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Learning to see: Look down, up and behind
Storytellers in any medium can learn from those in others. Writers must know how to paint mental images through the hieroglyphics of text, apply (and break) rules of grammar to ensure clarity, and...
View Article“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad...
Why I like it: I imagine my high school grammar teacher, Ms. Weiner, trying to diagram this sentence. We all seek characters to drive our stories. Here, Kerouac lists requirements for the characters...
View Article“She stares at me, but it feels like she’s looking at who I used to be, her...
This sentence contains everything that good narrative writing should. There’s the specific detail of the narrator, and there’s universality — the wonder we humans experience when faced with a child...
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Grounding apocalyptic issues in reality without losing hope
Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now. History is happening. We are changing the world. So sings Eliza Schuyler in “Hamilton,” a magical musical set in the late 1700s...
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Golden nuggets from the rich river of narrative nonfiction
EDITOR’S NOTE: The 2o19 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University was a full immersion into the craft, challenges and characters of story work. We are scrambling to mine as many of those...
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High notes from the keynotes
EDITOR’S NOTE: The 2o19 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University was a full immersion into the craft, challenges and characters of story work. We are scrambling to mine as many of those...
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Ripping up the narrative arc and fumbling your way to structure
Every story has a beginning, middle, and an end. But in the telling, stories don’t necessarily conform to that neat order. For Dave Cullen, freelance journalist and bestselling author, there is...
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Probing dark corners and dark souls
“The Trials of Whiteboy Rick,” the Atavist Magazine story, by Evan Hughes, of a baby-faced young white man who rose to the top of Detroit’s mostly black cocaine world. “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”...
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Hitting home runs with story pitches
Pitching rises again and again as one of the main challenges facing writers who want to make the leap from idea to publication. Whether you’re a reporter hustling support for an enterprise piece in...
View Article“Losing Earth:” Nathaniel Rich’s epic on the failure to confront climate change
Today marks the release of “Losing Earth: A Recent History,” Nathaniel Rich. The narrative tracks the story of a handful of scientists and politicians from 1979 to 1989 as they tried to build awareness...
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“74 seconds” that led to a man’s death, a cop’s trial and a 22-episode podcast
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was killed by police officer Jeronimo Yanez during a traffic stop in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. In the car with Castile at the time of the shooting were his...
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Avoiding false judgments in journalism about Trump’s evangelical supporters
Ever since Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in the summer of 2015, I have grown accustomed to the constant drumbeat of stories that pose the same question: How can white evangelical...
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Insight from the other side of the notebook
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mass shootings have become a tragic American story. School shootings are an especially searing chapter in that narrative. This week marks the 20th anniversary of Columbine, a high...
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The sentences that make the stories
Awards from elite, independent institutions always offer a reminder of the powerful work being done by storytellers of all stripes. None moreso in journalism than the Pulitzer Prizes. This year’s...
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About a bear: The story behind the story of “The Loneliest Polar Bear”
“The Loneliest Polar Bear” wasn’t just a heart-tugging news story. It was a suspenseful, multi-thousand word saga about an abandoned newborn polar bear. It was rationed into five chapters that were...
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Learning from what seem the unkindest cuts
There were two things I knew: I wanted to write a story about how heartburn can kill you, as it did my father, and I wanted to write for Undark, a really cool science magazine that prizes long-form...
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Going public with the private pain of suicide
Modern society works hard to find ways to talk about subjects that have long been taboo, and that left sufferers isolated and shrouded in shame. Things like mental illness, abortion, addiction and even...
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A young journalist is inspired by fickle spring weather (and an old newspaper...
Walking onto campus one morning in early April, coffee in hand, I approached Indiana University’s iconic Sample Gates. It’s always a spirit-lifting sight, especially with the statue of Ernie Pyle on...
View ArticleForeshadow forward; echo back
In his “New in Town” standup comedy special, John Mulaney tells how, when he was 10, he was in love with his babysitter, who he thought was much older. But as an adult, he discovered she’d been only 13...
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“He was followed by 30 seconds of silence, during which every sigh toured the...
Now and again, in the wonderful world of reading, you stumble across a sentence that not only evokes a response or felling to what it says, but to how it says it. This is one of those sentences. It...
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