Chapter 71: Pull Up a Chair

Writerland is a newsletter from The Delacorte Review whose mission is to help writers tell the stories they need to tell.

* * *

I want to talk about Vin Scully, the greatest of all baseball broadcasters and just maybe one of the great storytellers since the time of the Druids. 

That Scully, who died this week at the age of 94, could over the course of two or three hours deftly tell a story unfolding in real time by performing, seemingly without effort, all the best traits of good storytelling was nothing short of miraculous, when you consider that he did it for 67 years, one pitch at a time.

I want to talk about Vin Scully because he was a gift to all storytellers, especially, as I confessed last week, for nonlinear thinkers like me. Scully, whose home was Dodger Stadium (and before that, bless him, Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field), began each game by asking his listeners to “pull up a chair” (which became the title for his memoir) and join him in a journey of indeterminate length and outcome, a journey that would feature encounters that could not be anticipated.
All he could promise was that things would happen. 

But what were they? 

Well, we’d all discover that together.

It is safe to say many if not most play-by-play announcers working today model themselves on Scully. And no wonder; after all here was a storyteller who became so iconic and beloved that his final season, let alone final game, became occasions for celebration and sadness not only in Los Angeles but in every ballpark in the nation. Players come and players go. Storytelling, Vin Scully, reminded us, is as alluring as it is eternal.

If you have never heard Scully, I’d recommend listening to his telling of the last half inning of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game (no runs no hits no errors; 27 batters up and 27 down) in 1965. There is no shortage of Scully snippets but this recording which runs for just over 10 minutes captures his gift so well, and is instructive to everyone telling stories. 

Listen to the way he alternates between narrative – “fastball swung on and missed, strike two” –  and digression – “and you can almost taste the pressure now. Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, fussing at the bill…” – while pausing just long enough, as if marking the end of a paragraph, to let us hear the crowd roar so we can feel that we’re there, too. 

Scully is telling a mystery story that is revealing itself before his eyes: will Koufax do it? 

Neither he nor we know how this journey will end.

As I wrote last week, I’ve been working on my book for two years and have come to the point where I need to step back, first to assess what I have learned, and then to perform the far more difficult task of formulating the clear, simple, animating question that I hope will draw readers into and through the story. Framing questions never comes easily, certainly not for me. The process feels akin to this cartoon of a toothpick factory, a tree trunk being spun around and around until there is nothing left but a toothpick (watch it; it will change your life). 

If you think experience makes this process easier, guess again; it never is. I will spend countless hours, and too many long walks and sleepless nights asking myself again and again, the same question: what do I want to know? And yes, I am a big believer in questions being the driving force in a narrative; statements – this is what I want to say – feel to me like an approach that precludes discovery. 

Which brings me back to the gift that Vin Scully left: the telling of the journey.

When you’ve been at any writing project for any length of time it is easy, and perhaps inevitable, that you will get lost in the woods. The brain can process and retain just so much knowledge and because we nonfiction writers keep pouring in so much more, we lose sight of what should be clear:  that the process of reporting (the cornerstone of all nonfiction narrative) is a journey. 

Like a baseball game, we do not know what we will find or what will happen. One of the ironies of journey stories is that they are a form immediately understood by readers (they’ve been a staple of fiction since The Odyssey) but tough to sell. Pitch a journey story to an editor and you will be asked two questions: 

Who will you meet?  

How will it end?

I have no idea. That’s the point.

I know more now than I did two years ago. I have a clearer sense now of who I will meet. I know where the journey begins and have a good sense of where it will end. 

Right now the journey looks like this:

Yes, as my wife put it: inside Michael’s brain. If you cannot read the words, no matter. Note the circles and boxes and arrows. I am beginning to see how this journey might work, even as I resist the step-by-step of chronology in favor of an approach that will capture the excitement, frustration, and endless searching for answers that is the hallmark of any journey worth embarking upon.

A baseball game does have a relentless and immutable narrative spine, from the top of the first inning to the bottom of the ninth. Three up. Three down. But in between lies adventure and in Vin Scully’s daily telling, that is what keeps us watching and listening. 

I now see the question that will propel my journey. I understand what I need to know: who was my friend? A simple, four-word question that will take perhaps 100,000 words to answer.

I do not know that answer yet. But I am learning a lot. Right now, I am going around and around, seeking clarity. 

My job is to make you want to pull up a chair and see what happens.

* * *

Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture. Writerland, The Delacorte Review Newsletter comes out every other week. Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.