3 Tips for Turning Journalism into Fiction
Certain real-life news stories stick with us. Sometimes, those journalistic accounts inspire fiction.
(5 Different Forms of Journalism.)
Author Laura McBride was motivated to write her debut novel after learning about the February 13, 2008, police killing of a female ice cream truck driver near Las Vegas.
Police had summoned the 42-year-old woman to the scene of a traffic stop after her husband refused to sign a traffic ticket. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the woman retrieved a knife from her truck and used her young son as a shield. When a Taser failed to subdue the woman, police opened fire.
For McBride, that story struck a chord. “Sometimes something happens that’s so heartbreaking you can hardly stand it,” McBride told USA Today. “I couldn’t quite forget that story.”
The result was We Are Called to Rise, McBride’s award-winning novel about a split-second mistake that leaves a child’s fate in limbo.
Unlike the related news story, McBride’s novel uses no real names. Her book features fictional characters with invented names and imagined circumstances. The book’s central crisis is rooted in the same emotional truth as the news event. Yet, the story is completely different from the real police confrontation.
After all, McBride’s goal was literary fiction, not true-crime writing. “I took the three or four facts that were stuck in my head and tried to imagine my way in,” she explains in the back of her novel. “I hear a snippet of a news report or an interview or a radio program, and I ask myself: Who could have done that? Why? And then what?”
Similarly, when I saw a CNN news report of Dallas police shooting and killing Jason Harrison on June 14, 2014, the tragedy stuck in my head. Harrison’s mother had called the police because she needed help getting “Jay” to a hospital. Seconds after arriving on the scene, police shot the 39-year-old schizophrenic man five times, including twice in the back, CNN reported. Police bodycam video shows Harrison falling a few feet from his mother, who begins wailing, “Oh, they killed my son.”
Even now, this news report brings me to tears, especially because Harrison’s death was part of a broader trend: Of 994 people who were shot and killed by police officers in 2015, at least 25 percent suffered from acute mental illness at the time of their death, the Washington Post has reported. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be shot and killed during an encounter with police, the Treatment Advocacy Center found.
In writing my novel, Snakes of St. Augustine, I did not attempt to recreate any specific event. In no way do the family members and police officers in my book resemble the real-life players in Jason Harrison’s tragic death. All of my characters are composites, representing two trends: Individuals with mental health conditions who die during police encounters, and burnt out police officers who face dangerous situations without the proper training or tools.
Check out Ginger Pinholster’s Snakes of St. Augustine here:
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Three Guiding Principles
For fiction prompted by real-life events, my tips are as follows:
1) Use News Stories Only as Writing Prompts.
Don’t pluck a news story from the headlines and rewrite it exactly as it happened. Leverage real-life events to think about their deeper meaning. Create fictional characters from whole cloth. Avoid any real names or distinguishing characteristics.
Whether your work is nonfiction or fiction, if you feature real people who are recognizable in any way, you will need to secure permissions to avoid legal and ethical risks.
2) Pull the Human Truth from Real-Life Events.
What is the deeper meaning of the real-life news event that stuck with you? Fiction writers describe truths related to our human journey and broader societal issues.
Was the event part of a universal life experience or a national trend? What could have happened to result in that type of crisis? Those truths—not the journalistic details of a real-life event—will form the core of your fictional work.
Snakes of St. Augustine, for example, looks at how those with mental health conditions often face discrimination that turns them into “the others.”
3) Respect the Feelings of Real People.
Put another way, this tip means, “Don’t be ghoulish.” Avoid any appearance of writing “trauma porn” or exploiting a tragedy.
If your book sprang from a news report about a murder, for example, even if your work in no way resembles the actual event, always keep the suffering of those affected at the forefront of your mind. That constant awareness will help ensure that your tone and plot choices are compassionate and respectful.
Along the same lines, if your triggering news story relates to a racial injustice and you are not a member of the affected group, you will need to grapple with the risk of cultural appropriation. Read as much as possible. Conduct interviews with scholars in the affected community.
My forthcoming novel is not about the late Jason Harrison, specifically. Yet, I hope that my work will honor his life, and the lives of all those living with neurodiversity and an increased risk of harm by others.