In my first two posts, I talked about what documentary fiction is and how structure shapes meaning. Now let’s get completely practical and discuss writing documentary fictions, the tools that help, and the ethical responsibilities you can’t dodge.
Because here’s what I wish someone had told me before I started The Healing Physicians: documentary fiction demands a different workflow than regular writing.
Try to write it like a novel or like academic history, and you’ll fail. It requires its own methodology.
Let me walk you through what actually works.
The Research Trap (And How to Avoid It)
Every documentary fiction project starts with research. Makes sense, right? You can’t write about documented facts without first discovering those facts.
But here’s the trap I fell into: I kept researching. And researching. And researching some more.
There’s always one more source to check, one more archive to explore, one more perspective to consider. Research feels productive because you’re learning, you’re gathering material, you’re being thorough.
But you’re not actually writing.
The solution isn’t to stop researching—documentary fiction needs solid research foundation. The solution is to recognize the sweet spot between under-researched and over-researched.
Research until you understand the basic arc. For The Healing Physicians, that meant:
- Basic timeline of Shelton’s arrests and major events
- Representative journal entries showing his voice and thinking
- Understanding of Natural Hygiene lineage and philosophy
- Foundation documents showing Rockefeller’s grants and strategy
- The Carlton bankruptcy case facts
I didn’t have every detail and didn’t know exact dates for most of Shelton’s 31 arrests. I hadn’t tracked down every Rockefeller grant letter.
But I had enough to start writing with [VERIFY] markers where gaps existed.
Then I started drafting. Because here’s what nobody tells you: you discover what you actually need to know through the writing process itself.
When I’m drafting Shelton’s section and I write “I couldn’t understand why they kept arresting me,” I realize I need to verify: Was there a pattern to the arrests? Were they all in Texas or did they cross state lines? Did any result in convictions?
Those questions only emerged because I was writing, not researching in the abstract.
The Research-Writing Cycle
Here’s the workflow that actually works:
- Initial research (2-4 weeks): Understand the basic story, gather primary sources, identify key players and events
- Draft first section (1-2 weeks): Write with [VERIFY] markers everywhere you’re uncertain
- Targeted research (1 week): Hunt down answers to the specific questions the draft revealed
- Revise with verified facts (1 week): Replace [VERIFY] markers with documented claims or qualified statements
- Repeat for each section
This cycle prevents both under-researching (which creates factual errors) and over-researching (which prevents you from ever finishing).
The Tools That Actually Help
I’m going to save you months of trial and error by telling you what tools proved genuinely useful versus what sounded good but didn’t help.
Essential Tools
1. The Facts Database (Spreadsheet)
I already mentioned this in my last post, but I’m emphasizing it again because it’s that important. A simple spreadsheet where every significant claim has its documentation.
Format:
- Column 1: Event/Claim
- Column 2: Date (or “undated”)
- Column 3: Source (primary or secondary)
- Column 4: Verification Status
- Column 5: Notes/Context
This is non-negotiable. Without it, you’ll spend hours re-verifying facts you already checked, or worse, you’ll lose track of what’s verified and what’s assumption.
2. Source Document Library (Organized Files)
Keep PDFs, scanned documents, and web archives organized by source type:
/primary_sources/rockefeller_foundation_reports//primary_sources/shelton_journals//secondary_sources/biographies//secondary_sources/academic_papers/
Name files with dates: rockefeller_foundation_annual_report_1913.pdf
Why this matters: When you’re fact-checking and need to verify a grant amount from 1913, you can find the relevant document in 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes.
3. Timeline Document (Visual)
Create a simple timeline showing when major events happened across all your subjects:
1901 - Rockefeller creates Rockefeller Institute
1903 - General Education Board established
1910 - Flexner Report published
1922 - Shelton opens health school in Texas
1928 - First documented Shelton arrest[etc.]
This prevents timeline errors and helps you see patterns across the story.
Tools That Sounded Good But Didn’t Help
Fancy note-taking software: I tried Roam Research and Obsidian. They created more organizational overhead than value. A spreadsheet and organized folders worked better.
Citation management software: Designed for academic papers, not narrative nonfiction. Too much friction for what you actually need (which is just: can I verify this claim?).
AI research assistants (without human verification): AI will confidently cite sources that don’t exist. It will treat the Rikers Island myth as fact because it appears online. It can help summarize documents you give it, but it cannot replace human verification.
Working with AI: What Actually Helps
Since I’m collaborating with Claude on The Healing Physicians, people constantly ask: what role does AI actually play?
Let me be brutally specific about what works and what doesn’t.
What AI Can Help With
Drafting from detailed frameworks: Once I’ve done research, verification, and structural decisions, AI can generate draft text quickly.
Example conversation with Claude:
“I need a section in Shelton’s voice (first person, confused, angry) covering his arrests between 1928-1935. Here are the verified facts from my spreadsheet: [pastes data]. Voice should be raw, questioning, using details from his journals where he wrote ‘I couldn’t understand why they kept targeting me.’ Draft 800 words.”
Claude generates a draft. I read it against my sources, verify every claim, revise heavily for voice authenticity, and end up with maybe 60% of the original draft but written in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to write from scratch.
Maintaining consistency: AI catches inconsistencies across 36,000 words. Did I call it “General Education Board” in Part 1 but “Rockefeller General Education Board” in Part 2? Did I say $45 million in one section but $40 million in another?
Processing long documents: I can give Claude a 50-page foundation report and ask “Extract all medical education grants between 1910-1915.” It summarizes quickly.
But—critical—I verify the summary against the original document before using any information.
What AI Cannot Do (And You Must)
Research: AI can’t distinguish credible sources from garbage. It will confidently cite sources that don’t exist or facts that sound plausible but aren’t documented.
Verification: AI treats “widely reported online” the same as “documented in primary sources.” It would have included the Rikers Island myth without hesitation.
Ethical choices: Should you include this detail? Should you qualify this claim? Should you present this person’s actions more sympathetically? These require human judgment about real people and real consequences.
Narrative architecture: Which perspective serves the story? How should facts be ordered? What structure reveals the pattern? This is where documentary fiction lives or dies, and AI can’t do it.
The AI Collaboration Workflow That Works
Here’s exactly how I use AI in practice:
- Human does research and verification (100% me)
- Human creates structure and framework (100% me)
- Human writes detailed prompt with verified facts (100% me)
- AI generates draft from framework (Claude)
- Human revises heavily, verifies every claim (100% me)
- Human makes all ethical and narrative decisions (100% me)
The ratio is probably 70% human work, 30% AI assistance. AI speeds up drafting but doesn’t replace any of the critical thinking, research, or ethical responsibility.
If you’re not comfortable verifying every single claim an AI generates, don’t use AI for documentary fiction. The risk of including unverified “facts” is too high.
The Ethical Responsibility You Can’t Dodge
Here’s what nobody says about documentary fiction but absolutely should: you’re trafficking in real lives and real consequences.
When I write that Shelton was “confused and angry,” I’m characterizing a real person who died. If I write that Rockefeller “believed he was advancing scientific progress,” I’m attributing motive to someone who can’t defend himself.
When I write that Bill Gates is replicating Rockefeller’s playbook, I’m making claims about a living person with significant power and resources.
This isn’t abstract. This is serious.
The Four Ethical Principles
1. Fairness (Even to People You’re Criticizing)
Rockefeller systematically suppressed alternative medicine. That’s documented. But I also need to show that he genuinely believed he was advancing scientific progress, that he used homeopathy himself, that his motivations were complex.
The temptation in documentary fiction is to make villains one-dimensional because it serves your narrative. Resist this. Real people contain multitudes. Show that complexity even when it complicates your argument.
2. Precision (Distinguish What You Know from What You Infer)
I can document that Rockefeller gave $180 million to orthodox medical schools and $0 to homeopathic institutions. That’s fact.
I can reasonably infer that this wasn’t accidental—the pattern is too consistent. That’s inference based on documented evidence.
I cannot claim to know his private thoughts beyond what his journals reveal. That would be speculation.
The language matters:
- Documented: “Rockefeller gave $180 million…”
- Reasonably inferred: “This pattern suggests deliberate strategy…”
- Speculation (avoid): “Rockefeller secretly hated homeopathy…”
3. Humility (Acknowledge Uncertainty When It Exists)
“Shelton was arrested approximately 31 times” is stronger than “Shelton was arrested 31 times” when you don’t have exact documentation for each arrest.
“Exact dates for most arrests remain unknown” is honest. Inventing plausible dates would be dishonest.
Readers trust precision about what you know and honesty about what you don’t. Faking certainty destroys credibility.
4. Care (These Were Real People, Not Narrative Devices)
Shelton died in 1985. Rockefeller died in 1937. But they had families, friends, communities who might read this. And Bill Gates is still alive.
Every person in your documentary fiction deserves to be portrayed as completely as evidence allows—even when that complexity makes your argument harder.
This isn’t sentimentality. It’s professional responsibility.
The Most Common Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)
After finishing The Healing Physicians, I can see where documentary fiction projects typically fail:
Mistake 1: Trusting Secondary Sources Without Verification
Secondary sources repeat each other. One biography includes an unverified claim, others cite that biography, and suddenly it “feels” documented because it appears everywhere.
The fix: Always try to get back to primary sources. For important claims, multiple sources that don’t just cite each other.
Mistake 2: Smoothing Over Gaps with “Reasonable” Assumptions
You know something happened, you just don’t know exactly when or how. So you fill in the gap with what “probably” happened based on similar situations.
This is fiction masquerading as documentary.
The fix: Acknowledge the gap. “Exact details of the arrest remain undocumented” is better than inventing plausible details.
Mistake 3: Letting Structure Override Truth
You’ve built a beautiful structure, and then you find a fact that doesn’t quite fit. So you massage it, or downplay it, or omit it.
The fix: Revise your structure to accommodate inconvenient facts. If the truth doesn’t fit your argument, your argument is wrong.
Mistake 4: Using AI Without Verification
AI generates plausible-sounding text with confident citations to sources that don’t exist. If you use that text without verification, you’ve published fiction as documentary.
The fix: Verify every single claim an AI generates. Treat AI drafts as unverified until you’ve checked them against your sources.
Mistake 5: Forgetting You’re Not a Lawyer
Documentary fiction lets you make strong arguments, but you’re still bound by accuracy and fairness. Make defamatory claims about living people, and you might face legal consequences.
The fix: When writing about living people, be extra careful with verification. When in doubt, qualify your language.
Your First Documentary Fiction Project: Start Here
If you’re ready to try documentary fiction, here’s your practical roadmap:
Step 1: Pick Your Subject
Choose something you’re genuinely obsessed with. You’ll spend months with this material—it needs to sustain your interest through tedious fact-checking.
Start small: One person, one decade, one transformation. Not three people across 125 years. Build skills before attempting epic scope.
Choose documented subjects: You need primary sources. If your subject left no journals, letters, or documented evidence, documentary fiction will be nearly impossible.
Step 2: Build Your Source Foundation
Before writing a single word:
- Identify available primary sources
- Gather secondary sources
- Note what’s missing (gaps you’ll need to acknowledge)
- Create your facts database spreadsheet
This might take 2-4 weeks. Don’t rush it.
Step 3: Create Your Structure
Decide:
- Whose perspective(s) will you use?
- What order will best reveal meaning?
- How many parts/sections?
- What voice for each section?
Write this out explicitly before drafting. Your structure is your argument.
Step 4: Draft with [VERIFY] Markers
Write momentum first, verification second. Mark everything uncertain with [VERIFY] so you can find it later.
Target 500-1000 words per section for your first project. Don’t overreach.
Step 5: Verify Everything
This is where it gets tedious. Every claim marked [VERIFY] needs:
- Source identification
- Verification against primary source when possible
- Multiple sources for important claims
- Qualification if certainty isn’t possible
Budget as much time for verification as for drafting.
Step 6: Revise with Verified Facts
Replace [VERIFY] markers with:
- Documented claims (with precise details)
- Qualified statements (“approximately,” “sources suggest”)
- Removal of anything you can’t verify
Step 7: Test Your Claims
For every significant claim, ask:
- Can I cite a source?
- Can I defend this if challenged?
- Am I stating fact or inference?
- Have I confused “widely reported” with “documented”?
If you can’t answer confidently, revise or remove.
What Success Actually Looks Like
Let me be honest about what “success” means in documentary fiction, because it’s not the same as fiction or journalism.
Success is NOT:
- Millions of readers (the audience for documentary fiction is smaller than for pure fiction)
- Easy writing (this is hard, tedious work)
- Fast production (verification takes as long as drafting)
Success IS:
- Every claim you make is defensible
- Readers trust that what you’ve written is true
- The narrative makes documented facts feel urgent and relevant
- Complex people are shown completely, not reduced to types
- The pattern you’ve revealed feels inevitable, not forced
The Healing Physicians succeeds (when it does) not because it reaches millions but because readers finish it and think “I can’t believe I didn’t know this” and “I can’t unsee this pattern now.”
That’s what documentary fiction can do that neither journalism nor fiction does alone.
The Question That Matters
After walking through all this process—the research workflow, the tools, the AI collaboration, the ethical responsibilities—you might be wondering: Is this worth it?
Is documentary fiction worth the months of research, the tedious verification, the ethical complexity, the smaller audience?
For me, the answer is yes. Because we need true stories that hit like novels. We need documented facts that create undeniable patterns. We need history that feels urgent and relevant to right now.
We’re drowning in information but starving for meaning. Documentary fiction provides both.
It’s harder than fiction. It’s more constrained than journalism. But when you pull it off—when you create something that’s both verifiably true and emotionally gripping—you’ve done something important.
You’ve made history matter.
And at 77, after 50 years of writing about natural health and institutional suppression, that feels like work worth doing.
Are you working on a documentary fiction project? What’s your biggest challenge right now? I’d be genuinely interested in hearing about it through the contact page. Sometimes just explaining your stuck point to someone else helps you see the solution.