When the lens shifts: personal narratives as student, mentor, and editor

In the last post, I briefly shared about the importance and value of personal narratives in a media landscape. This week, I wanted to explore the topic in depth through three lenses, each requiring a different set of considerations to weigh.

I’ve gotten to know the personal narrative form from three angles. First as the subject of the narrative – telling my own story. Second as a ‘mentor’ advocating for the author and serving as liaison between students and their editors. And finally, as an editor who had honor the storyteller’s message while being mindful of an audience’s needs for clarity, accuracy, and understanding. 

Each experience gave me a peek into the challenges behind telling deeply intimate and personal stories. I gained perspectives that would let me see things from points of view I couldn’t have understood earlier on in my storytelling journey. Here, I’ll detail the reflections that came through each role.

• As a student

  It is so easy to get caught in your own narrative about your narrative. Super meta, right? When communicating your story to a larger audience, you confront your lived experience through the lens of others….which will always be accompanied by large doses of uncertainty, fear, and judgment.  You have to face the reality of a certain aspect of your life, the emotions it has conjured for you, and the impact it has had. I’ve had rough mental health days while in the thick of drafting a personal narrative, struggling to accept my story doesn’t quite have a resolution because I am, of course, a work in progress.

  Then, there is the question of where to start, and what the scope of your story is. How much do you share with your audience? If you can answer that question, the next challenge is balancing what feels honest to your experience versus what your editor thinks works better. This one is still hard for me and I’ve watched countless students experience this as well. Sometimes I wanted to explain the nuance of an experience but an editor would ask me to simplify my ideas in a way that removed the shades of what I wanted to express.

  Finally, as a storyteller, you may self-censor to spare the feelings of an audience or to come across as diplomatic. When it comes to sharing complex emotional realities, there is a negotiation process at play with your audience. Sometimes that can feel like you are negating your own truth. For example, when I worked on my mid-career fellowship episode for Code Switch, I struggled to let go of a scene I had drafted that spoke to the deep frustration of passing as White. Due to concerns over how that would be taken, I had editors and producers suggest I remove that section completely. I didn’t want to, but I weighed my options and chose the one that would have the impact I wanted. It was a tough call that would serve the story even if it diluted the strength of my own emotional reality.

• As a mentor

  Once I became a mentor working with youth to support their own storytelling, the tables began to turn. Now, my job was to advocate for the storyteller’s perspective to the editor, who was, in turn, prioritizing facts and accuracy alongside the student’s story. Think of this as being an imperfect translator – you are never going to get it quite right. I could understand the rationale of both sides, why a student wanted to keep something in, and why an editor wanted to take it out. But trying to explain one side to the other means something might get lost or just misunderstood.

   It was easier to tell a student why an editor wanted to make a certain choice because I could explain that publishing the piece was dependent on the change. In contrast, it was harder for me to explain a student’s perspective to an editor especially when it was emotionally rooted or had to do with a cultural understanding that was unfamiliar to the editor.

  Each one of us views others’ lives through the lens of what we know and understand regardless of how open-minded we think we are. There were times when an editor struggled to understand a student’s perspective because they held different positionalities of age, gender, racial and cultural backgrounds, or immigration status.  Sometimes it was just because they are, well, different people.        

  You can observe when someone is struggling through a piece of their life – or identity - that is unclear. One student I worked with was reconsidering her political leanings at a time when the US political climate was getting increasingly polarized. It was an ordeal to find the right balance of advocating for the student’s right to share their thought process, and to not want to put them in a position of bearing criticism and online bullying.

  In another instance, my editor and I worked with a young student grappling with the role of masculinity in their family. This student was processin observations in real time, trying to string together the impact of the story they wanted to tell. The words weren’t coming together because their thoughts were still being formed. This was one of the clearest times that I saw how much writing was correlated with one’s thought process.

  In this instance, the editor and I had to pause our editing session. We closed the laptop and instead entered the realm of the heart to heart conversation. After perhaps an hour of asking question to understand what the student was struggling to articulate, they finally found the words and the resolution that felt right. In the moment, I remember literally seeing the clarity around the student’s lived experiences playing across their face.

• As an editor

  first edited a student’s story in 2022. Going into those editing sessions, I was acutely aware of what I had wanted from an editor, which was a genuine care for what the story meant to the student. I knew I had to do right by the audience and the craft of (NPR-style) storytelling, however it was imperative that the storyteller would feel proud of the final product.

  As an editor, I continued to advocate for the storyteller while also balancing the industry need for journalistic standards. Sometimes that meant I would have to take a hard line, with the explanation that this would make the story stronger and more accessible to the audience. Doing so meant we would have to soften or harden the language to allow the message to come through, even if the storyteller or student didn’t want that change. Remember earlier, how I mentioned my stories had been simplified? Well, now I was on the other side of the table – I was the editor who had to making those tough calls and now I understood why.

  As an editor, I learned that there is a sort of detachment that must happen when dealing with a very subjective topic. Even if a story is rooted in personal experience, we have a responsibility to ensure details – events, people, timelines – are accurate. We also have a responsibility to consider what other perspectives might factor into this narrative arc.

  Some editors might ask a storyteller to include other voices, or points of view. I don’t necessarily think a point of view or perspective has to be included simply for the sake of offering a counter. I’d argue instead, a story rooted in lived experience isn’t the kind of story that requires a counter-perspective because it is not about sides. It is, however, still valuable to talk through other perspectives with the storyteller, to let them decide whether they want to address them in the narrative. My rationale is not that the other perspectives make the story more “accurate” or “credible”, but that they allow for a contrast of complexity such that the personal details of the story can have a deeper impact.  

There is no one size that fits all in how to approach personal narratives. The throughline for me at each stage in the process is to withhold the black-and-white judgment with which we treat facts, figures, and hard news topics. A personal story requires nuance and sensitivity at every stage in the process. As a storyteller, one needs to be mindful of their own internal dialogue. As a mentor, I had to play the advocate for both the heart of the story, and the editor’s system of checks-and-balances. And finally as an editor, I had to consider what the audience needed for the storyteller’s intention to mke its desired impact. These are all valid and necessary mindsets that enable a story to shine. We need them all if we want to reach beyond the page and connect to that one person who we hope will find a piece of their own journey in ours.