By Miriam Hill
Special to Poynter Online

“This guy is a writing genius!” I emit out loud as I devour Jon Franklin’s bible on narrative writing, Writing for Story.  I admire this accomplished author who won the Pulitzer Prize… twice!  I am mesmerized while he takes me through a delicate brain surgery in “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster.”  He fascinates me with the determination of a black man who wants to become educated in “The Ballad of Old Man Peters.”

Robin Sloan

Beyond his riveting stories, Jon Franklin is generous about sharing his knowledge with other writers. In Writing for Story, he dissects his masterpieces line-by-line in “The Annotated Monster” and “The Annotated Ballad.”  He shares the writing formula he created to guide the writer toward a successful narrative story:

1. Complication

2. Development

3. Resolution

When I finish his book, I am so impressed I vow, ”I have to meet Jon Franklin someday…no matter what it takes!”

It takes Bill Mitchell of the Poynter Institute, who invites me to attend the 2002 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism at Harvard. When I scan the roster of speakers and see that Jon Franklin will be among the nine Pulitzer Prize winners presenting, I make my reservations the same day. I will fly from Tampa to Boston.

Bill Mitchell understands my excitement and e-mails me the following message. “I share your admiration of Jon Franklin. Writing for Story has gotten me through some otherwise hopelessly tangled tales.”

Learning About Characters

In his well-attended teaching session, titled “All Stories Are About People: The relationship between character and action,” Jon Franklin begins to teach about characters.

“They are the heart of every story,” he declares. "Every emotional story has a sympathetic character, and characters are important to the stories of experience. Great characters are weird. We’re all great characters, but we are taught as children to hide our character.”  His challenge to writers is to make the reader enter the story and forget what they are doing…through the main character.

Jon Franklin talks about each of us having a “pilot light” that characterizes who we are. “If we are intense at the age of six months, we will continue to be intense at the age of 84.”
      
The writer should promise the reader, “I can make you live in someone else’s head.

Psychological Interview

To get inside someone’s head, Franklin suggests conducting a “psychological interview.” The writer asks a person about his or her childhood, beginning with a first memory. Memory has a time, place, subject, character, and mood. It will be true, according to what the person remembers. Then Franklin suggests the writer go on to, “What was your family like?”  And follow with, “Anything traumatic?  Death of your parents or pets?”  Then Franklin adds,  “What they remember and how they remember it emotionally, will allow you to see how a person looks at the world and why they respond as they do. You can see if they are trusting or paranoid."

Motive

“Look for the motive in the character,” Franklin advises. “Find out why a woman is a foster mother for three generations of children. What is the psychological payoff for her? What is she compensating for? What guilt does she have? What pleasure does she derive?”

Puberty

Franklin focuses on more psychology. “Puberty takes the early things we are and solidifies it.  Then you have a good idea of who the person is.  Unless trauma changes people, we’re all junior high kids who got older.  Every 70–year-old has an 11-year-old inside.”

Character Detail

Jon Franklin encourages writers to pay careful attention to character detail. “It’s a mistake to create characters from the details of the surroundings. You want the opposite. If a trophy is there, what did the person do to get the trophy? If you don’t know the character, you don’t know what the character’s surroundings mean. If the character grew up in a junkyard, and now has white carpet and a starched shirt, you have something interesting. A character’s house may be messy because he grew up like that, or it may be a rebellion against a tidy home. All things have meaning.”

Chronology

The highlight of Jon Franklin’s session was his insistence that writers make a chronology for their stories. “You are going to make a chronology or you are going to make a disaster,” Franklin warns. “Put every event and the time in the upper left-hand corner. You can’t have an event without time.”  Then this great writing teacher walks to a chart and with a black marker, vertically writes the numbers from 1-10. “Number one is the beginning of your story, number 10 is the end of your story. As writers, you want to begin your story at number 6.  Then go back to number one, and progress to number 10.”

Readers' Education

“We all write for people with an 8th-grade education,” Franklin observes.  “But simple language doesn’t mean simple people or simple ideas.”

Franklin's Drama

At the end of his session, Franklin has a twinkle in his eye. “People want to hear what we want to hear,” Franklin states. Then with a dramatic wave of his arm for emphasis, the stocky, balding Franklin says,  “I’m thin! I have hair!  Love me!”

When I talk with Jon Franklin and share my frustrations about being a freelance writer, he shares, “I began by writing two inches in a newspaper.”

“Were you born a writing genius?” I probe.

“No!” he scoffs, as he leans back in his chair.  “I worked hard.”

Perhaps that is Jon Franklin’s best advice for writers.

Miriam Hill is a freelance writer who lives in Florida.