Write True

Bring Authenticity to Your Work with Details from the Natural World

Juliet Marillier

We owe our readers truth in our writing. Not literal truth, or we’d be limited to recording what we had for breakfast and how far we walked the dog, but a deeper and more profound kind of truth. It’s a truth that can permeate our fiction whether we are writing a space opera or a Regency romance or a hard-boiled detective story. It’s the same kind of truth that can be found in traditional stories from all cultures, and it has its roots in nature. Sometimes it’s called authenticity.

The term authenticity appears in reviews of nature-based works such as James Rebanks’s The Shepherd’s Life, an evocative, plain-speaking memoir by a sheep farmer who lives and works in Britain’s Lake District. The Shepherd’s Life is indeed real, actual, and genuine. It is a firsthand account—three generations of the Rebanks family have farmed the same land. Reading this book puts you right there on the fells with the sheep and the hardworking dogs and the men and women whose lives are governed, like those of their animals, by the changing seasons and the vagaries of the weather. We are invited to share not only the daily work of a fell farmer but the moods of nature in the Lake District, the impact of historical events such as the Great War on the families who live there—many sons were lost—and, above all, the mind-set that comes from working so close to nature. Carol Midgley, writing in The Times, said of The Shepherd’s Life, “What is most striking about this book is its authenticity; this is the real thing.”

In his lovely book Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field, John Lewis-Stempel records the passing of the seasons in a single field on a farm in rural England. Here the author lives, works, observes acutely, and records in beautiful, clear language the changes in this field over a full year: the behavior of plants, animals, birds, and insects; the stream and its inhabitants; the weather; the soil. Such a book could only have been written by a person who lived and breathed nature, a person who understood his own relationship with the natural world in a way far deeper than the purely intellectual. The writing possesses an innate truth that goes beyond any attempt to analyze, summarize, or commentate. Simply, it is living the story.

So, can a writer be truly authentic only when writing memoir, autobiography, or nonfiction? Not at all. We can carry that real, actual, and genuine quality into our fiction. To do so, we must believe in the characters and their setting; while we are writing them, they must become real to us. And in our preparation to tell their stories, we must know their environment as if it were our home ground. The best practice for that is to understand our own place in nature and to be mindful of what shapes us into the individuals we are. We experience the world around us through our five senses. As writers, we need to sharpen our awareness of the senses so we can carry those experiences into our fictional worlds and make those worlds real and authentic to the reader.

Some novelists have an exceptional skill in bringing natural settings alive on the page. Here are just a few examples, all very different: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, Gingerbread by Robert Dinsdale, Traitor by Stephen Daisley, and Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.

My prime example is a classic novel, Precious Bane by Mary Webb, first published in 1924. In Precious Bane, the bond between characters and nature is powerfully present on every page—almost in every sentence. The novel is set in the English county of Shropshire, where the author lived as a child, and it’s told in first person by a young woman using the local dialect. Dialect can soon pall, but here it’s done with such liveliness and sensitivity that it makes both narrator Prudence Sarn and her environment, including the other characters, utterly real for the reader. Prue is not a woman of learning; she’s a hardworking farmhand. Her senses govern her perceptions. She lives closely with the natural world. Both she and the reader understand that she is an integral part of it. Here’s a sample:

In Stanley Baldwin’s 1928 introduction to Precious Bane, he wrote, “The strength of the book … lies in the fusion of the elements of nature and man.” And that, I believe, is key to authenticity in our writing, whether our setting is contemporary or historical, whether it is the real world or an invented one.

As a druid, I hold two beliefs that help make sense of this. First, humankind is not set above the rest of nature but is an equal part in the great web of living things. Not so very long ago, humankind lived and worked in a constant awareness of nature. We understood the seasonal cycles. Along with the weather, the seasons determined when and how we did our work. We respected and feared the power of storm, flood, and fire. But we’ve largely moved away from that life. In a world of fast technological change and an obsession with “progress,” we are increasingly separated from nature. Indeed, we are so out of tune with it that we may exploit and degrade it. Or we are so tied up in our daily lives that we simply forget to see it.

That’s a broad generalization, of course. But it is often true for many of us. And if we lose sight of nature and our place in it, how can we convincingly write about it? How can we make the natural world and the characters who live in it real and authentic on the page if we are out of touch with them ourselves? Don’t most stories happen in the natural world—or a natural world of some kind?

The second druidic belief relevant to this discussion is that storytelling has great power to teach and heal. Since the days when stories were told around the fire after dark to keep monsters at bay and to make sense of life’s challenges, traditional tales have been shared in communities around the world. (It is fascinating how versions of the same stories spring up in disparate, geographically separated cultures.) Those stories possess a kind of truth that is deeper than factual truth—I call them “truer than true.” They hold in their heart the values that keep us alive, lead us along wise pathways, and give us the strength to meet challenges and make hard decisions. The tales may have the trappings of fantasy, of magic, of monsters and spirits, and things that go bump in the night. But those crowd-pleasing garments clothe inner wisdom. The stories tell us about loyalty, courage, and faith; comradeship, endurance, and patience. They show us when to be wary and when to take risks. They teach us how to love and how to let go. The oral storytelling tradition is no longer strong in our society. That makes it even more important for us to write with awareness of those inner truths, the values that help keep people strong, wise, and good.

I’m not suggesting we all write novels based on fairy tales, folklore, or mythology, though a traditional tale may well inspire a crime novel or thriller or historical romance. I do believe it’s important for us, as writers, to remain aware of that oral tradition and how vital it was to society for so long, and to be mindful of our responsibility as storytellers. We are not only entertainers; we are also teachers, healers, and wise elders. As a reader, I like a novel to contain a note of hope or learning at the end. I don’t mean all novels should have happy endings; that wouldn’t be authentic. And a novel does not need a didactic message. But I like to see a character gain wisdom as a result of what’s happened in the story or reach a light at the end of the tunnel. That way, a novel has the same power as one of those old traditional stories.

That leads us back to nature. In fairy tales and folklore, nature is a powerful force. Woodlands are dark and mysterious hiding places for the unknown and the unknowable. Rivers rise to drown the evildoer or the unwary. Caves, lakes, and mushroom circles are portals to different worlds. A single leaf or berry proves transformative; an act of kindness toward a creature in trouble leads to unexpected benefits. Thorns grow thickly around a castle, shutting out the world; a mountain of ice stands in the way of an ensorcelled prince’s rescue. Nature is an integral part of almost every traditional story. This is as it should be, since those tales are our maps for living and we are ourselves part of nature.

How do we use this wisdom in our own storytelling? In simple ways that help us improve our craft, regardless of the genre.

USE YOUR FIVE SENSES TO EXPERIENCE THE WORLD AROUND YOU

Practice engaging all five senses daily in different environments. Have your characters do the same in their own world. Use their sensory perceptions to bring settings to life. Be sparing with this—a few deft touches are more effective than lengthy descriptive passages. Think about Prudence Sarn and her tossy-ball. The paragraph I quoted from Precious Bane includes the senses of touch, sight, and hearing.

WALK THE GROUND

If you can visit your characters’ setting, do so. Employ your senses there. How does the environment shape your characters? How does it affect the way they think and feel, the way they act, their relationships with each other? Take photographs and video for reference. Eat local food. Read local newspapers. Listen to local music. Talk to local people.

If you’re writing historical fiction, learn how the environment of your characters has changed over the years and why. Visit cultural museums. Read documents dating from your period. Join a historical reenactment society. Learn how it feels to wear period clothing, use the weapons, play the musical instruments, handle the tools, dance the dances. Write with a quill pen. Go camping in the wilderness. Wherever you can, be hands-on.

WALK IN OTHER WORLDS

What if you’re writing a novel set in a secondary (invented) world? If that world is based, closely or loosely, on a historical period and/or culture in the real world, keep the details accurate—the inclusion of uncanny or fantastic elements is not a license to defy logic. For instance, if your characters travel mainly on horseback, make sure your horses don’t perform impossible feats of endurance or agility. The vital rule for worldbuilding is to make your world internally consistent. The raw materials for your secondary world will come from the world you know—where else?—though, of course, you may mix, twist, and change them.

Your invented world should feel real, actual, and genuine to the reader. There should be no jarring notes—for instance, names that are a mismatch linguistically or historically but are used for characters or places within the same invented culture, or plants and animals plucked seemingly at random from different parts of the real world growing or living together in the secondary world. You want your reader to forget, while immersed in the story, that your world is not actually real. So be consistent. Use sensory detail subtly to bring the world to life. Avoid info dumps (blocks of explanatory information). Instead incorporate small, telling details of your world as the story progresses so the reader is led in gradually. As for conscious anachronism or culture mashing, those are for experienced writers—approach with caution.

KEEP DIALOGUE REAL

The topic of authenticity in dialogue could fill up a whole book of its own. Capturing the “real, actual, genuine” quality in dialogue does not mean replicating the way people talk in the real world. If we wrote like that, our novels would struggle under the weight of the verbiage. The pace would be funereal and the meaning often unclear. To write convincing dialogue, first know your characters and their setting from the inside out. How has your character’s psychology been shaped by the circumstances of his birth, upbringing, or life experience? What regional factors come into play? How do the characters’ ages or circumstances affect the way they talk? What vocabulary is appropriate to the time, location, and culture? In other words, how is dialogue in this particular instance shaped by the nature of things?

A writer of great dialogue takes all of those factors into consideration and then refines the dialogue to include only what is essential to build character, create a mood, or carry the plot forward. You might distill a real conversation down to a quarter of its actual length for the purpose of effective storytelling.

DON’T LOSE SIGHT OF THE NATURAL WORLD

The novel may be set in a hermetically sealed chamber, the interior of a spaceship on a long interplanetary journey, or a solitary confinement cell. How can you anchor the story in the natural world if the characters never experience what lies outside the limited confines of their environment? Use your imagination, but build on your experience. There’s the natural world the character dreams of—the one she remembers, longs for, hopes for, fears. The distant planet seen through the viewing screen. The flesh-and-blood life imagined by a golem, an android, a robot. The traces of nature still present even in the enclosed or clinical environment.

Whether your setting is contemporary, historical, fantastic, or just plain weird, write as if that world were your own. Let us touch, taste, hear, smell, and see it through your characters. Know those characters’ inner truths. Do this, and the reader will believe in your story. It will feel real, actual, and genuine. More than that, the story will stay in your reader’s thoughts long after he has finished the book.