Your stories --- go read them!

Thanks for a great class, for giving it a go, for believing in the magic of narrative storytelling. So here are your final projects. Read them. See what your classmates have been up to. And feel free to offer comments on this post.

Beauty Pageant at Jamestown Mall

Josiah

Comic Con

Moving Forward

Life Isn't Over

The Coffin He Built For His Mother

This is the end

"If you want to write about man, write about a man."

 - E.B. White

Chris Jones says

Not All Smurfs and Sunshine

Fatal distraction, annotated

Fatal Distraction

On copying

What other writers can teach us, Imitation, reverberation and inspiration

Reading for next class

The Things That Carried Him

Fatal Distraction

And the Pulitzer goes to ....

The Pulitzer Prizes, journalism's top honor, were announced yesterday. A full list is here, with links to the winning entries. And you might notice something, too:

Say what?

There was plenty of shock about this.

This isn't the first time this has happened. No award was given in this category back in 2004.

Many theories, but I think it comes down to how subjective good feature writing is. Other categories don't rely so heavily on just a good story -- remember the laws of importance and the laws of interesting? Well, feature writing basically rests on "law of interesting" alone, while the others all benefit from having some kind of importance attached to them. And folks can more readily agree on what's important rather than interesting. NSA secrets? Important. Abuses by big corporations? Important.

Supporting this idea is that the Pulitzer for fiction (yes, they do arts and letters, too) has not gone to any work seven times over the years. And again, fiction is a pretty subjective field.

A place to send your personal narratives

Jen passes along this from Sun Magazine, a magazine I remember seeing and reading in B&N not too long ago.

And there's a due date coming up: May 1

Knocking on doors

Here is a rag-tag collection journalists answering the question of, do you knock on doors for stories?

The correct answer, almost always, yes. Please yes.  

Narrative story tips

From the annual Boston University narrative conference, here is some advice -- I've highlighted the best bits.

Always good to be reminded of this stuff.





Go to the next page!

Your story ideas

Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writing

Using adverbs is a mortal sin

• 10 Rules of Writing
• by Elmore Leonard
• Buy the book

LaTasha's story

What's due for April 3

We're running out of time. So a final project is due at semester's end. 1500-3000 words.

** Bring in 3 story ideas. You have a wider range of possibilities here. You can do a story that happens entirely in the past, like someone who dies in a car wreck and you recreate that last car ride. Or you can do a story about someone running their first marathon or 5k or someone running in memory of their dead dad. Where do you find a story like that? On a race calendar. And you call up the organizers and you explain you're looking for a great story, some runner who has a compelling story. Do this a week before the race or two weeks. And find that right person, call them up and begin your reporting.

Or go find your own Little Miss Sunshine. But, professor, that was a movie! Was it? Because here is a list of pageants happening around here.

So you can recreate, you don't have to witness every moment in a story. But realize that witnessing makes for better and easier reporting. So I would not recommend on doing a story that occurs too far in the past -- unless it still reverberates in some kind of action and/or result today.

** Read this. "Eating Jack Hooker's Cow." We talked about cows the last class. But this is not why we're reading this. We're reading this because it's amazing. And because it will make you think about feature and narrative in a different way. Your last assignment was something like this -- regular action that might not seem significant, but really is.

** Read "Writing for Story" pages 22-90, plus the preface. You'll see.

** If you are still waiting to turn in your final version of your 1st narrative, do that on the day we agreed. Also, please read LaTasha's piece, marked it up with suggestions -- and leave some comments in the comments section here so she can read them.

Little Miss Sunshine

Stalking the feature

Stalking the feature story

How to avoid wasting time chasing bad ideas

More required reading: "Little Miss Sunshine" script

So I posted this late, but please read to page 39 in the script for "Little Miss Sunshine."

(Thanks to Jen for the great suggestion.)

Feel free to read the entire 110-page script. Scripts read quick.

It's a classic story. Think: What is the complication faced by the characters? What must they overcome? What is the plot, the mystery driving the story? What sets things in motion? What is the big picture theme being communicated via the action?

Here's the trailer, in case you haven't seen this gem of a movie:

Required reading: Why is Davion still not adopted?

A follow-up story on whatever became of that young man who wanted to be adopted:

"My name is Davion," he said softly. "And I've been in foster care since I was born."

Davion Navar Henry Only, 15, told the church full of strangers he never knew his real family. "But I know God hasn't given up on me," he said softly. "I just hope he finds me a home — and a family."

The Tampa Bay Times story was picked up by news outlets across the world. Davion's plea to be adopted was featured onGood Morning America and Al Jazeera America and in People.Producers flew him to New York to talk to Barbara Walters onThe View.

And 10,000 people from across the globe called to ask about helping or adopting him.

Learning from fiction and the movies

Using Fiction Techniques To Tell True Stories

What The Movies Can Teach Us

How to Grab Readers' Attention

Narrative does not (usually) tell the reader about the story as traditional journalists do but as novelists and screen writers do. The narrative writer reveals the story so the reader watches and comes to the reader's own conclusions about the significance of the events the reader has observed. Show, don't tell. Mark Twain: "Don't say the old lady screamed -- bring her on and let her scream."

                                        -- Don Murray

Foreshadowing

Creates suspense. Creates anticipation.

A clue or allusion in the story predicting a later event or revelation. Something a character says or does. An event whose full meaning is not understood until much later, etc. Foreshadowing can be spooky/obvious or hidden. But it should be an obvious clue in retrospect.

Alfred Hitchcock on bombs and tension

Chekhov’s gun

What it means for you: Choose details carefully. Helps you decide what to include and what to discard.

Character development

Characters not only exist in three dimensions — but they somehow change over the course of the story.

Emotional attachment

What drives/motivates the character?

History of how they got this point — and where they are going.

Movies like Royal Tennebaums and Lost in Translation

Hannibal Lecter

Dude in Big Lebowski

Dialogue

Glengarry Glen Ross

Social Network

Conflict/Plot

Confrontation between two or more things, one wins

(Other option: exposition and contrast, as explained here)

as defined by legendary screenwriting coach Syd Field

Act 1/Set up -------------- Inciting Incident --------- Plot Pt. 1/Reversal ----- End Act 1

Intro characters / goals

Set place and time

                                                                                              Event sets plot in motion

                                                                                                                                                                                               New event, plot moves in new dir.

Act 2 / Confrontation -------- Midpoint ---------------- Plot Pt. 2 --------------- End Act 2

Lead confronts obstacles

Again and again

                                                                                                    Lead seems to achieve goals

                                                                                                        Everything falls apart

                                                                                                                                                                                                         New event, plot moves in new dir.

Act 3 / Resolution ------------ Climax ------------------Denouement ----------- End Act 3

High action

                                                                                              Tension at highest

                                                                                                   Obstacles dealt with

                                                                                                                                                                                                 Wrap up / Big picture/ calm                           

Good Will Hunting

*******************

1 min recap

ACT 1

Marty McFly goes to see Doc at his garage. Not there. Gets phone call. Doc says meet me at the mall at 1:15 a.m. Goes to school. Dreams of being a rock-n-roll star. Talks with his girlfriend. Notes that the clock tower has been broken since being struck by lightning 40 years ago. Dad (George) is a wimp. Biff is dad's boss and acts like a jerk to dad. Home life is kinda depressing.

Inciting Incident

Has to go meet Doc at mall. Sends dog Einstein 1 minute into the future. Car returns. Doc sets machine to go back 40 years, to the time when he first thought of a time travel machine. Doc gets shot by Libyans in mall lot. Marty jumps in Delorean ... back in time he goes.

Plot Pt. 1

How will he go back?

ACT II

Goes back to 1955. Runs out of gas. Marty McFly walks into town after hiding the car. Marty sees that Biff has bullied and tormented George since they were both teenagers. Follows his future dad and sees his peeping in on his future mom. Says dad's life by pushing him out of car's way. Ends up in his future mom's house, being cared for by her. Finds Doc. Tells him he's from the future.

Midpoint

Doc vows to get him back to the future. But how? Recalls lightning strike set to happen soon.

Plot Pt. 2

But Mart's family photos are fading due to his interference from traveling back in time. He needs to get his parents back on track.

As Marty fades away while playing the guitar in the school dance, his parents finally kiss, causing him to rise up and keep playing the song.  His brother and sister appear in the picture again, and it seems his future is secure.

Act 3

Need to get back to future. Lightning strike sends him on his way. Marty sets to arrive 15 minutes early to prevent Doc's death.

Climax

Races to the scene but is too late. Discovers Doc is wearing a bullet-proof vest. Doc reveals he plans to go 30 years in the future next.

Denouement

Doc shows up dressed in futuristic clothing. Tells Marty to get in. "Where we're going, we don't need roads."

Required reading

So I'm going to read your narratives, and you're going to read these two pieces:

The $1 million bill piece, by yes me, in the "Next Wave" book. Some of you already have read it. That's cool.

And Esquire writer Mike Sager's explanation of how he hunted for the right person for his story about an ugly person living in Los Angeles. The city of beautiful people.

Yeah, an ugly guy. I remember reading this story when it came out and thinking, how did he ever make that approach? "Hi, you're ugly. Want to be in a story about that?"

And it's important to you all because it's something we've talked about a lot recently. How to shop for the right person to tell your story. You start with the notion that you want to do a story on some idea, some notion, some statistic -- and you look for the right person to tell that story.

It's important and difficult.

Be prepared to talk about it.

And you also should read -- at least several paragraphs, to understand what the story -- the original article.