M. Mark Miller, Author

Category: On Writing

  • What’s a story? It helps to know what you’re looking for:

    Helena Daily Herald, Sept. 30, 1870

    Last week, I promised I would explain how I find the stories I post on this blog. The first step is defining what I look for.

    Most of the stories I post come from the collection of first-person accounts of travel to Yellowstone Park that I assembled for my presentations under the auspices of the Humanities Montana Speakers Bureau.

    In my promotional materials, I promised to bring travelers’ experiences to life using their own words. I soon figured out I could read four or five excerpts of three hundred to a thousand words in an hour presentation. That meant I had to be very selective as I went through my files.

    At first I “just followed my nose,” that is, I read and noted things I found fun or exciting, then excerpted and edited selections for presentation.

    My collection grew into dozens. There was just too much good stuff. How could I choose just four or five tales? My solution was to tailor each presentation to its audience. When I presented to women’s groups, I focused on stories by women. When I presented in Billings, I included stories by people who lived there. But, an account written by a person who lives in Billings, isn’t necessarily interesting to a Billings resident. It needs to be a story.

    So, what is a story?  I found an answer in Jon Franklin’s wonderful book, Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction.

    Franklin, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and teacher, emphasizes the “complication-resolution” structure of stories.  He says a story is a description of what happens when a person encounters a situation that demands a response.

    That situation can be the high adventure of life-threatening danger as in “Colter’s Run”.

    Or the need for quick thinking to protect another person as in “Colonel Picket Gets His Bear”.

    Or the humor evoked by the need to get even with a supercilious twit as in “Maud Gets Her Revenge”.

    With the complication-resolution definition of a story, it’s not hard to recognize one when you see it. But that doesn’t mean finding stories is easy. In fact, most accounts of Yellowstone travel in my collection contain nothing but banal descriptions of one sight after another. But I slog through them anyway. You never can tell where you’re going to find a nugget.

    I found one of my favorite stories, “A Million Billion Barrels of Hot Water” after slogging through more than 40 boring pages.

    ∞§∞

    — Next topic: “Sometimes the best stories are the worst history: Differences between journals, articles and reminiscences.”

    — Clipping adapted from the Yellowstone Digital Slide File.

  • Narrative History or Historical Fiction? — Redux

    In September, I posted a rumination on this question: Should I approach my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877, as narrative history or as historical fiction? Then I was researching the morning of August 25, 1877, when George Cowan regained consciousness in Yellowstone Park after Indians had shot him in the head and left him for dead. I thought I could write a more vivid account of George’s ordeal if I knew what the weather was like on that day. It occurred to me that if I were writing fiction, I could just invent the weather.

    Recently, the issue arose again when I was writing about the time George and his companions spent at Henry’s Lake on their way to the park. After several days of hard travel, they stopped to rest at the sportsmen’s paradise.

    One day, while everybody else went out on the lake in boats, George and his wife, Emma, decided to ride horses into the nearby mountains. They said they were going to hunt. Elk and deer were supposed to be abundant the area, but after a long day, George and Emma returned empty handed.

    I’d like to write that they went for some “just the two of us” time. After all, they were newlyweds who had been traveling for a week and sharing a tent with Emma’s 13-year-old sister, Ida. It’s not far-fetched to think the Cowans wanted to be alone.

    I’m not just wanting to write a raunchy sex scene to liven things up. (Not that I don’t like a raunchy sex scene as much as anybody.) If I could show George and Emma as lovers, that would strengthen an important narrative theme that pervades their story and gives it coherence.

    In a later scene, when George regains consciousness after the Indians shot him, his first concern is not that he is alone in the wilderness with bleeding gunshot wounds. Instead, he anguishes over Emma’s fate at the hands of the Indians.

    The theme of the Cowan’s devotion returns still later after Emma  gives George up for dead and returns home to mourn. When she finally learns that George has survived, she makes a heroic horse-and-wagon trip to be by his side—175 miles in 31 hours.

    If I were writing fiction, it would be easy to foreshadow the drama of such experiences. To make a  love story for George and Emma. I could write something like this:

    George winked at Emma when he heard Ida say that she wanted to join the boating expedition on the lake. “Emma and I are going to see if we can bag us an elk,” he announced.

    The newly weds rode their horses away from the lake. After an hour, they crested a hill and headed down toward a stream that flowed out of the mountains.

    “There’s a nice spot,” Emma said, pointing to a grove of aspens that was bordered by a meadow.

    George dismounted and helped Emma off her horse. “I’ll picket the horses,” he said.

    George tied the horses in a grassy spot on long ropes and loosened the cinches on their saddles so they could graze. When he looked back, he saw that Emma had spread a blanket in deep shade under the aspen canopy.

    “There is no chance that the bright sun would burn our bare skin there,” George thought.

    There isn’t a shred of evidence that anything like that happened, and I don’t expect to find any. In the Victorian Era, genteel people like the Cowans didn’t talk about their feelings, and certainly not about their sex lives. If I stay with narrative history, I can’t make things up. It doesn’t matter that fictional scenes are completely plausible and re-enforce the narrative. I can only write things I can document.

    But there might be a way to stay with narrative history and still hint at a love life for George and Emma.  Would it be okay to speculate about their activities and motives—as long as I’m careful to let readers know that I’m moving beyond the facts? Could I write something like this:

    George and Emma mounted their horses and rode off to the mountains, ‘To hunt elk and deer,’ they said. But maybe the newly-weds just wanted to be alone after sharing their tent with Ida for a week.

    What do you think?  Should I switch to fiction, or stick to verifiable facts, or add overt speculation?

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    — To see related posts, click on “Narrative History” under the Categories Button on the right side of this page.

  • When Versions Collide

    George F. Cowan

    I’ve been researching the ordeal of George Cowan, who regained consciousness in Yellowstone Park on August 24, 1877, with bullet wounds in his head and thigh. Nez Perce Indians had left George for dead after chasing his companions into the forest and hauling off his wife and her 13-year-old sister.

    It would be easy to reduce things to a few general statements that everybody agrees on, but that would be boring. I want to dig up enough specific details to bring the story to life.

    George’s own account has to be the primary document, but it needs to be approached with some skepticism. We’re always the heroes of our own stories, so George may have presented himself as smarter and stronger than he really was. Also, his version is the recollection of a starving man who had a lead slug embedded in his skull.

    Of course, George’s version must take precedence during those times when he was alone. One writer says George fell asleep by a campfire one night and awoke to find it had spread through mold on ground and burned him. It’s a dramatic and plausible incident, but I doubt that it happened. George doesn’t mention it and the people who rescued him don’t count burns among his injuries. Besides, it sounds exactly like what happened to Truman Everts, who was separated from the Washburn Expedition to Yellowstone in 1870 and spent 37 days alone in the wilderness. I think the writer conflated the two stories, so I’ll omit this incident from my book.

    Things get trickier when versions offer conflicting interpretations of the facts. Contemporary newspaper accounts of George’s adventure portray him as a courageous victim of “the Red Devils,” but later writers who were sympathetic to the plight of the Nez Perce make him out to be an arrogant ass who provoked the attack on himself and his companions. I think there is truth to both versions.

    I’ll take sides sometimes. Army officers said George was an ingrate who did nothing but complain about the care they provided him. But, George says army surgeons left him with open wounds and a lead slug in his head for five hours while they went “geyser gazing” with other officers. I’ll go with George’s version here. One of his travel companions corroborates George. Besides, it’s well documented that military men of the era were fascinated by Yellowstone’s wonders. In fact, General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was the Army’s top officer in 1877, visited the geysers just days before Cowan and his friends arrived there.

    It’s hard work to compare multiple versions of events that happened more than 130 years ago, but the effort is giving me a deeper appreciation of them. My book will be better because of that.

    ∞§∞

    — Image from Progressive Men of Montana.

  • Narrative History or Historical Fiction?

    Most of the time I think I’ll write my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877, as narrative history, but when I hit a dead end in my research, I’m tempted to switch to historical fiction. That happened yesterday when I was trying to find out what the weather was like in Yellowstone Park on August 25, 1877.

    One of the main characters in my book, George Cowan, woke up that morning after lying unconscious under a tree in his blood-soaked clothing. George was suffering from three gunshot wounds so severe that he could barely crawl, let alone walk. He hoped to drag himself on his elbows for five miles that day to a campsite where he might find food.

    I’d like to write something like this: “An ominous gray sky greeted George . . ..” Or maybe: “The bright morning sun cast deep shadows that must have looked like canyons to George . . ..”

    I don’t want to just say: “George awoke the next morning . . ..” But I may have to if I can’t find out what the weather was like. It might be easier to give up narrative history and convert to historical fiction. Then I wouldn’t have to ground every detail in the facts; I could just make stuff up.

    That may sound like a no-brainer: don’t bother with the hard research; go with historical fiction, but it’s not that easy. When you tell your readers you’re writing fiction, you promise to provide compelling stories, fully formed characters, and gripping details that will bring your story to life. That can be as hard—maybe even harder—than sticking to the facts.

    I’ve got myself persuaded. I’m sticking with narrative history—at least for now. I know it’s possible to write true stories that have all the compelling virtues of fiction. Laura Hillenbrand did it with Seabiscuit; Erik Larson with Devil in the White City; Timothy Egan, The Big Burn; David Laskin, The Children’s Blizzard—and there are many more examples.

    If they can do it, maybe I can do it.

    What do you think?

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    — To see related posts, click on “Narrative History” under the Categories Button on the right side of this page.

    — Read more about History versus Fiction.

     

  • Why I’m Interested in Yellowstone Stories

    Hot Springs Cone

    When I was a little boy, my grandmother used to tell me stories about her trip to Yellowstone National Park in 1909. Grandma went to the park with her aunt, seven cousins, and two brothers. Great Aunt Elvina was recently widowed and her youngest daughter was born after her husband died. Family lore says that the baby is the reason they took a milk cow with them. Grandma said she would hang a bucket of cream under the wagon axle in the morning where the rocking motion would turn it to butter by evening.

    At 20, Grandma was the eldest of the young people and she was responsible cooking and taking care of the camps. Aunt Elvina had her hands full with the baby and keeping track of the other small children.

    Grandma’s 15- and 17-year-old male cousins probably drove the teams, took care of the horses, and milked the cow. The party had a surrey for Elvina and the small children, a covered wagon for supplies and equipment, and four saddle horses.

    Grandma used to brag about making herself a split riding skirt and riding astride through the park. At that time proper young ladies rode side-saddle.

    She told about making bread in a hot spring. She put dough in a lard can, tied it to a rope, and dropped it into the boiling water. After an appropriate length of time, she pulled it and found a palatable loaf, although it lacked a pretty brown crust.

    Grandma also recounted stories her father told about working in the park in 1882. Grandma’s grandfather, Rodney Page, was a surveyor by profession and he got a contract to survey the northern border of Yellowstone. In fact, he apparently moved to Montana to take the job. He left his wife behind in Michigan to manage moving the family.

    On Rodney’s survey crew were two young men, Fred Mercer and Harry Redfield, who enjoyed playing practical jokes. Grandma said they stole each other’s red flannel underwear and pitched it into a geyser. The next time the geyser played, it was colored pink from the dye.

    Despite their pranks, Grandpa Rodney apparently approved of the two young men. After their work in the park, they returned home with him. Harry Redfiled married his daughter Elvina, and Fred Mercer, her sister, Evelyn. I descend from the Mercer line.

    In addition to stories about her family, Grandma told about experiences every early Yellowstone traveler knew about like catching a fish and turning to drop it in a hot spring to cook where and angler without removing it from the hook. Grandma commented that she preferred to clean her fish before cooking them. Actually, there are several places in the park where you could do this: along the Firehole and Gardiner Rivers and the shore of  Yellowstone Lakc. The Fishing Pot is probably the most well known.

    I also remember Grandma’s telling about the Handkerchief Pool, a now defunct geothermal feature in the Upper Geyser Basin. The Handkerchief Pool looked like a large pot of boiling water and gave off clouds of steam and a sulphur smell. When someone dropped a hankie in the pool, it would swirls around for awhile. Then the pool would suck it out of sight. About the time spectators had given the hankie up for lost, it would pop to the surface. Then the owner could fish the freshly laundered item out with a stick.

    As a small boy, I was fascinated by Grandma’s Yellowstone stories. As an adult, I wanted to know more, so I began researching early travel to Yellowstone. I now have a growing collection of about 300 first-person accounts of trips to the park.

    I’m sad to say that Grandma never wrote about her trip.

    ∞§∞

    — Postcard from the Pioneer Museum of Bozeman.

    — You also might enjoy these stories:

  • Researching Attitudes Toward Indians

    What would it feel like to wake up in a wilderness with a lead slug embedded in your skull and remember watching your wife being dragged away by hostile Indians? That happened to George Cowan when the Nez Perce fled through Yellowstone Park  a hundred and thirty-three years ago.

    I’m writing about George’s ordeal for my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877, so I need to know how he felt. Actually, it’s not hard to empathize with George. We all know that his head hurt from the bullet lodged there. And of course, George felt anger  — maybe even rage — at his attackers, and fear — maybe even terror — at what they might do to his wife.

    George’s story is compelling because it’s easy to identify with him, but can we assume he reacted in the same way we would? Wouldn’t events like the Battle of the Little Big Horn that happen just a year before George’s ordeal have colored his reactions?

    Last week, I did some research to answer questions like those. I started by searching the index of Montana the Magazine of Western History. I scanned subject headings until I saw “Indians, attitudes toward.” Under that heading I found an article published in 1957 by Robert W. Mardock entitled “Strange Concepts of the American Indian Since the Civil War.” Mardock says in the 1870s Americans called Indians everything from “noble savages” to “red devils.”

    New England writers like Cooper and Longfellow promoted the “noble savage” view, but Mardock says things were different on the frontier. He quoted a Virginia City, Montana, newspaper: “It is high time that sickly sentimentalism about humane treatment and conciliatory measures should be consigned to novel writers, and if the Indians continue their barbarity, wipe them out.’”

    According to Mardock, “The apprehensions and viewpoints of our frontier areas were strongly reflected in the Eastern newspapers. Exaggerated dispatches from the West, incredibly wild and inaccurate when reporting Indian ‘massacres’ and depredations, were commonly printed without ever questioning their accuracy. The frontier ‘red devil’ concept dominated the national press with few exceptions.”

    George Cowan was an attorney so he probably read both territorial and national newspapers. Visions of “red devils” must have danced through his mind when he came to that morning.

    And what was George’s wife, Emma, thinking when the Indians hauled her away? I found a 1984 article by Glenda Riley entitled “Frontierswomen’s Changing View of Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West,” that provides some insight.

    Riley says, “Journalists and novelists fed the anti-Indian prejudices of their reading publics with fictionalized accounts of brutal and primitive savages who preyed especially on women. When women’s accounts were published they were usually ‘penny dreadfuls’ or narratives of captivity that further inflamed hatred of Indians.”

    In their accounts, George and Emma Cowan don’t dwell on their feelings toward Indians, but they were creatures of their times so the insights Mardock and Riley provide must apply to them. I’ll use those insights as I scrutinize the Cowans’ accounts and write about their adventures. Encounters in Yellowstone will be a better book because I took the time to dig into these things.  Of course, I will do more research.

  • Outline Complete for Encounters in Yellowstone 1877

    I have completed a major milestone for my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877. I finished an outline. That was a complicated task because I’m writing about a myriad of overlapping events and disparate (often desperate) people.

    First, there are the Nez Perce, who decide to flee their homeland in Idaho and Washington State and make a new life in the buffalo country of Montana. After the army’s predawn attack on their sleeping camp on the banks of the Big Hole River, the Indians fragment. The Chiefs try to avoid whites while leading the main group, but they lose control over small bands of young men who spread out to seek revenge. These young warriors attack settlers along the Montana-Idaho border and tourists in Yellowstone National Park.

    Like a nuclear chain reaction, each attack breaks up a group of people yielding several dramatic stories. For example, when a young warrior named Yellow Wolf and his companions attack a tourist party near the lower geyser basin, they capture a young woman, shoot her husband in the head and leave him for dead, and send several other tourists fleeing into the forrest. This one event yields Emma Cowan’s chilling tales of her captivity and quest for help after being released in the wilderness; George Cowan’s story of regaining consciousness to find himself wounded and alone, and the Cowan’s companions’ efforts to hide, flee and find help. Meanwhile, army units converge on Yellowstone Park from several directions, trying to find and subdue the elusive Nez Perce.

    I’ve organized these events into 20 chapters that chronicle events beginning in 1805 when the Nez Perce befriend several starving men from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and ending 130 years later with publication of a book entitled Adventures in Geyserland. Doubtless I’ll make changes as my research proceeds. I’ll need to merge some chapters, split others and rearrange things. But I have an outline that organizes a complicated human drama into a coherent narrative. For now, I’m happy with that.

    ∞§∞

  • A Note: Serendipity and Research

    While working at the Pioneer Museum today, I noticed the 1877-78 volume of the Bozeman Avant Courier was lying on a table. I had planned to examine it for articles about the flight of the Nez Perce through Yellowstone Park for my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone, but hadn’t bothered to haul it out of the basement. Since it was just sitting there, I decided I’d go through it. I’m glad I did.

    The first thing I found was a story about the adventures of Ben Stone, a member of one of the tourist groups that the Nez Perce attacked. On the same page were two other stories: one reporting that one of Stone’s companions had been killed, and one reporting that a man from another group of tourists who had been reported dead was found alive. These stories, published within days of the incidents they reported, were vivid and had an immediacy that historical accounts often lack.

    I found stories in four subsequent issues, but then discovered several issues were missing—including the one that would have reported Chief Joseph’s surrender after the Battle of the Bear Paws. I suspect it was stolen. Of course, that thought made me angry, but finding gripping reports took out  some of the sting. I know I’ll be able to find the missing articles at other archives.

    Knowing that there are exciting articles available motivates me to examine other newspapers such as the Helena Independent, the Missoulian and the Montana Post. Finding the stories will be hard work, but it will make Encounters a better book.

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