Answering The "So What" Question With The XY Formula
In my end-of-year post I resolved to finish a new memoir by the end of 2025. Each month I’ll offer craft resources like this every other week, share one medium-length review or interview, and publish at least one longform essay from the WIP. Upgrade your subscription here for access to each new chapter.
The Power of the XY Formula
One of my grad school professors started class by asking a young man in the back to hang his coat on the wall. The poor guy blushed fiercely as he scanned the bare plaster, but our professor insisted, so he slouched out of his seat, held his coat up as instructed, and then let it fall.
The point? The only way to read critical theory productively was to have some hooks to hang it all on. Without a framework or some way of situating each theorist in relation to the rest, none of it would make any sense. We’d be like our poor friend whose coat wouldn’t stay on the wall.
The same is true for a memoir. Before I can make any headway with a book, I need a larger purpose to hang it on. Preferably a sturdy one that will hold up over years.
Some writers call this larger purpose the “so what” question. I’m writing a memoir about ____, but why should anyone care? In my first book, I trusted the novelty of growing up Pentecostal in Montana to grab a reader’s interest, but the hook that really holds is the search for belonging. It turns out that a lot of people struggle with where they fit in the world even if they didn’t grow up on the side of a mountain wearing homemade clothes.
Seasoned writers can usually trust our instincts — we know a sturdy hook when we see it or feel it. But my goal for this series is to make my process more visible, to think through some of these choices out loud. So I’ll focus today on the XY Formula, a tool I learned from Jessica Abel, who in turn learned it from Alex Blumberg, co-founder of the podcast Planet Money.
I’m writing a memoir about X. What’s interesting about it is Y.
The first part of the formula is easy. I’m writing a memoir about fatherhood. But the “Y” is deceptively difficult. What’s interesting about it is…that I never set out to be a father, but now can’t imagine being anything else?
Here’s Blumberg from one of Abel’s interviews: “I’m doing a story about a homeless guy who lived on the streets for ten years, and what’s interesting is, he didn’t get off the streets until he got into a treatment program. Wrong track. Solve for a different Y.”
A few more enticing “Y”s. What’s interesting is…
“...there’s a small part of him that misses being homeless.”
“...he developed surprising and heretofore unheard of policy recommendations on the problem of homelessness from his personal experience on the streets.”
“...he fell in love while homeless, and is haunted by that love still.”
“...he learned valuable and surprising life lessons while homeless, lessons he applies regularly in his current job as an account manager for Oppenheimer mutual funds.”
Much more compelling, right?
So I’ll try again. I’m writing a memoir about fatherhood. What’s interesting about it is…
…I didn’t feel fully confident as a father until I got divorced and had to (got to?) parent all on my own.
…many men have either no preparation for fatherhood or everything they were taught about parenting was wrong.
…many fathers occupy a strange limbo between tropes like the provider/protector who’s got it all under control and the buffoon who can’t do even the smallest thing right.
…my experience as a single father has made me appreciate conventional mothers more, but it’s also isolated me from many “trad dads.”
I’m still figuring some of this out, but I’m confident that the story I’m telling is larger than me. A lot of dads have lived versions of this, mostly in isolation, often without words for their highs and their lows.
I’m writing this story for them as much as for me. And for now that’s most of the clarity I need.
Further reading/listening:
Alex Blumberg teaches a graduate-level course on documentary radio at Columbia University. The first thing he tries to help students to do is figure out what is story-worthy and what’s not. Read his detailed explanation of the XY Formula here and listen to some 1-2 minute clips from his students’ projects, where they apply the XY principle.
Jessica Abel’s Out on the Wire is a must-read for anyone who cares about craft. Instead of tracing conventional genres like fiction or poetry, Abel interviews the producers and hosts of award-winning radio shows. And she writes the whole thing as a graphic novel.
Perhaps the most powerful episode of Ear Hustle is the one on incarcerated dads. If you have 40 minutes, listen to “Thick Glass.” Every one of those dads has an unforgettable story to tell.
More essays like this ⬇️
Notes
Abel, Jessica. Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio, New York, Broadway Books, 2015.
Blumberg, Alex. “Alex Blumberg’s Manifesto,” Transom.org, September 2005.
Woods, Earlonne and Nigel Poor. “Thick Glass,” Ear Hustle, 28 April 2015.
I tried for many years (often unsuccessfully, alas) to encourage students to apply the hook principle even in composing their mundane academic essays. I would acknowledge that I was "hired sympathy," but I advised them to ask themselves, as they wrote, why anyone (including their teacher) would or should care about what they had written. Otherwise their compositions would be predictable, forgettable boilerplate. Needless to say, I still got a lot of boilerplate.
I find the last bullet point from your ‚Y‘ list compelling.