Guide to Stunt Writing

Creative Nonfiction offers a brief primer in the art of writing a book based on a stunt, such as going back to the high school prom or living the laws of the Bible for a year.

From the piece...

Step 4: Perfect Your Disguise or Establish Ground Rules, or Both

Depending on the stunt you choose, preparation can be a pretty elaborate process. Before she could go out in public as “Ned”—to bowling night in a men’s league, to strip clubs, on sales calls, even into a monastery—Norah Vincent (“Self-Made Man”) had to get new glasses and a flat top, figure out how to fake facial stubble (electric hair clipper trimmings, attached with stoppelpaste), bind her breasts (too-small sports bra) and lift weights to change her shape and find the right stuffing for a jock strap. Once she had the physical disguise down, she learned to speak like a man: in a deeper register, using fewer words, speaking more slowly and with greater authority. To pass as a black man in the South in 1959, John Howard Griffin (“Black Like Me”) first consulted with a dermatologist who prescribed a medication followed by prolonged exposure to ultraviolet radiation, a treatment Griffin undertook in secret at the house of a friend, and that gave him “a dark undercoating of pigment which I could touch up perfectly with stain.” Then, after shaving his head, Griffin headed out on his own into the streets of New Orleans. Interestingly, he didn’t change his name or identity, except as others changed it for him, reacting to his appearance. Nellie Bly experienced a similar phenomenon; although she prepared to pass herself off as insane by making some funny faces in the mirror and acting oddly enough to be committed (staying awake all night, talking to herself, rocking back and forth), once inside the asylum, she “talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life. Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be…”

(Of course, it’s possible to build a solid stunt without making such significant physical investments: A.J. Jacobs merely had to shell out $1,400—which, presumably, he could even write off his taxes—for a leatherette set of the Britannica, and find shelf space for the books. Totally manageable, even in Manhattan.)