Choose the Right Way to Tell Your Story Telling stories in a multi-platform world involves several choices. They won’t all apply to every story, but you should consider them with every story:
Notice that I put text last. I didn’t do that because it’s least important, but because that’s what many reporters think of first. Sometimes – many times – text will be the best way to tell the story or the most important of multiple ways that you tell the story. But sometimes you should decide that you can tell a story effectively without ever writing a string of paragraphs. Consider the full package Consider all “layers” of your story package. Too many reporters play a passive role in the presentation of their stories. Then they complain about a fact box that was redundant, a headline that gives away the ending, echoes the lead or steals a clever line. Or they may complain when editors want to cut out a chunk of the story that doesn’t quite fit. Even though other professionals will complete the package, it’s your story and it will bear your name. Take an active role in the planning. Suggest a headline. Yours might not fit the design. Or a copy editor might improve on your idea, because the copy editor is more experienced at that difficult art. But suggesting a headline conveys to the editors what you think is most important (and writing the headline helps you focus, too). Raise photo, design, graphic, multi-media, interactive and database possibilities. Perhaps your story and the visual presentation would benefit from pulling out your explanation of a process and turning that into a graphic or sidebar. Or some important numbers that would bog down your prose might make an excellent graphic. The other professionals will not necessarily follow your ideas. The package benefits from the creativity of each of the journalists involved and from your active involvement. Consider the user. Consider what job this story is doing for the user. Are you amusing, informing, giving the reader useful information? The job that the story does will often help you decide how to tell it. Also consider who your audience for the story is. These considerations about potential users will guide some of your decisions about how to tell the story. Consider multi-media Consider video. Video is especially important to your young readership. Your readers are enjoying video on YouTube and other internet sites. You need to make it an important part of your storytelling toolbox. If you’re covering an event, video can almost always be part of the story package. If characters are telling you interesting stories, let them tell part of the story in their own voice on a video clip. You don’t have to shoot all the video yourself. More and more of life is captured on video. You can ask for official videos and home videos that will help you tell the story. Consider audio. Digital audio recorders let us capture the voices of your characters. Telling stories in audio form allows users to download them to iPods and listen to them as they travel or work. Consider slide shows. Slide shows let us tell stories in still photographs much more powerfully than the few photographs you have space for in your print edition. Consider sound slides. Sometimes a video of a character speaking is pretty static visually. Put that voice over a slide show relating to the story, and you have a strong storytelling tool. Consider virtual reality. If the place you are writing about is important, you can show it to the reader in a detailed interactive way by shooting 360-degree photographs and editing them into a steerable virtual reality that lets the reader see what the place really looks like. You can get the software to edit still photos into VR at download.com. Consider PowerPoints. Increasingly, the people we write about use PowerPoint slide shows to explain issues to their peers and staffs. We can use those same slide shows (or develop shows of our own) to explain the issues to our users. Keep in mind that most PowerPoints are accompanied by a person explaining the context of what you are seeing or connecting some dots. Consider whether you need some audio to accompany the slide show or some extra slides that provide that context or connection. Consider simulations. Your readers grew up on video games. Your stories will be more meaningful online if you can offer simulations that help them try their skill at something you are writing about or use a game-like simulation to experience it more richly. You may not have to produce the simulations yourself. If the military or a contractor uses a simulation for a topic you’re writing about, see if you can get something to use online to help tell the story. Consider animations. Computer animations can illustrate processes, such as how a new weapon will work. Again, you don’t have to produce the animations yourself. But if you can obtain an animation, it would enhance the multi-media presentation of your story. Consider interactivity You can turn your user into a participant by making your story interactive. You can do this on at least four levels:
Consider crowd-sourcing. Crowd-sourcing helps you connect with participants who know what you’re trying to find out in your reporting. You use your web edition to connect with people who know something about the topic you’re writing about. Sometimes you will need to word the invitation carefully, so you’re not passing along rumors or tipping off competition. But you invite your readers to tell you what they know. Crowd-sourcing can help you connect with confidential sources or obtain official documents in an investigation. Crowd-sourcing can provide quick answers on a breaking news story. Crowd-sourcing can gather stories for a light feature. You can use the product of crowd-sourcing in multiple ways:
Consider a wiki or discussion thread. If you’re covering an event or issue, you could invite participants to tell their own story – either as a standalone or to supplement your own coverage – either as a wiki that each user adds to and edits what has been written before or as a discussion forum, where each contribution adds to what has come before. Consider databases and calculators. Readers can personalize your stories when you provide databases that allow them to find the information that applies most closely to them. For instance, if Congress approves an increase in pay or benefits, an online calculator can help each reader decide how much his own increase will be. Or if you’re writing about an issue that applies to the whole military or an entire branch, a database can allow readers to find the numbers (or a brief description) for their own unit or base. Interactive maps are an effective database. The reader can click on her base or home state and get the information that means the most to her. Consider discussion forums. If you’ve produced a good story, it should draw reaction from readers. By establishing a forum for reader discussion, you allow them to consider the story with their opinions, experiences and questions. This may generate tips for follow-up stories. Or it may be a discussion that deepens the experience for readers, however long it lasts. Consider alternate story forms Many stories are told most effectively in forms other than the traditional string of paragraphs. Consider whether all or part of your story should be told in the forms covered in the handout on layering of stories. An alternate story form can be a sidebar to a main story in the traditional paragraph format. Or the alternate form can become the story, either as a standalone or with the string of paragraphs as the sidebar. Consider whether your story would work best as a grid, graphic, board game, timeline, list, series of vignettes, quiz or some other alternate form. Choosing the structure of your text Think about structure early and often as you work on a story. As soon as you get the idea or assignment, start considering the best way to tell the story. You have lots of choices and no structure is right or wrong for every situation. The right structure depends on you and the story. As you report and discover the story, seek the best way to tell it. Consider alternatives. Try a couple approaches if you’re not sure. Write as you report. As you gather information, start writing the story. This will help you focus the reporting that remains. It will help you record events and interviews while the memories are fresh. It will help you audition story structures. If you’re thinking a narrative would be a good approach, an early narrative draft will give you a look at that approach before your editor is counting on it. That early draft will identify details you still need to pull off the narrative. If you can get those details, the draft will direct your remaining reporting. If you can’t get those details, the draft might redirect you to a different structure. Consult with your editor. Don’t hold your cards too close to your vest. Your editor can provide valuable direction on story structure. Even if you aren’t on the same wave length as your editor, consultations help prepare the editor for something different. Or the consultation may identify standards that you have to meet when trying something different. If your editor likes the approach you’re planning, you get an ally in winning over other editors who might be skeptical. If you’re trying a structure you haven’t tried before, the editor might have experience with that structure. If you’re lacking confidence in your new structure, the editor can provide advice and encouragement. Consider story elements. Use story elements such as character, plot, setting, theme, conflict and resolution to make your story more engaging, whatever structure you use. Because most newspaper stories aren’t long enough to develop all story elements fully, you need to select the most important elements and build the story around them. Your lead often should identify the most important story element. Plan your structure. Especially if you’re considering a structure you haven’t used before, write a plan or outline of your story. What will be the central conflict? How will you resolve it? Who are the characters? What is the plot? What is the setting? Where will you start? Where will you end? Will you write a single story or a series? Or a package with a main story and sidebars? Discuss the plan with your editors. Take inventory as you’re writing the plan. What do you already have that this plan requires? What do you need to learn to carry out this plan? Where can you learn that information? Avoid formulaic writing. None of these structures is inherently good or bad. Each of them has strengths and can be effective. Any of them can become a cliché if overused or used ineffectively. The structure doesn’t ensure a good story. Your creativity and high standards make the structure work for your story. Find the right structure. The structures presented here are only some examples of ways you can structure a story. Some of them overlap, so your story might fall in a couple of the categories below. Or you might be creative enough to craft a perfect structure for your story that defies any of these labels. Types of structures Inverted pyramid. The inverted pyramid remains a common story form, perhaps the most common. It gives the reader the most important information first, then follows with information of diminishing importance or interest. The inverted pyramid helps the scanning reader who wants to learn the most important information quickly and doesn’t necessarily want to read each story to the end. The inverted pyramid is easy for editors to cut quickly from the end. The inverted pyramid has fallen into disrepute because of its weaknesses: It grows less interesting or more trivial as it goes, virtually inviting the reader to stop reading. The inverted pyramid doesn’t engage the reader. If you’re writing most of your stories in the inverted pyramid, you should try branching out. Don’t use the inverted pyramid to write a long story. Because the story gets increasingly less important or less interesting, a long story in this style has a lot of wasted space. As the information diminishes in importance, your readership will narrow. The inverted pyramid can be effective for a short or medium-length routine story. Martini glass. This story form, named by Don Fry, starts out as an inverted pyramid, giving the reader the most important news first in a straight lead, following with other news in decreasing importance, just like the inverted pyramid, which becomes the top of the glass. At the bottom of this triangle is an olive, the nut graf or set-up for a brief narrative. The narrative follows in a straight path, the stem of the martini glass. The story ends with a conclusion that wraps up the story, perhaps fulfilling a promise you made up in the “olive” paragraph or resolving the conflict laid out there. While an inverted-pyramid story can cut from the end, the martini-glass story needs this ending, the base of the glass. If you must cut, you probably will need to shorten the stem. This is a different description of what Roy Peter Clark of Poynter calls the “hourglass,” structure, which turns from inverted pyramid to narrative with some sort of transition like “It started with …” Conflict/resolution. Ken Fuson of the Des Moines Register says every story at its heart is a story of conflict and resolution. Establish your conflict early and clearly. Unfold the plot as your characters pursue the resolution. Ideally the resolution will provide a powerful and fitting end. Because we write many news stories before the conflict is resolved, you sometimes need to alter this approach. Instead of resolving the conflict, your story becomes about the quest for resolution or the frustration of waiting for resolution. Circular story. This story starts in a particular place, usually with an anecdote about a character or with a particular scene. The anecdote leads to a larger story, usually an examination of an issue. The story concludes back where it started, with an insight from the initial character about the issue or by resolving how this issue affected the introductory scene. The circular structure also can work with a narrative or feature story. Sidebar. A sidebar generally should be short and tightly focused. It should make a separate point from the main story but on a related topic. When you have good information on a topic that doesn’t fit in the main story, consider a sidebar rather than forcing it into the main story. Five boxes. Rick Bragg, now of the University of Alabama, uses and teaches this approach, which helps organize both your story and your material as you report. He sets up the story as a series of five “boxes,” as explained in an interview with Chip Scanlan of the Poynter Institute:
Q&A. Question-and-answer format is most effective as a change of pace or a sidebar. It works only with tight editing and with a character who speaks clearly and colorfully. Long, rambling quotes bog down a story, so the Q&A runs the risk of becoming tedious and loaded with jargon. You want to produce a brisk transcript with pointed Q’s & crisp A’s. Be sure to tell the source you will publish an edited transcript. Then acknowledge in the introduction that you have edited the transcript. Edit out the jargon and clutter. Try not to edit in much, if anything. You might change a pronoun to the person’s name or add a couple implied words to make a conversational fragment into a clear sentence. But you don’t want to put words into the character’s mouth. If you edit heavily, run the transcript or the passage in question past the subject. Roundtable. This is a variation on the Q&A, with multiple sources providing the answers. When it works best, you have just a few questions, each launching a lively discussion among the characters with little input from the reporter. This might work as a sidebar or final installment for a series on an issue. Perhaps you have laid out the problem effectively over the first three days of a series and your fourth installment is a discussion of possible solutions. Again, you will need to edit heavily. Even with heavy editing, the roundtable often needs considerable space to work effectively. Debate. Still another twist on the Q&A is a debate, or joint interview, perhaps with two political candidates or with advocates of opposing positions on a hot issue. Without television cameras or an audience, you get the candidates or advocates together to answer the same questions in a less formal setting than a debate. You don’t need to time answers, but tell the candidates in advance that you will edit the transcript to give them equal or similar space. Provide the equal space over the transcript as a whole, rather than for each question. One candidate may provide more substance on a particular question while the other addressed it briefly. But even the space out in the long run. Or you can interview the candidates separately, asking the same questions and editing the answers into a transcript in debate style. Be sure to tell the candidates in advance how you will present the information and disclose to readers that this wasn’t a live debate but one created through interviews and editing. This edited debate allows you to press for answers when candidates dodge the initial question and lets you omit questions that elicited platitudes from both candidates. Blog. Whether you’re writing a blog for your web site or writing in blog style for a print story (perhaps about a blogger or about blogging), a blog takes on a different style from traditional print stories. If you blog a breaking news story, it unfolds in reverse chronological order for new readers, with the most recent entries on top. Entries should be brief and brisk, so you can post them quickly and move the story along for readers refreshing frequently online. Write each post as a distinct unit, readable by itself but tied to the rest. Readers will read in different ways: Some will follow the story closely and reading each new post in order. Some will check in occasionally, reading the newest post and scanning for other updates of interest. Some will start with the most recent post or two, then scroll to the bottom to read the coverage in order. As important developments break, some background and summary are in order, because those posts will be read most closely. Narrative structures Brief narrative. The brief narrative is effective for simple stories about a single incident. A routine police story or light feature may be a brief narrative. You can unfold the brief narrative in a variety of ways. If you’re writing a news story, you may need to give the reader the news first before you begin the narrative. Start with a summary lead, telling the basic news. You might follow with a paragraph or two of context and/or explaining why the story is important. Then you start at the beginning and tell what happened. You might open with the who, what, when and where, then use the narrative to tell how and why. With a feature story, the brief narrative can start at a key moment, then jump back in time and unfold chronologically. Or you can start at the beginning and let the story flow chronologically. In a feature, you might want to use suspense and tension to keep the reader moving, rather than giving away the end at the top, as you may have to do with a news story. A brief narrative may develop just a few story elements. Long narrative. A long narrative is an especially effective approach for a weekend story or for second or third-day coverage of a big news story. It also works in feature stories. In the long narrative, you don’t want to give away the whole conclusion, or perhaps any of it, at the top of the story. If you’re writing a narrative about a major news story, the reader will already know the what of the ending, but may not know the why or how or the background or all the details. A long narrative needs to hook the reader quickly and give the reader a reason to stick with you. Tension and suspense, even mystery, are important elements of the long narrative, but confusion is not. Give the reader an early hint, or promise, of what’s to come early in the story. The promise sometimes plays the role of “nut graph” in the long narrative. The promise may raise a question that the reader can expect you to answer by the end of the story. It may lay out the mystery that you will solve or establish the conflict you will resolve. Story elements are crucial to the long narrative. Develop the characters carefully so the reader cares about them and wants to know what happens to them. Help the reader picture them in her imagination, even if photographs will accompany the story. Place the characters in a setting and transport the reader there. Put the characters into action in the setting. Use sensory detail to help the reader see, feel, hear and even smell the scenes. Use dialogue to help the reader hear the characters. Capture the key moments in memorable scenes where your narrative slows (or accelerates) to highlight the drama. Use what Roy Peter Clark of Poynter calls “internal cliffhangers” to build suspense, move the reader along and give a promise of an ending worth the journey. Use what Don Fry calls “gold coins” to keep the reader following your path. These are the compelling, intriguing, amusing or enchanting details or anecdotes that you would shove to the top of an inverted-pyramid story. You need to string them throughout the long narrative to reward the reader for continuing the journey. Serial narrative. A serial narrative follows many of the same techniques as a long narrative. Each piece needs to stand on its own as well as link to the others. You need an overriding theme and/or conflict holding the serial together. Each installment needs a sub-theme or conflict. While the ending must wrap up that day’s story, it also should have some element of promise or mystery, maybe even a cliffhanger, to invite the reader back for the next installment. Be especially demanding of the serial narrative and each of its parts. You’re better off cutting the story short by a day or two than risking a story or two that drag or wander from the central conflict. If you lose readers during a narrative with a weak link, they won’t come back. Most newspaper narratives start on Sunday, when many readers have extra time to spend with the newspaper. Your reader’s attention span might be lower on weekdays, because he’s reading your paper quickly before he goes to work, or on a coffee break at work. Installments that day must be shorter and/or more compelling to continue holding reader interest. Story arc. Jack Hart of The Oregonian coaches writers to plan their narrative stories along the story arc – exposition, rising action, climax, denouement. The exposition sets the scene and introduces the characters, or at least the protagonist. Early in the rising action the protagonist will engage the complication (this is the conflict Fuson says is essential to a story). The rising action will be the body of the story, the unfolding plot. It must build tension, or at least pique curiosity. The rising action leads to a climax, the resolution of the conflict. The writer ties up the story and any loose ends in the denouement. Structural devices Anecdotal lead. An effective way to start an issue story is with an anecdote about a person or situation that illustrates something about the issue you’re discussing. You follow the anecdote with a nut graph tying this situation to the broader issue. Then you lay out the broader issue and discuss it. Anecdotal leads can be an effective way to personalize an issue and show the impact on readers. They also can become formulaic and tired. Next to the inverted pyramid, the anecdotal lead may be the most overused and most poorly used story approach. You heighten the effect of the anecdotal lead by making the relationship to the broader issue immediately clear. The reader can feel cheated when she realizes this is not a story about this interesting character but about that dull issue. Even if the issue is interesting, the shift from anecdote to issue must be smooth and the tie between anecdote and issue must be strong. The longer the anecdote rambles on, the more it seems like a bait-and-switch when the story shifts into the issue. You also strengthen the anecdotal approach by finding a character or situation that is a perfect fit for the issue and by weaving the character or situation throughout the story, including perhaps the ending. Bullets. This approach works for the complex issue with several facets that you need to explain. Bullets are most effective if you use them to:
When you summarize high in the story, you generally start with a top that introduces the issue. Fairly high, often following a nut graph, you summarize the several facets with bullets. Then you elaborate on the facets, or at least the most important ones, in the same order that you introduced them in the bullets. Tight writing is important in using bullets. You need to craft your setup carefully, so that each bullet follows clearly from it. One strong way to set up the bullets is so that an action verb will follow each one, as in the bullets above. Keep the text in each bullet point tight, especially when you are using the bullets to summarize high in the story. Resist the urge to elaborate here. Otherwise, your more detailed elaboration later will seem redundant. The bullets above are 13 and 11 words, enough to establish the point but not so much that this elaboration feels redundant. When you use bullets later in a story, you are not summarizing main points, but perhaps effects or upcoming actions. Brevity is still important, but in some cases these bullet points can be a bit longer. You should cover the point fully and don’t elaborate after you’ve finished the bullet points. Perhaps each bullet starts with a brief summary of the point, like those above, but then follows with a quote, an example, or a sentence or two of explanation. When you’re using longer bullets, it probably won’t work to set them up so that each starts in mid-sentence with a verb, as in the brief bullets above. By the time you get to your second or third bullets, you’re far enough from the “to” that the verb seems alone and incomplete. Use an intro that will allow you to begin each bullet with a complete sentence that stands on its own. When you use bullets, consider whether they belong in the story, or whether they could make a separate layer of the package, set apart as a sidebar or fact box. Subheads. You can break up an issue story into its various parts, or break up a narrative story into its various scenes, by using subheads. This helps the scanning reader who may care about parts of the story but not the full story. It also tells the reader, more effectively than a forced transition, that you are shifting to another topic. Use subheads to break up sections of similar length. If you have a 20-inch section of the story followed by a three-inch section, subheads look a bit silly. Viewpoint. Most stories are told in third person: he, she and they. Consider the alternatives where they are appropriate. Second-person stories engage the reader, telling what your child will encounter in school this fall, why your uniform regulations are changing, how your tax money is being spent. First-person stories don’t have to be just your own accounts of what happened to you. You also could use first-person to tell a story based on an interview. You can do this in a variety of ways:
Quotes. Too many stories become strings of quotes connected by summaries and transitions. Use quotes sparingly. Chip Scanlan advises putting your stories on a “Quote Diet,” counting quotes as carefully as some people count carbs or calories. The typical quote in many newspaper stories is some information that you could have presented better in a paraphrase, even if you still attribute it to the same person (usually an official). Be more demanding of quotes. Use them for opinion, for emotion, for distinct, thoughtful or outrageous words and phrases and especially for dialogue. Seek to increase the percentage of your quotes that are characters speaking in scenes that you observed or reconstructed, as opposed to sources answering your questions. You do this two ways, by listening and digging for more dialogue and by relaxing your reliance on quotation marks when you are using the information you gathered in interviews. Structural Issues Avoid confusion. In a long or serial narrative, multiple characters can confuse the reader. Consider the importance of each character and decide whether you can omit some. If your story still has a large cast, consider a “cast of characters” box with mug shots and thumbnail identification. This will help the reader keep characters straight, particularly when a minor character resurfaces quite a while after you first introduced him. Where possible, avoid reusing minor characters. Geography and chronology also can be confusing, especially if the story doesn’t flow in chronological order or doesn’t occur all in one place. Consider a map or timeline, or a map with numbers and text blocks that show how the action flowed through time and space. Process bogs down stories. Reporters need to know much more about process than readers want to know. Consider one of these approaches to explaining legal, bureaucratic or technical processes:
More resources on structure: Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “Give It a Different Structure”: http://www.journalism.org/resources/tools/writing/lessons/structure.asp?from=print Chip Scanlan ’s “Jacqui Banaszynski’s Six Paths to Story”: http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=11738 Chip Scanlan ’s “Five Boxes to Build a Story Fast: A Suggestion from Rick Bragg”: http://poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=11486
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