Annotated by the Author: ‘Pants on Fire’

We began our “Annotated by the Author” series, a feature of our Mentor Texts column, by inviting New York Times journalists to annotate their own articles to help demystify the research and writing process. Now, we’re asking past winners of our student contests to comment on their winning work.

To start, in honor of our Second Annual Personal Narrative Contest which began Oct. 13, we’re featuring three winning narratives from last year’s challenge, annotated by the students who wrote them.

Varya Kluev, now a senior at Tenafly High School in Tenafly, N.J., guides us through the process of writing her winning personal narrative, “Pants on Fire,” about her experience with lying as a fourth-grader.

Why did she decide to write about this moment in her life? She told us:

Both individual (nine-year-old me could have rivaled Pinocchio) and universal (admit it, we’re all guilty of fibbing from time to time), this subject was one that I thought would not only be entertaining, but serve as a snapshot of a relatable rite-of-passage, from living in our childish imaginations to accepting the metamorphosis to maturity.

I wanted to make my tale transparent and familiar, tinged with the nostalgia of playing pretend — a story that would trace building confidence in personal identity, and one which through telling would allow me to gain confidence myself.

In her comments, Varya explains how she set a “tone of confession” from the very first paragraph, why she loves metaphor and word play, and how she uses all five senses to draw readers into the world of her narrative.

You might start by listening to Varya read her piece, following along in her original published essay (PDF).

Then, explore Varya’s annotations below, picking out the “writer’s moves” she makes that you would like to try in your own writing. The paragraphs from her original narrative appear in bold, reproduced exactly as they were published, followed by her comments on them.

‘Pants on Fire’ by Varya Kluev

I never kissed the boy I liked behind the schoolyard fence that one March morning. I never had dinner with Katy Perry or lived in Kiev for two months either, but I still told my entire fourth-grade class I did.

Varya Kluev: I try to keep my introductions short and sweet, like the first bite of a dessert.

My approach to the opening lines was to write them in a tone of confession, as if the reader and I were schoolchildren, divulging gossip. Besides inviting the audience in, these lines introduce the conflict of the story — my pesky habit of lying — from the get-go.

Despite being one of the last elements I integrated into this piece, all the examples of my lies that are scattered throughout the narrative I came up with right at the beginning, before I started writing. I brainstormed a huge list boasting every flake of fiction that crossed my lips as a kid, both embarrassing and theatrical. Taking the time to comb through my memory was beneficial for more than just collecting details I could later sprinkle into my writing — the action put me back in my size 4 shoes, into the moment where my story took place. My writing, when I finally began, flowed like water from opening floodgates.

The words slipped through my teeth effortlessly. With one flick of my tongue, I was, for all anybody knew, twenty-third in line for the throne of Monaco. “Actually?” the girls on the swings beside me would ask, wide eyes blinking with a childlike naivety. I nodded as they whispered under their breath how incredible my fable was. So incredible they bought into it without a second thought.

From the beginning, I attempt to set the scene. The swing set was the social hub of my elementary school, so it only made sense that our conversations would transpire here. Politely, I offer a coveted seat to the audience, inviting them into our circle.

Choosing words is the last, and longest, step for me. My inner perfectionist shines through — a word not only has to have my intended nuanced meaning, but it must roll off the tongue just right, eliciting the particular air I mean for people to note. It’s often painstaking, but always worth it in the end. Here, for example, instead of “incredible” I could have gone with a similar word such as “remarkable,” “amazing” or “astonishing,” but I would have lost the root word “cred,” meaning “believe.” That element let me subtly nudge readers toward the irony of these girls believing something that had no real truth to it.

This paragraph is also where I start to weave in a theme that I toy with all throughout the narrative, that being of grandeur, honor, pomp. I use the word “throne” to evoke the idea of royalty, which in later paragraphs I return to and expand on to reinforce my story and its message. More on that to come.

I lied purely for the ecstasy of it. It was narcotic. With my fabrications, I became the captain of the ship, not just a wistful passer-by, breath fogging the pane of glass that stood between me and the girls I venerated. No longer could I only see, not touch; a lie was a bullet, and the barrier shattered. My mere presence demanded attention — after all, I was the one who got a valentine from Jason, not them.

I play with language whenever I can. In this paragraph I do so in several different ways. For example, in the first line, I use “ecstasy” to describe a great feeling of enjoyment, but I pair it with “narcotic” in the next sentence to hint at the word’s other meaning. Both definitions are appropriate when recounting my attachment to the pretend.

Next, I love metaphor. It is my go-to tool whenever I want to add flair to a description. There is little that comes close to its utility: you are able to describe an abstract idea by making an artful comparison, which both makes your writing original and allows readers to better understand your message. Here, for instance, I put myself into the shoes of a great captain and an inconsequential pedestrian to highlight the power of my lies, demonstrating how easily they could flip my position in life on its head, as life-changing as a “bullet.”

And then, there’s the almighty “Jason.” Outside allusions to celebrities, his is the only name I use in my narrative. “Jason” isn’t a character I need the readers to meet and get to know — the name serves to emphasize what was most desired by our fourth-grade clique. By flaunting his gifted candy hearts, the school’s most valuable currency, I show the world my worth.

Outside of specific words, I try to stay cognizant of phrasing as a whole. Using a variety of sentence structures and punctuation makes a piece of writing more interesting to read, and more melodic to hear in your head. If every sentence is the same length, a piece tends to feel monotonous. By fusing bold, pithy statements with long and fluid sentences, my syllables become music.

This way I became more than just the tomboyish band geek who finished her multiplication tables embarrassingly fast. My name tumbled out of their mouths and I manifested in the center of their linoleum lunch table. I became, at least temporarily, the fulcrum their world revolved around.

While both writing and rereading, this paragraph stands out to me. Here, I am most open about my identity, and therefore most vulnerable. Readers learn details about who I was, and thus begin to understand on a deeper level why I felt the need to lie — not just to have fun, but to camouflage my identity, to exist as somebody less “embarrassing.”

I tried to space out moments like these rather than put them all in at the beginning. That way, as one works through the narrative, they get to know me like they would get to know any person — slowly, layer by layer.

As you can see, I use the names of celebrities and the name “Jason” earlier, but when referring to the girls, the main, reappearing characters throughout my story, I simply label them that — “girls,” at times a mere “they” or “them.” I wanted this generalization to illustrate how I viewed “them” not as individuals, but some larger entity that I glorified and desperately wanted to become a part of.

Not only did I lie religiously and unabashedly — I was good at it. The tedium of my everyday life vanished; I instead marched through the gates of my alcazar, strode up the steps of my concepts, and resided in my throne of deceit. I believed if I took off my fraudulent robe, I would become plebeian. The same aristocracy that finally held me in high regard would boot me out of my palace. To strip naked and exclaim, “Here’s the real me, take a look!” would lead my new circle to redraw their lines — they would take back their compliments, sit at the table with six seats instead of eight, giggle in the back of the class when I asked a question. I therefore adjusted my counterfeit diadem and continued to praise a Broadway show I had never seen.

Metaphor and me: the love saga continues. This paragraph was my favorite to write. It plays heavily on the theme of nobility, splendor and glory — the image of a monarchy reflects my climb up the ranks in my own kingdom at school.

I wanted to create my own world here, a mental mirror to the one where my story actually took place. Beyond establishing my “alcazar” as the royal setting of my conceit, I toyed with other details, such as clothing, using the words “robe,” “diadem,” even “boot” (though in a different context) to make the scene palpable. My narrative was meant to trace my attempt to fit into a new skin — I set that in opposition with my true, authentic, “naked” self.

I spent the longest time editing this section as well because, as much fun as it is to try and express an idea with new and creative methods, I knew I had to be succinct and impart the big picture without taking the reader completely off my narrative’s tracks. Through my drafts, this paragraph was the one that underwent the most modifications. Though I was pained by completely deleting sentences, looking back, it was necessary.

Also in this paragraph, and throughout the piece, I mix perspectives from differing times, both detailing the present moment but also reflecting in retrospect. I like to imagine myself as a director, filming a movie: in one scene, my heroine is battling against her conflict, in the next, she’s telling her grandkids her story around a fire. It’s usually through hindsight where we get the most meaning out of a situation and see the lesson the moment taught us. That reflection to me is just as important as the details of the action scene itself.

Yet finally lounging in a lavender bedroom one long-sought-after day, after absently digesting chatter about shows I didn’t watch and boys I didn’t know, I started processing the floating conversations. One girl, who I had idolized for always having her heavy hair perfectly curled, casually shared how her parents couldn’t afford to go on their yearly trip the coming summer. I drew in an expectant breath, but nobody scoffed. Nobody exchanged a secret criticizing glance. Instead, another girl took her spoon of vanilla frosting out of her cheek and with the same air of indifference revealed how her family wasn’t traveling either. Promptly, my spun stories about swimming in crystal pools under Moroccan sun seemed to be in vain.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it can only take a few syllables to create a mental one. I find that great writing takes black and white text and evokes a colorful image in your head. I like to do this by engaging the readers’ senses. Here, I try to touch on most of them — a “lavender bedroom” awash in “vanilla frosting” and “chatter,” “crystal pools” gilded by “Moroccan sun” — to erect the setting around the audience, to make them feel as if they were sharing a scoop of frosting with the rest of us, breathing the same air I had dusted with deceit.

Another move I love: Sometimes instead of reporting what is, it’s fun to remark what is not. Referencing things I “didn’t know” and actions “nobody” had done is an idea I flirt with all throughout this narrative, such as in my opening lines with the word “never.” Besides being, at least in my opinion, interesting to read, it serves to underline my story’s point: I was there, in the moment I had dreamed of for a while, yet I was still distant, disparate, a bona fide self hiding under a veneer of dishonesty. Lies might have painted me a certain way, and the public may have admired the colors, but they didn’t change me as a person. The lesson that I took from this experience starts to rear its head in this paragraph.

The following Monday, the girls on the bus to school still shared handfuls of chocolate-coated sunflower seeds with her. At lunch, she wasn’t shunned, wasn’t compelled to sit at a forgotten corner table. For that hour, instead of weaving incessant fantasies, I listened. I listened to the girls nonchalantly talk about yesterday’s soccer game where they couldn’t score a single goal. Listened about their parent’s layoff they couldn’t yet understand the significance of. I listened and I watched them listen, accepting and uncritical of one another no matter how relatively vapid their story. I then too began to talk, beginning by admitting that I wasn’t actually related to Britney Spears.

Just like in the beginning, I paid attention to my tone. In a nod toward the initial group setting around the swing set, I tried to establish an atmosphere of unity here; back at home base — my school — I first highlighted a crowd that shared snacks and sat at the same table, then listed events like lousy games and layoffs that could happen to anyone. Not only do I find this gives my piece a sense of completion by going full circle, but it links a personal tale of mine to the common experiences of a larger audience — the universal lesson that everybody, no matter the brilliance of their outward appearance, plows through the same hills and valleys as everyone else.

I spoke earlier about using all the senses. Here, I repeat the word “listening,” which serves as a point of contrast to the sense of sight I had magnified through details in the rest of the narrative. The idea was that sight can be skin deep, but listening goes deeper, and so I used the word when reciting events that were more honest and commonplace, reflective of my optical illusion of grandeur shattering.

The finishing touch of my narrative was my allusion to Britney Spears. I didn’t actually remember who I claimed was my long-lost cousin twice removed, so I had to find the perfect person to fill the spot. I bounced from Beethoven and George Washington to J. Lo and J-Law, but settled on Britney since she best encapsulated the feel of the story — a girlie icon, hypnotized by a glittering lifestyle, who eventually realizes that playing a part just to reserve a spot in that world serves no real purpose. Plus, in regards to lying — Oops! I won’t do it again.