Pleasures of a different kind of writing

I'm writing a story memo.

It might seem odd, but this is actually one of the best parts of my job, mostly because of everything that came before it -- the idea, the reporting, the talking with reporters -- and what will come after it -- the revising and the hard work that will produce a great story.

But I also love it because doing a story memo makes me think harder about a story, and about the people who are working on it, than I do at any other point in the editing process.

I usually do them only for big projects, or when it feels like writing one would help the story get to where it needs to be. Any editors out there do story memos? Any reporters like/hate getting them? Why?

What don't you know?

I had a great editing-for-voice conversation with another editor here this morning, and it reinforced my belief that every time I have a conversation about writing or editing like that, I learn more than the person I'm talking with.

It was a great reminder to try to know everything you can about what you're doing; understand that you'll never know everything; and work hard to know what you don't know ... and then learn those things, and figure out how to use them.

Wise (and brief) words on narrative writing, editing

Sharing this after discovering it via Gangrey.com:

On editing and revising: When less is more, FEMA style

The federal government, or at least one office of it, sees the light. "We had letters that took three paragraphs to say four words: 'We need more information,'" a FEMA rep said.


 He was talking about some Alabama residents' complaints about a letter they got from FEMA about their desire for help after tornadoes scoured the state in April. Some letters to people in blown-away houses told them they had "insufficient damage" to qualify for certain kinds of aid. No good, FEMA realized.

So FEMA revised, and simplified, its letters.

Chip Scanlan: 'We have to write badly to write well'

Writer & writing coach Chip Scanlan wants you to embrace revising your stories, even if you don't think you have time. "You don't have the time not to revise," he said during a Newsu.org webinar.

And he wants you to understand that it's OK to write poor first draft. And editors, he said, "need to let reporters know -- you can write badly, because I know you're gonna write well." 

Chip was one of the faculty members at a writing/editing conference I went to at Poynter years ago, so I knew he was going to be good. I just love his attitude about writing and editing. He understands what's hard about it as well as what's great about it, and understands the work it takes to work through the hard stuff to get to the great stuff. He values the relationship between a reporter and an editor, and much of what he teaches revolves around those two people working together for the reader and for the story. 

A quote he put up at the end of the webinar captures that optimistic attitude: "Accept the flaws of your first draft to find the promise of the final story."

 He also offered fresh, concrete tips on how to do what you do better. Here are some other key points from his webinar:

To revise effectively (and there was more, I'm condensing here):

• Print out your story and read it. Mark each thing that strikes you as needing work; number each; write a note as to why you flagged it; then go back into your story and take on the changes one at a time.
• Do you have text-to-speech on your computer? Make it read your story to you. Revise what sounds off.
• Use 'find and replace' to scrub 'ly' adverbs from your copy.
• Check word counts of sentences, paragraphs and your lead.
• Keep quotes to somewhere around 6-20 words.
• Get rid of is/was/were verbs; they can reflect insufficient reporting. Replace with active constructions.
• Role-play the reader.
• Study others' work, dissect it, learn from mistakes (as well as what's good) and bring that to your own work.
• Find a co-reader who will help you work through your drafts.
• Budget time to revise early in the process.
• Never give up.

Here's more on revising, including a great story about Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. 

Zinsser: Believe in yourself and in your story

Amy passed on this "excellent link," and it's good stuff: via Poynter, William Zinsser, author of "On Writing Well," checks in with some advice for writers (and, perhaps not so unintentionally, editors).

One graf caught my attention: "It’s natural for writers to worry about how their editors and publishers will respond to their work. But this preoccupation can be crippling. When we focus on what our editors want, we tend to tell the story we think they want to hear rather than the story we want to tell."

That probably resonates with a lot of writers in here, and should with editors as well. But here's the thing: Editors are never not going to have ideas about how a story might be, could be or should be done. I'd encourage writers to do what Zinsser says -- fight for the story you discover and believe is important to tell. Any editor worth anything should recognize and welcome a better story idea, and should go about the job of helping you do that story as well as it can be done.

Charles Pierce interview

Charles Pierce on writing, editing, stuff he likes, the end-of-decade narrative he did for Esquire magazine, and other things, courtesy of Neiman Storyboard.

Preview:

Q: What should a good story do?

A: I want the ideas to flow from one to the other. I want them to be surprising if they can be. I want the reader to go along in the same kind of evolutionary way, to have the themes strike them at the same point in the story that they strike me.

Fine reading

If you like writing, and you're not reading Tom Shroder's blog, you should be.

That's all.

What good editors do, by Stephen King

Like so much of what we discuss in here, King is talking about fiction writing/editing (specifically, editor Gordon Lish and writer Raymond Carver), but what he says certainly applies to our newsroom, or any newsroom:

In King’s opinion, “a good editor should improve the writer’s work by doing a number of useful things: posing questions the writer should have answered and didn’t, suggesting places where thematic concerns can be reinforced to make a more pleasing whole, and pointing out (gently) infelicities of language. What an editor should never do is superimpose his or her own beliefs about style and story on the author’s work. An editor should be an expert midwife, not a surrogate parent.”

Why humans need narrative (and other good stuff from ex-Washington Post editor)

Former Washington Post editor Tom Shroder, who's worked with Gene Weingarten and David Finkel among many others, has some instructive, compelling, inspiring and above all realistic thoughts on narrative journalism and its future in a digital age at Nieman Storyboard.

Two I'd point out:

Narrative is the way that human beings are genetically coded to understand the world. From the very beginning of the human ability to communicate, the way we’ve understood each other is through story. You can get a bunch of information together and try to communicate something, but you aren’t going to feel you really grasp an issue until you see it unfold in story form. The most meaningful conversations you have with your friends are you telling them stories of your experiences. People who are good at telling narratives will always be valuable. 

and

Any really great narrative journalist understands that there are no bad stories, there are only incompletely understood stories. That idea—that everything in life is going to be one hell of a story—is what drives the best. And what makes them deliver so consistently. If you look at somebody like Gene or Finkel, you might ask, “How is it that something perfect always seems to happen to them to make the story great?”

Gene and I call that the god of journalism. But the god of journalism pays off the persistent.

It's late, so what the heck, I'll do an edit on the NYT

I called up the New York Times story Nickie flagged in her post below to get started. I read the first sentence, then the first graf, then returned to the first sentence:

"The smell of death was overpowering the moment a relief worker cracked open one of the hospital chapel’s wooden doors. Inside, more than a dozen bodies lay motionless on low cots and on the ground, shrouded in white sheets. Here, a wisp of gray hair peeked out. There, a knee was flung akimbo. A pallid hand reached across a blue gown."

I thought, couldn't the first sentence have been smoother, active, tighter with an edit such as:

"The smell of death overpowered the relief worker who cracked open one of the hospital chapel's wooden doors."

Agree? Or is there something about the words "the moment" that make that sentence hum, and I'm out of tune here? Let me know what you think. (And I would add ... the rest of the graf is pretty darn good ... )

For the love of revising ... circa 1776

Thomas Jefferson labored over a declaration of independence in July 1776, then brought it before a Congressional committee, which tweaked the language -- including, for example, changing "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" to "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

Then Jefferson and the committee brought it to the full Congress, where
"change after change was called for and approximately a quarter of what he had written was cut entirely," writes David McCullough in "John Adams."

Jefferson was not comfortable, McCullough wrote, but nobody recorded that he protested (out loud, anyway).

They took out some big stuff -- Jefferson had assigned the blame for slavery to King George, and he had written that Americans must forever break their relationship with the British people, whom he held partially responsible for the King's actions. And they made some minor changes -- instead of the King inflicting "unremitting" injuries on the colonies, the document would say he inflicted "repeated" injuries.

At one point, McCullough writes, Ben Franklin "leaned over to tell [Jefferson] a story ... that he had once known a hatter who wished to have a sign made saying, 'John Thompson, Hatter, Makes and Sells Hats for Ready Money,' this to be accompanied by a picture of a hat. But the man had chosen first to ask the opinion of friends, with the result that one word after another was removed as superfluous or redundant, until at last the sign was reduced to Thompson's name and the picture of the hat."

In the end, though, as McCullough points out, the "eloquent lines of the second paragraph" -- which were, "when all was said and done, [Jefferson's] lines" -- survived and still glow today:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

I think the revising stage of a great piece of writing -- the stage where you really get down to examining sentences and words and such -- can be the most fun and the most rewarding part of writing (if also among the hardest, particularly, perhaps, for the writer). I think there are a few of you out there who would second that thought.

How do you create a great narrative?

Jan Winburn, a great, great narrative editor who worked with Ken Fuson at the Baltimore Sun and later worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, won an award from the Dart Society, a group of journalists that work toward sensitive coverage of victims of violence. The awared recognizes exceptional work by an editor.

According to the Dart Society's Web site, some of the people she's worked with -- including Lisa Pollak, who won a Pulitzer for feature writing while at the Sun -- nominated her, saying in part:

“We learned from Jan about the indelible link between reporting and writing: that successful narratives are not just the stuff of pretty writing (as some editors believe). Instead the power lies in intensive yet delicate reporting that yields intimate anecdotes and details that allow Jan’s reporters to write with authority from another person’s view."

That's about as strong a definition of what goes into making great narrative as you'll find, I think.

Good warnings

I like this post from John McIntyre, former chief of the Baltimore Sun's copy desk, for a couple of reasons:

One, it's good for a couple of chuckles.

And two, it's always good to be reminded of the writing minefields that sometimes are only a step or two away. Knowing what territory to avoid can sometimes be just as helpful as knowing where you want to go.

It's great to be edited (and I mean, I'M being edited)

If I've ever worked with you on a story through revision after revision, and you were like, 'Dang, I thought I was done!,' I just want you to know that right now, I'm in your shoes.

I've been working with my wife on what would be a picture book for young grade-school kids about a matter of great import: What would happen if the Tooth Fairy ever met the Easter Bunny while they were making their rounds.* (This is fiction. I have not been staking out little kids' houses the night before Easter to do research.)

Both Betsy, my wife, and Buffy have been my editors on this. I wrote it a while back and sent it to them for a read. I figured I was done. Great sense of accomplishment; I'd taken an idea and actually created a beginning-to-end conflict/resolution story that, by God, wasn't half bad.

And then Betsy and Buffy weighed in. And I revised it. And they suggested things. And I revised. And so on ... and this morning I finished probably the 10th revision of the story. (And it still needs work.)

It is now so different, and so much better, than it was the first time I put it down, I can hardly imagine why I thought I was done. But that, I realized, is what a writer/editor relationship is all about -- the writer creates and the editor helps see around the corners the writer can't see around when he/she is writing.

It's a great learning experience for me to be on the other side of that equation. In the last edit, for example, Buffy even flagged me on using 'ing' verbs instead of 'ed' verbs ... which is something I am attuned to as an editor but something I missed in my own work as a writer.

Betsy, who used to be an early childhood teacher and can tune in to the frequencies used by little kids, has helped me with the tone of the story -- that is, making it more silly. Once during revisions, I had to think long and hard about the weighty issue of what, exactly, a rabbitt would exclaim upon bashing into a fairy; and what a fairy would say at the same moment.

I know all this work will make me a better writer; I'm hoping it makes me a better editor too.

*You're welcome to read it if you want.

Update: Videoconference workshops with Jacqui

We're solidifying the schedule and topics for the storytelling workshops with Jacqui Banaszynski, as well as some baggers Amy and I are going to do. Check the left rail under 'Coming up' for dates, times, presenter and topic.

Note that the first two are:

April 8, 4:30 p.m. -- Amy on the writing process and "forensic editing."

April 22, noon -- Jacqui on a deeper look at focusing and organizing, and how a conversation between reporter and editor can help.

We've set this up to be an integrated year-long schedule of workshops aimed at practical reporting/writing/editing skills: Amy or I will do a bagger; the following month, Jacqui's video workshop will drill deeper on some aspect of what Amy or I talked about. We've staggered the times between noon and 4:30 to give those who work early or late a chance to be in at least two sessions with Jacqui.

Jacqui's goal, she said in an e-mail as we were working on this, is to "provide real tools on very focused topics" so that you'll leave the session with concrete and practical things you can apply to your work.

It's gonna be great stuff, an opportunity few newsrooms will have.

As always, if there are some specific things you'd like covered in these sessions, let me know and we'll try to work them in.

Another thing about that Chris Jones story ...

I've since read other stuff by him, some of it good, but nothing nearly to the level of 'The Things That Carried Him.' And I would bet there is a lot of work in Jones' background that is decent or good but not great.

So I think anyone who dreams about reporting/writing/editing/photographing a truly great story should not be discouraged when they read something like Jones' story or Gene Weingarten's in the Washington Post on children who suffocate when their parents accidentally leave them in the car. There's a thread on Gangrey.com where people are discussing why a story like Weingarten's makes them feel inadequate; i.e., I'll never be able to write that, so why bother?

To which I'd say:

It may be true; you may never be as good as Weingarten or Jones, never good enough to pull off that kind of a story.

But I guarantee you that all of the stories that Weingarten and Jones did before they reported and wrote those stories prepared them to report and write those stories. (Not to mention all of the life experience). Neither went to sleep one night as idiots and awoke the next morning as terrific observers, interviewers, fact-finders and writers.

Every time we report and write, or edit, or shoot, we're creating something, and trying to make it as good as it can be. But we're also preparing ourselves for the next story. We're learning something we can take with us down the road and put to work on a story we don't even know exists yet.

That's why you bother -- because it's how you get better. That's how you prepare yourself to do something great.

It's OK to be in awe of Jones and Weingarten after you read their stories. Just turn that awe into a tool, and use it to focus on what you can bring to, and take from, your next story.

Was I just talking about short narrative? Hmmm.....

Well, I just wrote something about short narrative, so to balance things out ...

Gangrey.com posted that this story is a finalist in some magazine award contest. I or someone else may have written about it before, but if you haven't read it, it's worth the read. (UPDATE: It was someone else. Thanks, Jeff.) It's about the trip home of a soldier who died in combat. And it's very, very long.

It's incredibly ambitious -- from the practically minute-by-minute, scene-by-scene reporting to the reverse chronological structure of the story. But Chris Jones, the writer, obviously was able to pull it off.

If you read it, try to use what's in the story to deconstruct the things he did, from concept to reporting to focusing to organizing to writing to revising. As a bonus, the Esquire page has a link to an interview with Jones about the story (warning -- right now I can't get the Esquire site to do anything but load the first page of the story).

Anyway, the thing I try to do with stories like these is not figure out how I could write (or help you write) that story. I try to learn from the things Chris Jones did in order to apply them to the next story I'm working on, and the one after that, and the one after that ... so that I'm essentially developing a greater ability to do the things that make a story good. That, I think, helps me get ready for when the really great story comes along.

Present tense, or past?

Writers often like present tense when they write about something they've witnessed; present tense makes the scene feel more fresh, more there somehow. But past tense is powerful, too, and to me, present tense has to clear some hurdles before it gets in the paper.

If I come across present tense in a story I'm editing, I'll ask at least a few questions about it -- why use present tense? What are you accomplishing? Can you sustain present tense all the way through the story?

That last one is key. If the writer's answer is no, I usually advise the story be written all in past tense.

However ...

I've edited two stories in the past couple weeks, both of which opened with a scene in present tense. One was Melissa's story on Eric Sajko, and the other was Jeff's on Sean Brame. I thought past tense worked better in Melissa's, and she changed the present-tense scene to past. I thought the present-tense scene worked in Jeff's, and it's in the paper.

I remember talking with Melissa and saying, if you wanted to do the opening in present-tense, I think you'd have to set it off as its own part of the story, to put us in that scene as a way of making a point or showing us something important about the story; then make a clear break to a new and different part of the story. You couldn't write in present tense for several grafs and then suddenly shift to past in the middle of the story. It just doesn't work.

In Jeff's story, the opening scene is set off; it shows us something important about the story and it does so by allowing us to be in the scene as it unfolds. And there is a significant break in scene/topic when you move into the second section.

Bottom line is, I'm comfortable that both stories were well-served by decisions on verb tenses. Both are very good; both have descriptive scenes with good action verbs and bright observations rendered in fresh language by the writers. They were both a pleasure to read, let alone edit.

Read the openings to both stories, and let me know what you think.

Take a fresh look at Nieman narrative web site

Nieman Narrative Digest just unveiled its redesigned Web site. It's as good a reason as any to check out the site. The folks at Nieman post good narrative stories, do Q&As with the authors, and explore the craft in other ways.