Class 11 - Ethics and Nonfiction

Introduction

Today we’re going to talk about ethics. We’re going to start with a quick writing exercise.

Exercise 1:

Write for five minutes in response to the following question:

What are the ethical obligations that I have as a nonfiction writer？

We’ll feed back afterwards.

Discussion

We have already touched on many questions about ethics throughout this course. And many questions may have occurred to you:

1. When Tara Westover writes about her family, is this also a kind of betrayal?
2. What does Fernanda Eberstadt reveal about Stephen, and what does she not reveal? Why?
3. How does Michelle Kuo tackle the complex ethical questions of writing about people from economically and socially disadvantaged places?
4. Noreen Masud writes about troubled family relationships. What decisions does she make about what to say and what not to say? Would you make similar decisions? If not, why not.

On Good Writing

All these questions are questions about ethics. As writers, we want to be good at what we do. We want to produce “good” writing. But what do we mean by good?

On the one hand “good writing” is writing that is powerful, convincing, persuasive. On the other hand, “good writing” is writing that ethical, that is a force for good in the world. Or, at least, that doesn’t make the world a more shitty place. So in this week’s classes, we’re going to be thinking about what good writing is — in both senses of the word.

At this point, you may be rolling your eyes. Where’s the fun in being good, after all? Do we really need to worry about ethics? Sometimes we can think that ethics is all about what we’re not allowed to do, about what we shouldn’t do or ought not do. And perhaps not surprisingly, when we think about ethics like this, we find ourselves getting irritated. Nobody, after all, much likes being told what to do (or not all of the time, anyway). Not only this, but if we feel like we are being bossed around, the temptation is to simply do the opposite of what we are told, just for the sake of it. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out, When an ethical law of the form, ‘Thou shalt …, ‘is laid down, one’s first thought is, ‘And what if I do not do it?’

This, however, is a narrow and unhelpful idea of ethics. It’s better to see ethics as a process of becoming increasingly sensitive to the human complexities that writing involves. And part of this, of course, is thinking through the possible damage you may cause through, for example, lack of truthfulness, fairness and clarity. That’s the detail. But the bigger picture is why you write at all. It is not just about the ethical constraints on your writing, but about the ethical motivations that cause you to write.

Ethics, in other words, is not just about what you can and can’t or should and shouldn’t do. It is also about why you do what you do, or the impulses behind what you do. This question ‘why?’ providers the bigger ethical context of your writing.

A World Made of Matchsticks

For example, imagine that you want to write a nonfiction article about people who make complicated structures (Eiffel towers, DNA coils, life-size poodles) out of matchsticks. This may be driven by all kinds of impulses. For example, the following impulse seems quite positive:

a) I want to celebrate this painstaking, quirky creativity,

Meanwhile, this seems less positive:

b) I want to show how pointless and sad these people’s lives are.

Needless to say, if you wrote taking a) as your starting point, the article would be very different from how it would be if you took b) as your starting point. Not only this, but a) is very likely to make for a more boring piece of writing.

So what we’re going to talk about this week is how paying attention to ethics — rather than making your writing blander and less interesting — can actually make it richer, more humanly complex, more multi-faceted, and better not just in the moral sense, but also in the craft sense.

The Questions that Compel Us

Writing nonfiction is always ethically complex, whether the subject-matter is yourself or other people, but one advantage of creative nonfiction is that you can let your reader into this complexity, and let them see your own struggles with it. If you bring the ethical questions that compel you into your own writing, the writing will get stronger.

Because this process of wrestling with difficult ethical issues is also, at least potentially, a part of the story you are telling. When you write, you may often find ethical questions popping up:

• Can I write about this person in this way?
• Is this mean-spirited?
• Do I have a right to tell this story?
• Do I really remember this accurately?
• What will the effect of this writing be on my audience?
• What are my motivations in telling this story?
• Am I stretching the truth for greater effect?

…and so on! There’s no end to these questions once you start asking them!

Ethics exercise 2: Thinking Through ethics.

For this exercise, take a piece of nonfiction writing that you have done on this course, and that you think raises interesting ethical questions for you yourself as a writer.

What are these questions? Write them down as clearly and concisely as you can. At this stage, just write a list or a few bullet points. Now you have two things: a) a piece of writing and b) a list of ethical issues.

I’ll put you in pairs to discuss

Ethics exercise 3:

The next task is to write a new piece of writing that brings these things together. How can you rewrite the original piece so that the ethical issues, and your struggles with them, become a part of the story you are telling? How can you fold these ethical issues into the body of the writing?

It is best for this exercise not to just edit the previous piece of writing, but to start a new piece of writing. In this new piece you are both telling the original story and also allowing these ethical challenges to become a part of the story you are telling.

If we have time, we’ll share our work!

Homework: The Creative Nonfiction Police

Read through the article by Lee Gutkind called “The Creative Nonfiction Police.” Now think about these questions, and write some responses to the questions that interest you (you don’t need to cover them all) on canvas.

Also respond to your fellow students’ work!

1. What, according to Gutkind, are the ethical problems faced by nonfiction writers?
2. In what sense are they problems?
3. What is Gutkind’s checklist? Do you agree with his points?
4. Would you add anything to your checklist for ethical nonfiction?
5. Was there anything you disagreed with in Gutkind’s piece?
6. How, if at all, did this piece make you think about your own writing?

In the next session, we’ll do the assignment briefing, and talk a bit about editing.