Narrative isn’t synonymous with long-form work. A narrative journalist doesn’t need thousands of words or loads of reporting and writing time to tell a memorable story. For you hunter-gatherers of short-form models, consider: W.C. Heinz’s “Death of a Racehorse.” At 963 words, it is one of the most glorious short narratives ever written. A glimpse: [...]
by Paige Williams
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Mar 1, 2013
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also posted in tips
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tags: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Gene Patterson, Larry Bingham, Pulitzer Prize, Roy Peter Clark, Steve Rubenstein, the Atlanta Constitution, the Poynter Institute, the San Francisco Chronicle, W.C. Heinz
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We chose Erin Sullivan’s story about a 9/11 survivor as our latest Notable Narrative for the usual reasons − interesting characters; strong, memorable writing − but also because it contained the watermark of a takeaway for surviving trauma. “Watermark” because, as in all good narrative, the writer stays out of the way and lets the story unfold [...]
by Paige Williams
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Sep 14, 2012
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also posted in tips
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tags: Alex Orlando, Bay News 9, Birmingham Post-Herald, Bridget Hall Grumet, CNN, Erin Sullivan, Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Nieman Storyboard, Tampa Bay Times, The Associated Press
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Isabel Wilkerson closed out the Mayborn by describing the 15 years she spent reporting and writing her book, The Warmth of Other Suns. The book chronicles the migration of 6 million black Americans out of the South and into the North and the West from 1915 to the 1970s. Formerly a Pulitzer-winning reporter for the [...]
by
Andrew Pantazi |
July 26, 2012
If you were following the activities out of Grapevine, Texas, last weekend you might’ve seen tweets like this one: And this one: And these: Peter Simek of D magazine recapped this year’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference this way: The after-hours antics at the Mayborn are not surprising. Writers are, stereotypically, cocksure, socially starved, self-destructive sorts; booze ignites egos [...]
Great story ideas come by luck but also with the hard work of searching, pre-reporting and thinking. From our archives, here are a few timeless pro tips for idea-mining. Follow the links to longer pieces on story craft. “Topic selection for a writer is crucial and not crucial at all. The not-crucial part is that [...]
If you’ve ever spent some time nosing around Storyboard you know we archive everything from interactive narratives to original essays on craft, in which masters such as Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Rick Meyer and Walt Harrington offer tips on developing characters, finding stories, writing scenes and more. Some of the 26 pieces feel fresh even a decade later. Here’s [...]
by Paige Williams
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May 18, 2012
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tags: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Bruce DeSilva, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Hart, Michael Pollan, Peter Singer, Rebecca Allen, Rick Meyer, Storycraft, The New York Times Magazine, The Orange County Register, Walt Harrington
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In this week’s Notable Narrative, we took a semi-quantitative look at how Dahlia Lithwick’s story on a wrongful conviction used one person’s experience as a narrative thread to present a bigger problem. The piece, which followed the exoneration of Bennett Barbour, is right up Lithwick’s alley. As a senior editor at Slate, she writes the [...]
by Andrea Pitzer
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Mar 23, 2012
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tags: Adam Liptak, Dahlia Lithwick, Frank Green, Joan Biskupic, Nina Totenberg, NPR, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Slate, The New Yorker, Will Dobson
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We recently noticed that Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard had expanded a series he had done for the paper into the book “You Will See Fire.” We’ve talked with other narrative journalists who have done a similar thing (David Finkel, Tom French), but in this case, we thought it would be interesting to focus [...]
Reflections on Tiananmen Square 20 years on. A look at the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons today. A father rolling through an infantile old age as part of a new generation of “Immortals.” Here is a handful of narrative and narrative-ish pieces we think are worth your time, written by some of the [...]
by Andrea Pitzer
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Feb 16, 2012
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tags: Anthony Schick, Atlanta, Barry Bearak, Doug Monroe, Jonathan Gourlay, Missourian, Oliver Broudy, Susan Greene, The Dart Society, The Morning News, The New York Times, Tin House, Utne Reader
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by
Tommy Tomlinson |
February 14, 2012
When I was little, my mama worked the early shift at the seafood plant. She’d drop me off at my Aunt Janice’s house before dawn and they’d lay me down on a pallet in the living room. Country music played low on the stereo. I knew Charley Pride and Loretta Lynn before I knew words. [...]
