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What stacking wood can teach us about structuring stories
As I write these words I am propped up in bed, six days into COVID, chipping through my fugue at a 6,000-word story that was due before I got COVID. It’s 99 degrees outside my window in Boise, Idaho,...
View ArticleHow narratives defined a Queen and a Queen changed a narrative
The Queen is dead. Long live the King. OK, that may be the most predictable line I’ve ever written, but a version of it has been working for the Brits for, what, about 1,100 years now? And as much...
View ArticleWhat to do when you write the kinds of stories you find hard to read
Every morning I wake up and do exactly what selfcarefederation.org and everydayhealth.com and verywellmind.com and all those other “take care of yourself” sites and blogs and organizations tell me not...
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A top Danish journalist reflects society in autopsies, trans surgery and pork...
A few years ago, Line Vaaben was eating a traditional Christmas dinner at her home in Copenhagen. Vaaben, a 2014 European Press Prize-winning journalist, remembered a story that followed a potato from...
View ArticleHow M*A*S*H* practiced journalism to deepen its storytelling
Story craft surrounds us, not just in journalism but in pretty much everything I can think of. Proof, I guess, that humans are hard-wired for story. It teaches, informs, entertains, enlightens,...
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What reporters need from editors and editors need from reporters
Moni Basu was a news reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) when she was sent to Baghdad to write about a Georgia-based military unit. It was 2005. The 48th Infantry Brigade, a National...
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Hearing stories from behind the burqa
In the spring of 2021, when President Biden announced the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, Anand Gopal knew there was an untold story concealed in the flood of media attention that the...
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Small news that hits big close to home
A group of journalists clustered along a table at a lovely restaurant in Bergen, Norway, late last month, chattering about our work and how good it was to be back in the wrap of the narrative tribe...
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A better way to teach writing? Try journalism
First there was Nathalie, an English language learner who whispered that she’d never done well in English, never liked it, but this course was different. And her writing was getting better. Then there...
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How do you make the bear facts interesting?
A 2021 public service announcement about bear encounters, included these one-liners; Do not immediately drop to the ground and “play dead.” Bears can sense overacting. Do not run up and push the bear...
View ArticlePersonal stories on what Afghan women want the rest of us to know
There has been a small but steady wave of recent stories focused on the plight of women in Afghanistan, who have been stripped of their rights — to jobs, to education, to choosing their wardrobe or...
View ArticleHow one death by gun violence revealed an epidemic of indifference
Shootings are so common in the U.S. that victims are often reduced to 10-point type in news stories: A name and age, maybe alongside a loved ones’ baleful quote set snug against a margin. Peter Sagal...
View ArticleA political narrative shaped for a public audience
The headlines coming out of last week’s public hearing of the Congressional Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol focused on the unanimous vote to issue a subpoena...
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“…Baldwin when you’re stuck. …Coltrane when you’re not.”
A speechwriter, a couple of jazz geniuses and the 44th president of the United States. That would be an enticing dinner-party guest list. As it turns out, it’s also an intriguing source of writing...
View ArticleWhen the best form for a complex narrative is a simple structure
A standard — some would say ideal — approach to effective narrative nonfiction is to follow a single, primary character through an intimate journey that illuminates a larger social situation. The key...
View ArticleThe challenge of ethics in the field
I’ve always questioned the old aphorism that misery loves company. When I let myself throw a Pity Party, it’s a pretty self-absorbed affair, with room for only one in the spotlight. But it is...
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Print beat reporting vs documentary film drama: Pros and cons
As the aerospace beat reporter for the Seattle Times, Dominic Gates is one of the world’s most knowledgeable journalists about the business of commercial aviation, and especially about the Boeing...
View ArticleJournalistic superpowers: Curiosity, clarity and discomfort
Kindness isn’t a word often used to describe journalism or journalists. I get that. To those who don’t do this work, we can seem abrupt, aggressive, even cynical and certainly impolite. In the...
View ArticleWriterL, the book: A “greatest hits” collection of narrative discussions
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of two essays about the new book “A Place Called Writer L,” a collection of listserv discussions from the 1990s and 2000s. Tomorrow, co-editor Stuart Warner writes of the...
View ArticleHow the WriterL came to be: The origin story of a narrative community
EDITOR’S NOTE: “A Place Called WriterL” is a new collection of some of the listserv discussions about narrative journalism held in the late 1990s through the early 2010s. In a previous post, nonfiction...
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