Transcripts of family interviews read like miniature plays or novels

Evidence

But Sanity, Madness and the Family is vivid, direct, gripping. It is a series of interviews with families, who each include one member who has spent time in psychiatric hospitals. Each interview is a novel or play in miniature. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1021

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s goal of learning how Mantel builds scenes and characters from sparse raw material — interview transcripts as dramatic form.
• DEFINE: Demonstrates how non-fiction raw material (taped interviews) contains latent dramatic structure a writer can mine.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1021