This is the inaugural installment of Work the Problem, a storytelling advice column featuring everyday craft quandaries and a roving band of narrative sages. Today’s players: >Dave Tarrant, reporter, Dallas Morning News >Jack Hart, former Oregonian editor and author of Storycraft Tarrant is on the enterprise and projects team, where he started in 1984 as a [...]
Tag Archives: Dallas Morning News
Work the problem: “How do you prospect for narrative beyond the obvious?”
January 25, 2013 – 9:44 am
Michael Mooney on trauma detail, his reading partner, the internal critic and his “I ♥ (Vince Young)” notebook
July 6, 2012 – 8:43 am
We’ll be talking to Michael Mooney again soon about a small body of his recent long-form journalism, but today we give our attention to “When Lois Pearson Started Fighting Back,” our latest Notable Narrative. We chose the D magazine story, about how a 62-year-old Texas woman named Lois Pearson survived a horrifically violent kidnapping, for [...]
Colin Harrison and Sam Gwynne on the editor-writer partnership, going deep and the difference between a subject and a story
September 21, 2010 – 1:59 pm
In yet more goodness from July’s Mayborn Conference, we’re happy to post this conversation between Colin Harrison, who is currently senior editor at Scribner, and S.C. “Sam” Gwynne, author of “Empire of the Summer Moon,” which Harrison edited. A first-time book author, Gwynne is also a senior writer at the Dallas Morning News and contributing editor at Texas [...]
Narrative tips for nonfiction writers: more from the 2010 Mayborn Conference
July 28, 2010 – 11:18 am
I recently led a writing workshop at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, and talked to students about finding the meaning in their stories and going deep – while at the same time writing in a simple and clear way. Here are some tips. FINDING THE STORY Every story has its surface-level meaning. Let’s say the surface [...]
