The Ecological Conditions Behind Non-Fiction Writing | Li Xueli & Zhuang Ruilin & Ning Hui & Zhang Jieping: Companions in Time

This article is a record of the lecture "A Companion in Time, The Ecological Conditions Behind Non-fiction Writing" at the first season of "Presence" non-fiction writing.

Speakers of this lecture: Li Xueli, editor-in-chief of "Reporter"; Zhuang Ruilin, editor-in-chief of Chunshan Publishing House;

Published content of this lecture:

The media article on the ecological conditions behind non-fiction writing: Li Xueli, editor-in-chief of The Reporter & Ning Hui, editor-in-chief of Duan Media International Edition

The Ecological Conditions Behind Non-fiction Writing: Publishing House | Zhuang Ruilin: Quiet Movement—Non-fiction is a worldview competition

From the very beginning of the topic selection, an author starts to think and writes, then accumulates new materials for writing, conducts interviews and researches, and then can use a reader who is completely out of this context to present understandable ideas. , texts that can be communicated, and then published on influential platforms so that more people can see, be interpreted, and enter public discussions. Every link here needs an ecological support.

This ecology may include different roles such as news media, publishing houses, alliances of independent reporters, foundations like "Presence", etc. These roles must support the network in such an ecology, and finally there will be works and authors. birth.

So this lecture is to discuss the ecological environment. Technically speaking, what ecological conditions are required for the birth of a non-fiction writing and the birth of an author?

Zhang Jieping: The first question is more representative. When each topic is related to oneself, if "I" exists in the story, should the author keep a distance from the work?

Zhuang Ruilin: I can talk about it, I think non-fiction writing "I" has to go in and come out. It is not a choice between two. It needs to be able to move people and convince people with reason. It is often a process of going in and out. So how do you get in and how to get out is a matter of knowledge. So basically you can say you want to go in but keep your distance, so it's an ambiguous state.

Li Xueli: I think for the matter of "I", although we are all on the scene, I will reserve the word "I" when writing. I have indeed seen that some people who write at the beginning feel that the presence of "I" means that I am present, but in fact, there is no need to use the word "I" to express presence in writing, which is very tricky. Yes, my words can sometimes become an unconfident way of expressing; on the contrary, what is more important is that when writing, you have selected those materials, which ones are meaningful to see, and whether the selected details have anything to do with the theme, or are they just To show what you see, but not necessarily related to the subject. I think the point is to go back to whether each message is related to the topic behind it.

Zhang Jieping: I would like to ask Xiao Rui, you deal with a lot of trauma writing from the perspective of memory politics. How do the writers you actually contact face this problem?

Zhuang Ruilin: For example, one of the projects I am working on right now is the third generation of political prisoners. He is no longer just a person being interviewed, but has to write his own family story. Therefore, he has to face the many problems that he and his family have brought about because of this trauma, and it is indeed very hard during this process. He has to work hard to squeeze out the language to describe himself and visit his family. Some things will have their own boundaries, because people will have a blank area, so you may need to look at other examples for reference at this time. Because the author of my work is a biological researcher himself, he knows that there are many people who research Nazism, who will look at the genetics to see how an injury is inherited for three or four generations, and the accumulated data is very large.

Zhang Jieping: Is it a mental injury?

Zhuang Ruilin: Yes, in fact, the injury was inherited when she was pregnant. It's when your mom gave birth to you, that egg was already decided, so the third generation of harm was already established. So we're trying to say that maybe we can talk about it from a scientist's point of view. I personally think that there must be places he can't get over, but we can try in many ways. I think the conversation with my colleague and him is to hope that he will remember more things, because that is his memory from childhood to adulthood, how to think about his mother - the daughter of a political prisoner; how to find out that his grandfather is a political prisoner commit. These things need to be brought to his mind through dialogue, even to make him feel that it can be written. So there is a kind of writing movement that is more inward. A friend like me often needs to face his innermost feelings, but there is a stage where we want him to come out and look at the needs of political prisoners or family trauma in this world. how to be written. For example, I recently found a well-written book about the fourth generation of political prisoners in the United States, and I would share it with him to see more of how others have written to overcome writing problems.

Li Xueli: To add, it is the same problem. Just now, Xiaorui started from the author's point of view. Let's go back to the editor. Jieping may know that there have been many situations in the past year on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and the three places. I didn't think about it before. I would lose my author, or the author would be in personal danger. But it happened this year. So in terms of writing, as we just talked about the process of "birthing", I also feel that we have to do this very urgent and scarce topic. Usually editors also want to support reporters and authors like this, but this year has changed. It is too big. When you may lose a person, you have to constantly evaluate the "boundary". You will think a little more: Is this the only way? Sometimes you don’t have to step on the accelerator all the time, and occasionally you need to step on the brakes. Editors may need to understand the status of their reporters and writers.

Ning Hui: I really want to say a few words, just briefly. I think so, when we may act as editors, standing between the author and the reader, we imagine what the reader wants to see, and then make it; but the greatest strength of writing this thing is in the author himself , Writing is empowering. We can see that in many cases, many people use writing to process (refine) themselves, and build some unacceptable or very painful things in it. Maybe editing is not a substitute for The author goes to make such a decision, but instead gives a lot of things after the author makes the decision. There are also many methods, such as autotheory, which are more in feminism. Starting from your own very individual specific experience, will you come up with some theoretical thinking that can empathize with other people? And this process can heal itself. This focus might be on the process of writing.

Zhang Jieping: I can quite understand the predicament that Shirley just talked about, even too much. I was just talking about editors, authors, and readers. We are close to equality when facing a story. The editor is really not serving the author and writing what he wants to write; the editor is very concerned about this The story should have an independent judgment on its influence and possible risks. Because the author is too close to the story, he may ignore these things; To himself, whether in a spiritual, political or real dangerous situation, but the editor is relatively far away from the story, so his judgment can help the author.

I myself have dealt with some such sensitive topics before. I think an important role of the editor is that it is important for the author to be able to write things out. For many people, it is an empowering process. If he is in the In a situation of depression, he has to say things that must be said - just like when he wrote it, he felt that he was a person, and his humanity was complete when he wrote it. This is why so many people in China and Hong Kong know that this article is written. What might happen when you come out, but you still have to write it, because you will feel like an upright person only after you write it out. In fact, in this case, writing it out and publishing it are two different things. I think editors can draw a safe boundary, that is, you write it out first, whether you want to post it, how to post it, whether to make it public, and then release it after ten years. The editor can judge, but the motivation for the previous push still has to be given to him. Of course, these experiences are learned from a lot of setbacks and actual risks.

Then let's leave a question for the scene, because many online questions are more specific, such as whether to be a full-time reporter, and what kind of clues are necessary to write these, the previous five lectures actually mentioned more or less; It is not an answer that can be yes or no, it needs to be discussed according to the specific situation.

Zhang Jieping: A good report will stay. Suppose he felt that he wanted to be reported, but ten years later he found that his story was still there in that state... As an editor or author, how do you think about this? condition? This involves the real voice and mentality of the parties involved.

Li Xueli: If you look at the media, I would think that he is a cruel character. You have the pressure of deadline, and you have to find the protagonist of the so-called narrative of the story. It's very cruel, because you're interacting with real people, real people, not fiction; and that's why we're just talking about all kinds of trauma, because we're actually intervening in other people's lives in a way. Just now, Xiao Rui mentioned ethics, although there is not much time to talk about it today. The person involved, or how the ethics are handled when you intervene, there are several levels. First of all, I think the time scale is very important, so why? We often get angry with TV reporters because the second the microphone is handed out, the second the camera is put on, is actually a show of power, sometimes quite violent, asking a person at the scene of a disaster, "Where are you now? What mood” and so on, which is why we don’t want to be on such a time scale. So why do people who want to do in-depth writing and investigative reporting want to prolong this time, that is to say, the time when you interact with the interviewee is elongated; when you are seeking consent, you are knowing that he is true consent, rather than pressing the tape recorder without asking, and sometimes even revealing your identity, which are not allowed.

In addition, the example given by the questioner is quite interesting. During the production of "The Ruined Boy", I had a very big debate with my photography. I thought that the boy was only eighteen but not yet, so I wanted to I treated the protagonist of my story as a mosaic. I said "he will turn 18 in a few days", but the question my photography asked me was "Why do you mosaic him? He wants to be well known." . I started to think, eh, yes, why do I intuitively feel that he needs to be protected, so we had a very big debate about whether to mosaic him or not, we asked a few lawyers and the responsible person of the children's NGO Man, I asked the director of the TV station who has dealt with related issues, etc., but in addition to laws and principles, what is more important is what the works say. Therefore, in the end, we actually have to go back to the case discussion, including your narrative method and the overall feeling to the readers/audience, because the method we present is not a novelty, but a narrative angle with him as the main body. Most people have seen it and thought it was Present the subjectivity of the protagonist. So, in the end, you still have to go back to your interaction with the protagonist, including whether you asked for his consent in the process, and communicated with him in advance about the possible impact of the film after it came out (of course, we may not be able to decide the direction of the work after it comes out)? So I think that if you simply use powerless, then he will always be powerless, I don't think so. But when you asked about "the next ten years", I can't judge and answer. People will change, the environment will also change, and a person has the right to be forgotten, but how to do it technically, I don't know if everyone has anything feasible method, and if ten years later he has changed, or hope is forgotten, what will be done? Another example is a friend who photographed pigeon racers for a few years, but he still had to leave after a few years. He once shared with me the effect that one day after he left the field, he received a call from the pigeon racer, "I just want to chat with you, I have few friends, but you have been by my side the longest. people". So how do we understand the relationship between the interviewee and the interviewer, I think it is very rich and diverse. But as an interviewer's ethics, I think it's important to avoid using the vacuum method to understand the complex emotional aspects of people.

Zhang Jieping: I personally feel that I agree. First of all, there is really no way to give a simple yes or no answer. We just talked about this story. Of course, the reporters are members of this story who are also members of this ecosystem. I personally It feels like a lot of times the power of a story is greater than the person telling the story. This is also why we sometimes distill our wounds for others to see, because we believe that this matter has a more lasting value to society that transcends our personal value. If you can't convince your reporting object, it is difficult for this story to stand; but more often we see that the parties are willing to be reported because they also believe in the value of the matter. The interviewer, the interviewer, and the editor are all collaborators, and everyone wants to make the story come to the surface. So I think time is a very important factor, allowing everyone to have the full right to know about this matter and to fully respect each other's decision.

Zhuang Ruilin: I think of a few examples. Recently, there is a foreign example. It is a very famous photo during the Vietnam War. Kim Phuc, a little girl who escaped, is naked. That photo has a great influence on her. So she mentioned in the report that she had some contact with the reporter Nick Ut. There was also a famous photograph during the Great Depression, by Dorothea Lange, of a new immigrant mother, unemployed, sitting on the side of the road, and it seemed that her family was dissatisfied with the photograph. That is to say, it will indeed cause a lot of trouble for the respondents over time. So they keep denying that they are not what the reports say. Another example is that a few years ago, a very important non-fiction popular science work was talking about Hela . In fact, it took the author ten years to write this book, because the family was very sensitive to this matter, and because The author is a white woman, and to write a black story, there are some racial issues. So she took a long time to gain the trust of the other party and complete the book; but because the book was so popular, and later sold the film copyright, all the disputes began to have many disputes after they gained influence later—— I will feel that this thing is changing, and the ethical issues of everything will almost never end, but I just don’t know which direction it will go.

The second season of the "Present" Scholarship is open to Chinese writers around the world to solicit non-fiction writing projects.

We believe that whether you are a "journalist", a "student", or a practitioner of any profession, you can start your "presence" writing. The "Present" scholarship solicits writing proposals every four to six months, and each time five finalists are selected to receive prizes ranging from $2,500 to $7,000, with full assistance with professional editors.

Registration Entrance (will open on June 11): https://www.mattersonsite.com/

Deadline for registration: July 18, 23:59 East Eighth District