Charlotte Grimshaw: The power of narrative

The opening Gala Night stuck to its traditional format: eight authors had the task of talking for eight minutes on the night’s theme, “Resetting the Compass”. For the chosen writers it’s a serious challenge, difficult to nail, and it presents an interesting spectacle for the audience. Who can pull it off; will anyone crash and burn?

There were no disasters (one year, a writer went to pieces and ran seriously over time) and, to my mind, there was one standout. I spent time afterwards wondering what it was that made this author’s spiel so clearly a winner. It was, I decided, because she was the only one who’d put the art form first.

The lineup was a mix of highly successful local and international authors. They talked about their careers. They spoke of challenges, dilemmas. US author Tayari Jones shared “learnings”: her grandmother had told her she didn’t need to save the world! She only needed to do her best! God figured in this quintessentially American homily.

There were quirky career anecdotes (Man Booker winner Yann Martel’s first attempts at writing were hopeless!), more learnings, variations on well-worn, long-accepted themes. We sat through some preaching to the converted. We were encouraged to stand and share during a brave and beaming Ted Talk. There was plenty of poise and charisma, especially from Chinese-American fantasy writer RF Kuang. Elizabeth Knox, though, got up and did something different. She told the audience a story. She made it all about the narrative.

It was a tale about children: girls let loose and ranging over a golf course. It had a beginning, a middle, an end and a point. It featured drama and conflict. It may have been autobiographical but it faced outwards. It was designed for us, the listeners. It drew us in with gentle comedy, sharpness and charm. It was a demonstration of the way it’s supposed to work: the artist works hard; the artist shapes the narrative so that those on the receiving end want to know more.

We weren’t sitting through Knox’s grand message. We weren’t waiting for a “thus we see” that we could anticipate coming a mile off. We wanted to know what happened next, on the golf course, to the girls. The subtlety and subtext were left to be interpreted from the characters and their skirmishes. In the context, it looked like a refreshing kind of authenticity. To get up and tell a story, to put the narrative – and effectively the audience – first.

Narrative is fundamental and complex; it’s our way of making sense of the world. When I was growing up, I had plotline difficulties with my mother. I gradually became aware that her anecdotes weren’t organised with a clear understanding of her audience. She didn’t gauge her listeners’ degree of knowledge. Her characters were often rigidly categorised; those in authority, for example (teachers, bosses), were uniformly “bad”. She wasn’t willing to look beyond the classifications, to consider the concept of individual minds. Questioning her designations generated serious, stressful conflict.

There’s a comedy element to this: the idea of me, the 6-year-old aspiring writer complaining, “Mum’s got narrative issues!” It was only much later I realised that the problem was significant, that it had profound effects. Because of this, good storytelling feels crucial. It creates order from chaos. Elizabeth Knox’s rendition of an authentic, linear story seemed to me not only entertaining, but also a quietly consummate demonstration of artistic integrity.