A little dialogue + vomiting baby = effective scene

Laura Burkey wrote about one of those classic parent moments and delivered the payoff in a nice little scene.

We settled into one of the back pews, just in case Amelia decided to announce her presence. We stood as the priest, altar boys and lector proceeded up the aisle and Amelia finished the last sips of her bottle in my arms.
I turned my 19-pound 11-month-old into the upright burping position.
Pat, pat, pat
"Good afternoon."
Pat, pat, pat
"Good afternoon, Father."
Gurgle, sputter, choke
I stopped patting. Horrified, my eyes met my dad's as he shoved his hankie toward Amelia.
"Oh my!" the elderly woman whispered behind me as liquid hit the pew and my Gram's shoes.

Now think about how that could have been written with exposition -- "I turned her into the upright burping position. I patted her on the back as the priest said, 'Good afternoon,' and we responded, 'Good afternoon, Father.' Then she started making sounds like she was about to spit up. ....' -- and see how much more effective it is the way Laura wrote it.


 

Dialogue of the day

The gang is sitting down to dinner, and Andy, swooning over the spread, says something like, "Now Aint Bee, those mashed potatoes are something no artist could paint a picture of."
Aunt Bee: "Oh, flibbertigibbet."

Spot news as narrative

We've talked a lot about this over time, but it's worth mentioning again: Spot news doesn't always have to be written in traditional news-story format. A narrative can work as well or, in some cases, better.

The key, of course, is thinking about doing narrative before you get to the scene, so you can do the reporting (including both observation and interviews) that will allow you to write a tight narrative. If you only have a few details and a broad or loose chronology, it's probably not going to work.

 I thought of this after reading a piece by Lauren Fitzpatrick, who did work for us as a Medill correspondent several years ago, in the Southtown Star in Chicago, about rescuers pulling a woman from her car that was submerged in a pond. Things to note:

• The line that cranks up the tension -- "Then the passer-by calling 911 said the words that set him off: The car is underwater."
• An observed detail about the cop's injury: "The 33-year-old ran to his own car and tore over to the corner where the Rupari Food Services plant sits, he told reporters late Friday afternoon, shivering in a light jacket, his left hand clinging to his bandaged right one."
• Action verbs: "Frausto ignored the chilly drizzle. He shucked his coat and his shoes. He stripped off his clothes and threw away his gun. Frausto grabbed a baton, and in briefs and an undershirt, he dove into the water."

Ted Czech often writes a narrative out of spot news, including recently about a man who went into a burning home and helped an elderly lady escape. To note from Ted's piece:

• He uses a question as the engine to push the story forward: "Sipe often wondered what he would do if there ever were a real fire at the home. Would he get scared and run, or would he stay and help, possibly risking his own safety?"
• Dialogue, reported from his interview with the man, helps capture the feel of what happened: "Ma'am, are you in here?" he called. "You've got to come out of there. You can't stay in there." He heard her say something but couldn't make out the words. Then he saw her. She stood in front of him, motionless. "My pets, my pets," she said. "I got to get my pets."

39 steps, 10,000 words

Some pretty cool thoughts on what you can learn about storytelling -- mainly visual, but print too -- from Alfred Hitchcock films, courtesy of a blog called 10,000 Words. It touches on everything from dialogue to foreshadowing to streamlining your storytelling.

And there are video clips, too.

Here's another writer's take on Hitchcock and storytelling.

Dialogue that does a lot of work

Here's a quick heads-up on effective use of dialogue. Check out this passage from Jeff's story on the couple who wants to live a self-sustaining life:

---------

They passed a farmhouse on the left, with a few acres of visible land. Fred imagines that one day, he’ll build a hobby farm on land like that.

"I really want to get a goat," Fred said. "Eggs from the chicks and milk from the goat. That would be awesome."

"Babe," Towanda said, "you don't even drink milk."

"I'd drink it if it came from a goat," Fred said.

Then it was past an Amish house, with clothes stretched out on a line between the house and a side building. They just paid to have a dryer fixed.

"Look at those clothes out on the line," Fred said. "I could have gotten a clothesline or drying rack and it would have been free."

"Babe," Towanda said, "we're not hanging up our clothes outside."

"I didn't even think of that," Fred replied. "It could have been free --"

"Babe."

"Basically free."

As Fred laughed, Towanda's eyes made the trip around the car again.

-------

The dialogue does several things: It reveals some things about Fred and Towanda's relationship, which is important to the story; it gives you information about their goals that is essential to the story; and it's funny, which should make most readers like Fred and Towanda, at least on some level ... and that's important to a story, too.

That passage, written another way, could have been a series of paragraphs describing things: Fred said he wanted this and that; Towanda reminded him that he didn't drink milk; Fred said he wants clotheslines but Towanda said no; and maybe there would have one line between quote marks.

When you deconstruct it like that, it's easy to see how much more engaging that dialogue is.

Dialogue in action

Check out Erin's story on two singer wannabes getting a crash-course in the business, and how she used dialogue to really carry the story and put you in the room with them. A sample:

Bain belted out a few stanzas of "With You" by Chris Brown.
"You have a vibrato in your voice," Duncan told her.
"Is that bad?"
"No, it makes you identifiable."

The dialogue, in a sense, is the story here. Erin recognized that and ran with it. Great work.

"All praise in varying degrees from high to extra high"

I know Scott posted a link to W.C. Heinz's obit earlier this week, but since Heinz is all I've ever wanted to be as a writer, I thought we could use a little more.

If you love sports writing or war writing or medical writing or narrative writing or just damn good writing, you owe it to yourself to read W.C. Heinz. He covered crime for the New York Sun, then the European theater in World War II at age 29, where he found the voice that anchored his copy for the next five decades.

He wrote a daily sports column, then moved on to magazine features. He wrote "Run to Daylight" -- then the best-selling sports book of all time about Vince Lombardi -- and co-wrote M*A*S*H. He was the only writer to whom Elmore Leonard ever sent a fan letter and the only writer featured three times in the anthology, "Best American Sports Writing of the 20th Century."

He pioneered many of the non-fiction techniques we pull out for best pieces: dialogue, well-drawn scenes and a strong, if understated narrative voice.

Just look at this, from a 1949 column, The Fighter's Wife:

When they came to the corner they stopped for just a moment under the streetlight. Then the turned left and started walking again.

"Who said being a fighter's wife is easy?" Lucille said.

"It's like being in the ring," Norma said.

"She fights right in the ring with him every fight," her mother said, talking to Lucille.

"That's the trouble," Norma said. "You can't get in the ring with him."

"What could you do?" her mother said.

"Well," she said, "if they put Fusari's wife in the ring."

"He just said Fusari's in trouble," Lucille said quickly.

"You heard it?" Norma said.

"Yes."

"I don't know," Norma said. "It's too much."

That's the funny thing," Lucille said. "Everybody seems to wait for tonight but you."

"I wait for the night after tonight."

"It's like building a stone wall without mortar," he said of writing in 2000. "You place the words one at a time, fit them, take them apart and refit them until they're balanced and solid."

Show & tell

Jeff Frantz' column today on York Catholic's girls' basketball team does more than perfectly capture a milestone in the girls' lives by using their dialogue. It also is a classic example of showing, and not telling, something that is at the core of the story.

As you'll see, the team's coaches had a great feel for how to run the team's last practice. But Jeff never writes that -- never even comes close to writing that. He simply puts you at courtside, lets you in on a little conversation between the coaches, and writes about what they do and say. You have not been told what's happening; you've seen it happen, experienced it.

Great storytelling.

Kudos, Jeff.