Post #55 – Memoir and Fiction, Writing Alchemy – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Nora Ephron’s Lesson to Writers
I know there are many lessons to be learned from Nora Ephron’s work. She was an incredible woman with an Empire State Building-sized talent. Since the announcement of her death last week, I’ve been reading the many articles written about her life and her craft. There’s one I’d like to draw to your attention. Tom Hanks in an article reflecting on her voice and attention to detail highlighted a concrete example of an point for memoir writers.
In 1992, Hanks went to the movie “This is My Life” that was written and directed by Ephron. Although the movie was not a big success, it contained one scene that Hanks says made an impression on him, a big impression. He describes the scene this way:
‘…the lead character moves across the East River, her dreams, courage and household items packed into a rental trailer she is towing across the 59th Street Bridge. She steers uptown on First Avenue, then turns left toward Central Park, winding through it on one of the familiar cross-park routes, turns right on Broadway, then left onto an Upper West Side street, finally stopping in front of the family’s new home. What’s so special about that? Here’s what: this was the first time I had seen a geographically correct moving montage in a movie — real cars in real traffic in the actual order of transit required to get from point A (the ordinary life in not — Manhattan) to point B (Manhattan), a distance of miles physically but light-years culturally.”
Hanks continues:
“Nora, with her sense of story, understood the value of the turn-by-turn realism of her character’s trek, transforming what could have been a standard moving-the-kids-and-couch bit into a journey of hope and glory.”
Why did this passage speak to me? We’ve probably all seen movies about cities or locations that we know well. To the outsider, the scenes look fine. But if you know the place, you’re thinking “How the heck did she get from here to there. That street is one-way in the opposite direction.” Instead Ephron wrote the script with attention to detail. Then by doing that, she turned detail into a message about the protagonist’s life — a change in her life circumstances.
In our new book, Writing Alchemy: How to Write Fast and Deep, Kendra and I share a new system that helps you discover details at a finer level that you have previously used.
Details are the answer to the question we frequently hear: “But how DO I show rather than tell.” It’s all in the details that you provide the reader.
And how did Ephron’s attention to details affect Tom Hanks? Sure, he noticed and appreciated. But here’s the major impact it had on him:
“When I was told she was going to direct a second movie — Sleepless in Seattle — and wanted to meet, I actually hollered at my agent, “She shot that geographically authentic move into Manhattan!”
Yes, Hanks was eager to work with Nora Ephron in a movie because he respected the level of detail in This is My Life. Later, he also was in You’ve Got Mail. Which, by the way, is worth seeing again. We rented it this week at the first in our personal Nora Ephron festival. Next Saturday will be Sleepless in Seattle. Hope it has aged as well as You’ve Got Mail.
