by Korina Moss
This past week I watched the Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything. For those of you who are not familiar with her, Elizabeth Holmes was the founder and CEO of Theranos, a multi-billion-dollar company that claimed to have a proprietary device that could test for a slew of medical conditions with a single drop of blood. In 2022, she was convicted of defrauding investors when it was discovered the technology could not do what she’d claimed.
The movie opened in theaters rather than going to a streaming service and has been a huge success, ranking number one at the box office for the three weeks since its release. Having seen it, I think part of its success can be attributed to the fact that, at times, it feels like a movie rather than a documentary. Its purpose isn’t to tell us what happened. There’s no typical slide show with narration interspersed with interviews. The purpose of You Can See Everything is to reveal a more personal side of Elizabeth Holmes. Whether this confirms what you’ve already believed about her or changes your mind or simply leaves you questioning who she is, is up to the viewer.
The first half takes place in the thirty days before she was to enter prison, having been sentenced to eleven years. One of the filmmakers, Nathan Fielder, stayed at the beach home Elizabeth and her husband had rented for themselves, to have access to her daily life 24/7 in her final month of freedom. (Or as she told Fielder, so “you can see everything.”) As you can imagine, with that much access, there was an immense amount of footage they must’ve had to sift through to make this movie.
I watched closely. I thought about every choice the filmmakers made, because I knew they would only choose the conversations and the scenes that built the story they wanted to tell. Thus, every scene mattered, even if I wasn’t certain of why at the time.
It reminded me of the choices that we as writers have to make. We do our research. We assemble a “bible” of information to create a three-dimensional protagonist. We know everything about him or her before we start writing. So, it’s understandable that we’d feel the reader needs to know all of it too. But our protagonist’s history is not where the story starts.
Before watching You Can See Everything, I only knew the headlines about Elizabeth Holmes—the book blurb, if you will. Some viewers may have known even less. To understand the movie, it was imperative that we know the genesis of the documentary—why Fielder was in her home and why Elizabeth was going to jail. Even though it was important to know these things, it wasn’t the focus of the documentary. So, spending a lot of time explaining or showing what led up to this moment didn’t make sense for them. Ultimately, they printed a short paragraph onscreen at the beginning of the movie that simply stated the circumstances.
These same choices that make a good movie-like documentary are worth considering when writing a book. To begin where the story starts, not before it. Give us just enough information so that we understand where we are and why. Then add bits of backstory in places where it adds to the reader’s understanding of the current scene or develops the character. Choose wisely which scenes to include and when.
For example, in You Can See Everything, we did eventually get some more information about her (now defunct) company’s device and what she’d told investors about it. This information wasn’t revealed in the beginning nor was it through footage of the trial or her deposition, which in a book, would be told as flashbacks. It came later, right after a scene where Elizabeth and her husband were calling investors to try to start a new company with improved technology. (The audacity!) It felt natural to have a scene following, where she showed Fielder Theranos’s device and Elizabeth’s account of how she’d sold investors on the technology. Waiting for that information had not hindered our understanding of the story and, just as importantly, putting it a little later in the documentary didn’t pause the trajectory of the movie, it pulled it forward.
Much like a documentary filmmaker, writers have a lot of “footage” about their protagonist and their characters at their disposal. It’s important that you’re clear (with yourself) about the story you want to tell, so that you choose only the most relevant parts. Trust that your characters’ actions and reactions will fill in the blanks better than backstory.
The next time you’re writing or revising your manuscript, consider looking at it as a documentary filmmaker might. You’ve done tons of research (backstory). You’ve got tons of footage (drafted scenes). Thus, you’ve got all the extra insider information you need to craft your story. Choose scenes that shape and pull your story along, chapter by chapter. Dole out backstory where it makes sense. Trust that your portrayal of your characters will show the reader most of what they need to know about them. By having a clear vision of the story that you want to tell, sifting through everything you know, and making the difficult choices of what to include, every scene will matter and your book will have the most impact.
Readers: Have you watched You Can See Everything? Do you like documentaries?
