Bringing the weirdest dates to life
This story is part of the Star’s trust initiative, where, every week, we take readers behind the scenes of our journalism. This week, we look at how Kate Carraway brings people’s stories from the dating scene to life.
There’s something about the Star’s weekly Dating Diaries, which allows contributors to recount their best, worst and weirdest dates in their own words, that consistently intrigues Toronto Star readers.
The feature that dives into the GTA dating scene, by freelance writer Kate Carraway, is consistently one of the most popular offerings in the Life section of the paper and on thestar.com.
Regular readers of Dating Diaries are unlikely to forget the story recounted by a woman who, after several dates and feeling she was really connecting with a man, received unsolicited photos of an intimate part of his anatomy.
Then there was the diary about a woman’s first sleepover. The next morning, while she was putting on her makeup in the bathroom, the guy went and did a number two in full view.
This week, Carraway lets readers in on how she gets people to open up about the intimate details of their personal lives: How did you become a go-to person for readers and their dating experiences? I pitched Dating Diaries as a way to get the readers’ experiences directly into (now defunct weekly) The Grid and readers really responded. I think the appeal of the column is obvious — it’s provocative, it’s voyeuristic, it’s fun, it’s educa- tional, it’s sad and happy and embarrassing and funny, and really a vehicle for empathy. It also gives diarists an opportunity to share some very personal moments outside of the usual context of their lives, where friends might judge or where they may not have the chance to revel in something amazing or weird that happened. Can you explain your process for turning what people have told you into first-person narratives written in their voice? The diarists all provide an overview of the date, at first just a short one so I can assess it.
Often people submit stories about relationships, rather than dates, or almost-but-notquite dates, or dates in which there’s no emotional turn or surprise or interest, or that serve some kind of agenda. If a date and a diarist seem like a fit, I ask for the full story, and then I dig in. The asides they might not have thought of as interesting often become the most revealing elements of the Diary. It’s the most fun kind of excavation, for me. I just keep asking questions and clarifying the details, emotional logic and the tick-tock of the date until it’s tightly packed into the Dating Diaries form. It needs to be cogent, but it needs to maintain the diarist’s voice and experience. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s excruciating. How do you find the people you write about? Usually, people come to me via datingdiariescontact@gmail.com. It’s really not hard to find great diarists. Usually they are readers of the column already. Often Star readers and former daters recommend the column to friends who have had an especially interesting date. If I meet someone in real life who has a crazy story I always ask them to do a Diary for me. I love talking about my work so a lot of Diaries have come from my extended network, too. Have you experienced any backlash, and if so, how did you deal with it? There are definitely certain themes in the Diaries that emerge again and again. I hear a lot about what kinds of dating mistakes men and women make that are thought to be demonstrated by the column. I hear a lot from older people about how dating was different when they were young, and from people who are just now dating after a divorce, or later in life, and find online dating to be difficult to navigate. A lot of people don’t like it when the “rating” that the dater has given their date doesn’t seem to match their experience. Why do you think these kinds of stories resonate with people? I think people are almost desperate for reality, or what the late Tom Wolfe called “status life:” the daily, quotidian details of our existence. Not the kind of shock-value content that is all over the internet and media, but genuine and honest real life. It’s becoming popular to talk about the value of vulnerability, and I think people are understanding that more and more, but in a practical sense it’s still risky to be truly vulnerable, socially and professionally and in relationships and maybe especially in dating. Ultimately, what do you want people to take away from Dating Diaries? I want people to feel like they’ve engaged with someone else’s life in a real and intimate way. I want people to see outside themselves and consider what life is like for someone else, even for a few minutes. I want people to be informed and entertained and to have an opinion about it.