lot of information: we are sitting in a café. We don’t know where, but it’s cheap, and dirty. We can safely assume that this character (“you”) is not a millionaire. Already, we’ve gathered the following: setting, socioeconomic class, the related facts that the character a) speaks French, and b) is most likely a young historian. 

We have gathered this information because Fuentes has established it through a secondary source — the advertisement.

But Fuentes has also provided us with a paradox: the description in the newspaper and the character’s actions don’t match up. On the one hand, we know what this character thinks of themselves: the character believes they are conscientious and neat. On the other hand, the character doesn’t notice the cigarette ash they’re dropping into their tea, and they’re sitting in a dirty café, perhaps a regular spot. 

Because they reread the advertisement several times, immersed in a state of focus so intense that their habitual cleanliness has dropped away, we can conclude that the advertisement is one of great significance to them. We can further conclude that although this character is generally neat and conscientious (or so they believe), they cannot afford to dine in neat and conscientious establishments. And all of this information has been gathered within the span of a single paragraph!

V. Try out the Literature of Witness Technique

Literature of Witness is the most common approach for first-person narration. Literature of Witness is observational — the character, who is telling the story, bears witness to the events occurring around them. Through this act of Witness, the reader can pick up on information about the world which the writer is building for them. 

VI. Detach: Let Go of Expectations and Give Your Draft Some Space

A lot of writers, when starting out, make this mistake of getting attached to a certain way of telling the story — a certain perspective, or a certain character. Many writers, when starting out, want to tell the story a certain way, and when they look back at the writing, it doesn’t come out the way they initially intended. And then they freak out! But they realize how much work it would take to change things up, and do not follow through. 

You don’t have to give yourself a deadline. It is okay to leave things alone, then go back to them at a later date. It is better for the art, actually, to give it some space and breathing room. When you go back to it, you will not be the same person; you will have more knowledge, and more experience. 

I like to write something, then leave it alone for three to six months. I do not touch it. Instead, I leave it be, and read other things, write other things. This helps me separate the person I am when I write the work from the person I will be when I go back to it. This process of detachment and shifting subjectivity helps me write better. I’m not recommending that you do exactly the same thing (abandon your draft for six months at a time), but in my explorations, I’ve found that time is a writer’s friend! Find a rhythm that works for you; everyone has their own process, and that is okay!

In my own personal experience of creativity, practicing non-attachment and accepting that things are temporary, and works in progress, allows for the art to grow. Objectivity and detachment are important. It takes a lot of courage and work to be secure with changing things toward the good of the story, because really, what matters — is what’s on the page. The reader has never seen your face; they do not know who you are; they are only here for the story. If you want the story to shine, sacrificing your comfort and putting in the work to improve it are vital aspects of the creative process. 

That’s why The Incredibles 2, for example, took more than a decade to come out! They didn’t fast-track. Pixar took its time, and the film complemented the first one -- well -- incredibly! So don’t worry, and don’t rush. Just write.