How Did It Really Happen?

By Tamara Dean






A “vivid and continuous dream” wrote the late John Gardner, author of The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist , is the type of narrative that readers find captivating and memorable. But a “vivid and continuous dream” is the subjective result of an author’s efforts. How do we craft such an ever-dazzling trance?



With honesty . Commit to seeking the truth doggedly, unimpeded by judgment or fear. Writing more honestly isn’t about a moral fidelity to the truth, although that can’t hurt. It’s about being precise. Honesty leads to precision, and precision makes your prose more compelling and convincing.



Here’s a line from Joni Tevis’ Pushcart Prize-winning essay, “If Your Dreams Don’t Scare You,” about university marching band and hazing:




October afternoons, we practiced a stiff prance that popped the knee ninety degrees and needled the toe down into the dirt, bam! Scissor! Bam! Scissor!




Tevis’ specificity of detail brings us into the narrator’s truth. Such precision works for fiction as well as nonfiction; in fiction, you’re after the characters’ truths.



One simple yet powerful technique for achieving greater honesty in my writing applies to revision: Reread your work slowly and ask of each claim you make, however minor it might seem, No, how did it really happen? Or, What’s the real truth?



Often, we write early drafts in a kind of shorthand. That’s fine. It’s our way into and through the material. My first draft might include, “As a flower girl, I wore a long white dress to the wedding.” But when I question myself, I remember that’s not exactly true. In fact, I wore an off-white dress with crocheted daisies stitched to the hem that grazed my shins. Maybe that dress isn’t essential to my essay’s theme or arc—such exactitude is most important when it serves your main drama directly—yet even with incidental claims, precision draws the reader in. It leads to the richness we mean when we say about a book we read, “I felt like I was there.”



But honesty isn’t only for revision. What about first drafts? What if you depicted everything precisely rather than relying on shorthand from the start? You might regard a scene as an exploded diagram, where even the smallest part is named, illustrated, and situated in relation to other parts. Rather than accept the first character description that comes to mind, search for something more particular and truer. Rather than summarizing a pivotal event, render in a moment-by-moment fashion the dialogue, actions, and insights that make up the scene. Later, in revision, you can assess which elements of the exploded diagram are worth preserving.



Greater honesty will reveal more undercurrents in your piece than were evident when you conceived it. Unerring precision will help concretize themes. This practice offers benefits whether applied to facts or feelings, exposition or metaphors. It’s a way of setting the record straight, conveying big emotions such as grief and lust, and capturing readers’ hearts. Pursuing high-definition truth can even, through elaboration and qualification, become part of your piece’s style.



Here’s another bold claim, one that I’ve experienced and was delighted to discover is proven by neuroscience: writing more honestly not only transforms your work; it transforms your life. In fact, it changes your brain and blood cells.



Decades ago, James Pennebaker researched the healing effects of writing about traumatic experiences. His conclusion might sound familiar to creative writers: writing about challenges makes those challenges feel more manageable. But he and other scientists took the studies further. In this November 2023 podcast , Andrew Huberman describes the beneficial writing protocol that they developed, along with its implications. Among other things, their research showed that rewriting the story of a difficult experience four times within one month, while focusing on facts, feelings, and associations, leads us to be more honest about the event. And that honesty changes which neural pathways we use to recount the experience to ourselves. This—extraordinarily!—helps us heal both emotionally and physically. Memories recast more precisely produce less anxiety. Meanwhile, blood tests taken before and after this protocol indicated that writing more honestly improved immune function, even several months following the exercise.



Whether or not you factor health benefits into your writing practice, this approach can offer a new perspective on your work.



Try it with any line from your work-in-progress. Stop and ask, “No, how did it really happen?”



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Feeling stuck or uninspired? Discover practical techniques for overcoming resistance and tapping creativity in Writing With Consistency & Courage, a CRAFT TALKS interactive workshop for all genres. 2-5PM EST January 27th, $135. More info/register here.



Tamara Dean writes fiction and nonfiction and enjoys teaching writing as much as writing. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar , Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion , The Southern Review , and elsewhere. Her essay collection, Shelter and Storm , is forthcoming in 2025 from the University of Minnesota Press. Subscribe to her newsletter for monthly writing insights and first dibs on her workshops.