Human Writes: Details
The genealogy of a story | Non-Fiction | Fresh Soup
A few weeks ago, I was on a webinar with Rachel Kadish, a core faculty member of the creative writing MFA that I direct at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In a conversation about whether or not writing can be taught, Rachel discussed how her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor and the family storyteller, had taught her when she was little that what makes a story are facts and details: When did it happen? Where? How many people were standing on the railway platform? Without these specifics, there can be no story. And that’s why, to this day, Rachel is careful to thoroughly research every detail before she writes a work of historical fiction, so that she can tell the story just like her grandfather used to.