Friday Speak Out!: WHAT NEWSPAPERS TAUGHT ME ABOUT WRITING FICTION

By Fran Hawthorne

Who? What? When? Where? Why?

For 30 years, that list was drummed into me and my colleagues by the editors at the newspapers and magazines where we worked: Give your readers the facts. Provable facts. No highfalutin' language. No opinions. The facts will tell the story.

A few factual adjectives were permitted. A city council meeting might be crowded, loud, even "spirited." A criminal suspect--especially, of course, one who was still at large--could be described as short, tall, heavyset (never "fat"), blond, elderly. Our ultimate workaround was to sneak in a direct quote from someone who used an adjective or two.

In any case, with our stories usually confined to strict wordcount limits, we had no room for adjectives. As for adverbs? They barely existed.

In a meeting that ran past midnight, and after two years of debate, the City Council yesterday voted 8 to 7 to allow low-income housing on a former warehouse site on the east side.

That's almost flash fiction, isn't it?

Now, however--ah, now I write novels. Now I can actually play with words like: scared, uncertain, miserable, eagerly, carefully.

But here's the thing: I rarely do.

If journalists are taught the five Ws, fiction-writers are just as powerfully imbued with the demand to "show, don't tell."

I don't want to outright tell my readers that Alice, in my new novel HER DAUGHTER, is nervous about meeting with her daughter and her ex-husband. I want readers to feel her nervousness, through the way that she prepares a detailed list of things to say and arrives early at their designated Starbucks in order to scout out tables. She wishes she'd ordered a muffin so that she could keep her fingers busy picking it apart. She knocks over her coffee cup. Maybe I'll even have her best friend urge her beforehand not to be nervous.

After all these years, I've grown into my hybrid style. Call it journafiction? I don't want a lot of fussy little descriptive tics.

Still, I'm glad to have a few stunning or exhilarating (but not tired) adjectives and adverbs in my palette, to be used occasionally and judiciously (but not extravagantly).

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During her award-winning journalism career, FRAN HAWTHORNE wrote eight nonfiction books, mainly about consumer activism, the drug industry, and the financial world. She’s also been an editor or regular contributor for Business Week, The New York Times, and many other publications. Her first two novels, The Heirs and I Meant to Tell You, were published in 2018 and 2022 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press and together won or were named a finalist for seven awards, including the Eric Hoffer Book Awards and the Sarton Award. HER DAUGHTER, Fran’s third novel, will be published in January 2026 by Black Rose Writing. She’s at work on Number 4 from her home in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more at hawthornewriter.com

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