How Not What

Issue 274

Welcome to Desk Notes. I am writing this week from São Paulo, where, as you can see below, the rainforest never stops encroaching on life. Whenever I’ve visited, I’m always astounded by, and appreciative of, the relentlessness of nature, how omnipresent it is and how much it affects the rhythms of this city. I’ll be sure to have more thoughts and stories about Brazil soon but, for today, this is a short essay about one aspect of storytelling. Thank you, as always, for reading.

Charles

São Paulo, 2025

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Here’s French writer Emmanuel Carrère beginning his deceptively titled 2020 memoir, Yoga, with a wallop of a first sentence:

Seeing as I have to start somewhere in relating the story of these four years—during which I tried to write an upbeat, subtle little book on yoga, was confronted with things as downbeat and unsubtle as jihadist terrorism and the refugee crisis, was plunged so deep in melancholic depression that I was committed to the Sainte-Anne Psychiatric Hospital for four months, and, finally, during which I bade farewell to my editor of thirty-five years, who for the first time wouldn’t be there to read my next book—I choose to start with this morning in January 2015, when, as I finished packing, I wondered whether I should take my phone, which in any event I wouldn’t be able to keep with me where I was going, or leave it at home.

There are many aspects of this opening that are worth praising. I’m particularly delighted by how its rollicking, propulsive, roundabout structure provides a nice shove to the principle that good writing requires short and crisp sentences. There’s also the fact that Carrère’s lengthy sentence is easy to parse. The verbs are clear, the clauses are short, and the narrative flows. That narrative, to begin a book, also accomplishes a subtle but crucial task: after providing the reader with a sweeping exposition that places the reader in a specific setting with a specific character and knowledge about that character’s background, it ends at a precise moment. We’ve been given years’ worth of background, then, just a clause later, we’re seamlessly thrust into a moment of decision. Will he take his phone? But these techniques aren’t what stood out to me as I read these words for the first time recently, because, much more interestingly, I couldn’t help but notice that these sentences loudly proclaim that Carrère is rightly more captivated with how rather than what, and that’s what he offers in his memoir.

The entire story is foretold in the opening sentence. The reader knows what will happen—no surprises are forthcoming—so we can focus on the subject of how. In storytelling, this is a timeworn lesson, though, like most timeworn lessons, it needs to be learned again and again.

I’m reminded of another French writer, Édouard Louis, and the opening sentence of his book History of Violence:

I am hidden on the other side of the door, I listen, and she says that several hours after what the copy of the report I keep twice-folded in my drawer calls the attempted homicide, and which I call the same thing for lack of a better word, since no other term is more appropriate for what happened, which means I always have the anxious nagging feeling that my story, whether told by me or whomever else, begins with a falsehood, I left my apartment and went downstairs.

Now this opening is a tad more cryptic, and in some ways a little incomplete, in its disjointed switch from present to past tense, in its peculiar ability to keep the reader both informed and disoriented. What it does, however, is ensure that we know what Louis’s story is about and what’s coming—there’s no surprise, no sense of the unexpected. This is also a book about how rather than a book about what. Louis’ opening, like Carrère’s, actually increases the tension even though the reader knows what’s coming.

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A writer certainly could create a story that’s based exclusively on unexpected and propulsive whats, so that each turn of the page comes with an unexpected, unanticipated event, and the interest comes from the discovery of what comes next. I believe this can hold a reader’s attention for a period, though the writer is forced to continually escalate the stakes, to make each surprise a little bigger, to make each twist a little more dramatic. When the only excitement is the unexpected, then you’re in the unexpected business.

And this is often what happens when a television series begins to lose momentum: in watching twist after twist after twist, there is, eventually, exhaustion at the endless sequence of surprises that occurs merely because the show demands another surprise. Once the story has surpassed its original premise, however interesting, it’s forced to escalate, then escalate again, if it’s in the surprise business—so there’s no more development, no room to increase the drama, just space to place another surprise, another shock.

Dramatic Irony—in its classic definition from Greek drama—is an alternative approach. Consider a classic horror film scene, where a character walks down a dark hallway, opening door after door. The viewer inhabits the character’s perspective, experiencing their surprise when a man holding an axe jumps from the third door. But now consider watching the same scene after you’ve already learned, as a viewer, that the man with the axe is behind door number three. You watch as the character opens the first door, then you watch the opening of the second door, anticipating what’s coming next. In most film scripts, the dramatic irony of the second option actually creates more suspense, even though, technically, there’s no element of surprise—what will happen has been replaced by how it will happen.

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The most astounding example comes from a play that most people know. Theaters fill every year to see this production despite the surprise, the reveal at the end, not coming with any shock. Even if you don’t know the ending, you can sit down to watch a production of Romeo and Juliet and learn the ending in the first six lines:

Two households, both alike in dignity

(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;

If you’re paying attention, what will happen has been foretold, so now we can focus on the much more interesting how.

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But I wouldn’t limit this principle to storytelling. In daily life, too, it’s worth noticing that how questions are more interesting, more conducive to good conversation, and more expressive. A what question is often akin to badgering. It is the interrogator’s strategy: give the facts and certify what happened. What did you decide? What did you eat? What did you do about it? The answers to these questions are lists, items, events, the episodes that comprise a schedule, nothing that comes close to the intimacy that makes a conversation feel alive.

At least with how questions there’s an invitation to explain. To put the pieces together. To get closer to the person, to their motivation, their emotion, as these are questions of composition, which allow you, just a bit, to comprehend the character of a person beyond a mere statement of facts. How did you decide? How do you prepare it? How did you feel about it? In a world of infinite possibilities, where, eventually, even the surprises become tedious, fitting the puzzle pieces together with how is much more interesting, and often much more revealing.