When I first read the New Journalism manifestos by Tom Wolfe in the late 1970s, they changed forever my vision of narrative. In spite of my Ph.D. in English, I realized for the first time that a narrative had parts and that each part lent to a story a power of its own. I began [...]
Contributor Archives: Roy Peter Clark
The Persuasive Narrator
We call lots of things “stories” in American journalism, but very few of them are true narrative storytelling. Most journalistic accounts are reports, whose primary purpose is to pass along information to readers. Reports require certain writing strategies to help readers figure things out: the telling quote, the revealing statistic, the deep explanation, a piece of [...]
The Line Between Fact and Fiction
Journalists should report the truth. Who would deny it? But such a statement does not get us far enough, for it fails to distinguish nonfiction from other forms of expression. Novelists can reveal great truths about the human condition, and so can poets, filmmakers and painters. Artists, after all, build things that imitate the world. [...]
