Story. It's a word you'll hear echoing in a newsroom on an average working day: "I've got a great story." "Hey, Malika, great story!" "I'm working on a story about ..." And of course, that old standby, "Story at 11."
But what journalists mean when they say "story" is usually something else. We call them stories, but as Jack Hart, of The Oregonian, one of the best storytelling editors in the business observed, most are articles, or reports. This doesn't represent an attack but an observation.
News articles are -- or should be -- complete, clear, accurate and convey vital information to readers. They may present information -- about an accident, a public meeting, a speech -- in clear, logical fashion. But they're not stories.
Last week, I set out on a quest to find answers to a question raised by a fine reporter: "What is narrative, anyway?"
Thanks to the writers, editors, and readers who shared their definitions and thoughts on the subject in the first two parts of this virtual roundtable on the craft:
What is Narrative, Anyway: Part I: Writers and Editors Weigh In
Discussion: Readers respond to Part I
What is Narrative, Anyway, Part II: Feature Writers and Editors Weigh In
Discussion: Readers respond to Part II
Many years ago, G. Stuart Adam, a Canadian journalist and educator, made the astute observation that effective news writing exists on a spectrum, with civic clarity -- the news and information that citizens need to function -- at one end, and literary grace -- the storytelling skills that make that material memorable, occupying the other.
We shouldn't have to choose one over the other. A story that confuses, bogs down, or drives away a reader is just as much a failure as one that conveys the vivid experience of a fire without telling readers how many people died in the blaze.
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OTHER WAYS
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Hoping for peaceful co-existence, I'd be satisfied if more journalism reflected my definition of narrative:
A story that features characters rather than sources; communicates experience through the five senses and a few others: a sense of people, sense of place, sense of time, and, most important, a sense of drama; has a beginning that grabs a reader's attention; a middle that keeps the reader engaged, and an ending that lingers in the reader's mind like the reverberations of a gong.
Let's take a closer look at these easily recognizable and -- with experience, diligence, and practice -- obtainable features.
1. Features characters rather than sources.
In most news reports, people are little more than a name, a title, age, and address. "Janice Richardson, 35, advertising account manager at Hathaway Communications" or "William Masterson, 22, of 568B Crowne Court Apartments."
It takes a little more effort to zero in on the physical attributes that distinguish one person from another, but that's one of the writer's gifts that makes storytelling such a special experience.
Notice how Anne Hull, in her award-winning series,
"Metal to Bone," puts people on the page, not as sources or as talking heads, but as fully rounded characters:
Carl's skin was black-gold, and his eyelashes curled over his eyes, just like Eugene's. His beard needed trimming, and the T-shirt he wore was faded and too small, but there was something proud and impenetrable about him.
A person can be sketched quickly and with powerful effect with a few brushstrokes, as Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press does with his portrait of a football player and convicted rapist:
He is kind of thin for a football player, with a gangly walk, dark hair that falls onto his forehead, a thick neck, crooked teeth, a few pimples.
These examples may seem beyond the reach of beginning writers, but even they can inject humanity into their stories in small ways.
WITH A WORD. In her story about Mama Gert, Poynter summer reporting fellow Rebecca Catalanello could have simply written, "Jason Myron, 8." Instead, she wrote, "Jason Myron, a freckle-faced 8-year-old," evoking a child's face.
2. Communicates experience through the five senses and a few others: a sense of people, sense of place, sense of time and, most important, a sense of drama.The first storytellers, recounting the day's hunt as firelight flickered on cave walls, described action they had witnessed personally. Too often, today's news stories read as if they were reported from the end of a telephone, which isn't surprising because many of them are. To write a story built on sensory details, the reporter must use her senses: sight, sound, smell, touch.
Far too many stories read as if they're reported from a desk, from releases, and from telephone interviews. I want to see the community, but in many stories those kinds of images are few and far between. Instead I read stories about troubled neighborhoods and housing projects where there was nothing to indicate that the reporter has walked its streets and talked, not just with its so-called "leaders," but also with the people living there. As a result, there is a flat, bloodless quality to much newswriting.
When a reporter is on the scene, the contrast is striking. Out in the field, Gerald M. Carbone of
The Providence Journal records sensory details in his notebook. "I will always write down 'Sight,' and I'll look around and see what I'm seeing; and I'll write down 'Sound,' and then 'Smell' or 'Scent.'"
The habit enabled him to report and write an award-winning story in three days about a dramatic mountaintop rescue that contained this evocative passage, lifted directly from his notebook.
Below the treeline, the White Mountains in winter are a vision of heaven. Deep snow gives them the texture of whipping cream. Boulders become soft pillows. Sounds are muted by the snow. Wind in the frosted pines is a whisper, a caress.
You don't get writing like that by calling up the Weather Service.
3. Has a beginning that grabs a reader's attention.
Contrast these two leads on the same story:
A 28-year-old Queens woman was stabbed to death early yesterday morning outside her apartment house in Kew Gardens.
Neighbors who were awakened by her screams found the woman, Miss Catherine Genovese of 82070 Austin Street, shortly after 3 a.m. in front of the building three doors from her home. -- The New York Times
The neighbors had grandstand seats for the slaying of Kitty Genovese. And yet, when the pretty, diminutive 28-year-old brunette called for help, she called in vain. -- The New York Herald Tribune
The case of Kitty Genovese and her callous neighbors became a symbol of a new generation of uncaring Americans. It's hard to imagine that the story would have been so deeply embedded in our country's history had it been based merely on
The New York Times' approach.
4. A middle that keeps the reader engaged.
Like a runner who falls flat halfway through a race, reporters often use the middle of their stories as a dumping ground for boring information. After a quick start, they bog the story down with extraneous information written in a clumsy fashion. The middle can be a useful spot for a telling anecdote, a vivid description of a process, or other information that enlarges a reader's understanding in a painless way.
When Tony Conigliaro, a much-beloved former Boston Red Sox player, emerged from a four-month long coma in 1982 after suffering a heart attack, I was assigned to cover a hospital press conference about his condition. I decided to use the middle of my story to convey details about his physical condition.
Reporters were not allowed to see Conigliaro, who had auditioned for a sportscasting job the day of his heart attack. What they would find in a second-floor hospital, Dr. Kaulbach said, is a 37-year-old man "in extraordinary condition. He is lean, he looks like an athlete, his muscles have not lost their tone."
It is a mirage.
"If you watched him for a while," the doctor said, "you would realize he does not behave like a person who is awake. He's sort of vague, he sort of stares. He is no longer truly comatose, but you cannot say he is conscious."
Conigliaro faces "many months" of physical therapy, and even after that, the doctor said, he could not predict a full recovery or a normal life.
"He will not recover to the point where he will go jogging or do anything that is within the realm of possibility for the average citizen."
The information about Conigliaro's medical condition was important but wasn't appropriate for a lead or an ending because my focus was on the devotion of his family and fans. Rather than slow the reader down, I used the line, "It is a mirage," set off as a paragraph, to heighten the surprise and maintain the story's interest.
5. An ending that lingers in the reader's mind like the reverberations of a gong.
Matthew Purdy of
The New York Times meets that standard in his story about the testimony of Johnny Morales, the little boy who saw his father murdered.
With his description of the boy's reaction outside the courtroom, Purdy lets the reader share the boy's palpable sense of relief.
"You saw the shooting?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
No further questions. For whatever it was worth, the 7-year-old had done his part in the adult version of justice.
Then he was hustled out of the courtroom, walking in a smart suit between two comforting women.
The door banged open and Johnny was a boy again. He quickly drew his hand up to his mouth as if it had been hit by the door, let out a big "Ah," and broke into a big, toothy smile.
To me, the most satisfying story endings reverberate like a Chinese gong. They conjure up images from throughout the story, then take you back to the beginning.
In a story about the Navy's insensitive handling of a young seaman's unexplained death, I ended with a scene of a grief-stricken mother getting a letter sent to her son from the recruiting station a few days after he died. Unaware that the young man was dead, the recruiters wrote, "We liked your stuff, shipmate. We'd like to have you back." Many reporters might have used that as the lead. When I get something that is powerful and reinforces the story's theme, my impulse is to save it for the end.
Choose your endings with care, drawing on vivid details that will resound in the reader's mind.
Stories have characters, settings, themes, conflicts, plots with climaxes and resolutions. Storytellers don't give away the story in the first paragraph the way news writers do. Instead they set up a situation, using suspense or the introduction of a compelling character to keep the reader turning pages. Rather than put the least important information at the end, the storyteller waits until the end to give the reader a "big payoff" -- a surprise, a twist, a consummation.
What is narrative, anyway? Since good stories show as well as tell, here are two examples:
Two decades ago, I wrote
"Having a Baby: 'In Sorrow Thou Shalt Bring Forth Children,'" a story that remains one of my favorites because the experience taught me so many lessons abaout storytelling described in an accompanying essay,
"How I Wrote the Story."
At the top of the list of stories I wish I could have written is one that includes all of the central elements of good storytelling, even though it's just 630 words long (Narrative doesn't have to be synonymous with long):
"One Good Thing on Top of Another," by Lisa Pollak of the
Baltimore Sun. Edgar Sandoval, a Chips Quinn Scholar from the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel furnishes
the story behind the story.Let me conclude this craft dialogue with a definition of story that for me strikes closest to the heart of the matter. It was provided by Bill Buford, a nonfiction writer and former fiction editor at
The New Yorker:
Of the many definitions of story, the simplest may be this. It is a piece of writing that makes the reader want to find out what happens next. Good writers, it is often said, have the ability to make you keep on reading them whether you want to or not -- the milk boils over -- the subway stop is missed ... But stories also protect us from chaos, and maybe that's what we, unblinkered at the end of the 20th century, find ourselves craving. Implicit in the extraordinary revival of storytelling is the possibility that we need stories -- that they are a fundamental unit of knowledge, the foundation of memory, essential to the way we make sense of our lives: the beginning, middle and end of our personal and collective trajectories. It is possible that narrative is as important to writing as the human body is to representational painting. We have returned to narratives -- in many fields of knowledge -- because it is impossible to live without them.
[The best news stories can be found at the intersection of civic clarity and literary grace. If you had to name the best news story of all time, what would get your vote?]
Portions of this article are excerpted from "Reporting & Writing: Basics for the 21st Century."
Dear Chip: Very good your final article on narrative. Article!...
