#14a Writing With The Headlights On, Six Ways to Cover All Your Story's Bases, Jon Franklin's "Writing for Story" Stands The Test of Time
"Unloading the Mail"/Reginald Marsh
Works Progress Administration Mural 1936
At this time of year, postal workers, Amazon drivers and other delivery services work overtime to make sure the cards and gifts we send to loved ones arrive on time. Granted, they don't always succeed. But this week's art pays tribute to their efforts through a series of publicly funded mural art that illustrates the moving of the mail during the American Depression of the 1930s. You can learn more about them in the Miscellany section at the bottom of this edition of Chip in Your Inbox.
Thanks to all my faithful subscribers who share my passion for the craft. I wish you all the Happiest of Holidays, wherever you are, and the very best of writing.
WRITERS SPEAK
"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go... It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
- E. L. Doctorow
CRAFT LESSON: Six ways to cover all your story's bases
Recently, I interviewed author and longtime magazine writer David Margolick about a story he wrote about a loud and noxious building project in his Manhattan neighborhood. His reporting was meticulous and richly detailed from the health effects on neighbors — human, canine and feline — to the
construction process and description of the owners' plans for an ostentatious and disruptive underground entertainment center.
Margolick's comprehensive approach brought to mind a reporting rubric that can be a guide for writers who want to make sure they cover all the bases. They are six elements that William E. Blundell devised for himself when he was writing and editing page one stories for The Wall Street Journal and later shared as an influential writing coach in his classic handbook, "The Art and Craft of Feature Writing."
Blundell uses six areas to cover his material. "A few of these things are of interest, and others may not be, but I always consider all six of them," he said. They are:
1. History. When did this start? Who started it? What are the pivotal events on a timeline? Does my main theme development have roots in the past? What are they?
2. Scope. What is the extent of the problem? How many people are affected? How much money is at stake?
3. Central reasons. Why is this happening? What are the economic, social or political forces that created it, influence it, threaten it?
4. Impacts. Who is helped or hurt by this and to what extent and what's their emotional response to it?
5. Gathering and action of contrary forces. If this is going on, is somebody trying to do anything about it, and how is that working out?
6. The future. If this keeps up, what are things going to look like five or 10 years from now, in the eyes of the people who are directly involved?
Blundell used the six points to organize his reporting before he wrote. I think they can be equally valuable earlier in the process. Blundell’s six points provide a roadmap for this kind of comprehensive research, reporting, and interviews.
Whether you’re on a daily deadline or working on a longer project like a magazine article or nonfiction book, they offer powerful assistance with the reporter's never-ending challenge: developing the expertise needed to write with clarity, completeness, accuracy and, above all, authority.
BOOKBAG: Jon Franklin's "Writing for Story' Stands The Test of Time
In 1979, Jon Franklin won the first Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for "Mrs. Kelly's Monster," a dramatic rendering of a brain operation that focused on a surgeon who fought and lost a battle with a tenacious tumor.
Six years later, in 1985, Franklin won his second Pulitzer, this one for explanatory reporting for "The Mind Fixers," a seven-part series about the new science of molecular psychiatry.
A year later, he published "Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction." Three decades later, it remains one of the finest handbooks available to writers of narrative nonfiction.
The book still succeeds because Franklin is not just a superb writer, but a reflective practitioner and willing teacher who shares the lessons of his craft with clarity and generosity. He describes his methodology as a "step-by-step cookbook approach." If you follow it, as I learned, you can write successful narrative nonfiction.
I purchased the book shortly after it appeared, put its lessons into practice and can testify to its power. To prepare for a new writing project, I recently dove back into my copy and recapped its highlights for this week's Craft Lesson.
I was pleased to see that it was just as instructive and inspirational as I remembered.
Franklin presents a coherent, easy to follow (if challenging to achieve) formula.
He based his theories on his study of short fiction, specifically the stores of Ernest Heminway, John Steinbeck and other writers whose work appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and other popular--and sadly, long-defunct--magazines of the 1930s and 40s. These publications, he said, amounted to "the universal school for writers."
The fiction they published rests on a simple, timeless and elegant formula: a complication, plus a body (or development) and a resolution. Franklin applies and expands the lessons of that formula to the nonfiction story with these assertions. Highlights from the text include:
“A story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.”
“A complication is any problem encountered by any human being; it’s an event that triggers a situation that complicates our lives…” For instance, a surgeon confronts an intractable tumor or "Joe loses his job.”
“To be of literary value, a complication must be not only basic but also significant to the human condition.”
“A resolution is simply any change in the character or situation that resolves the complication.”
You implement the formula by writing the complication, developments and resolution on three by five cards.
You must cast them in three words and in terms of action: “Cancer strikes Joe.” “Joe overcomes cancer.”
Avoid static or passive verbs: has, had, were, was, is, be, am, being, been. Verbs must be action verbs.
“Once you've stated your complications and resolution in terms of clear action, identify the actions your character takes in his attempts to overcome the complication... Using three-word active statements, you should be able to form a chronological chain of actions that lead either directly or indirectly from the complication to the resolution. This composes the development of your story. The complication, the action events that flow from it, and finally the resolution compose the backbone of the true story. A fiction writer would say you now have your plot.”
Outlining is essential. “With an outline you can think your story through, quickly and without great effort. Massive structural problems will stand out, and you can solve them with the stroke of a pen. You can think the story through, time and again, very quickly, and still retain the energy, enthusiasm and freshness you need to do a good job when it comes time to actually write the story.”
An outline might look like this
Complication: Company fires Joe
Development:
Depression paralyzes Joe
Joe regains confidence
Joe sues company
Resolution: Joe regains job
The story must adhere rigorously to the facts. You can’t make up anything to fit your focus.
“If all else is done properly, the most dramatic aspect of any story is growth and change in the main character. The growth and change should be made the central part of the outline, so that it will emerge as the backbone of the story."
Although the rest of the book contains more information about structure and revision, the lessons I itemized are the most vital for anyone contemplating a piece of narrative nonfiction.
After I bought the book shortly after it appeared when word of its publication was spreading among narrative and would-be-narrative writers and their editors. I decided to try and put its lessons into practice as soon as possible.
By chance, a call to the St. Petersburg (FL) Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) reached me in the features department where I worked as a staff writer.
The caller was an elderly man named Bert Mudd who had an interesting, but dubious, story to tell. Mudd said his older brother Thaddeus had been murdered in his home in Virginia. Bert Mudd was going to find his murderer. With my marked-up copy of “Writing for Story” staring at me from my desk, I asked if I could tag along.
Once I returned, with bulging notebooks and several audiotapes, I set to work.
It took a while before I could match Franklin’s formula, but eventually, I came up with:
Complication: Brother hunts killer
Resolution: Brother identifies killer
In between, I sketched out the developments: Mudd's travels north, fruitless encounters with authorities, his indefatigable sleuthing that led to a chance encounter with the man who would be charged, along with another man, with his brother’s killing. Because I’m working from memory here, I can’t replicate what I wrote on the cards that charted the development of the story between the complication and the resolution, but the three-word complication and resolution are tattooed into my brain.
The story was splashed across the front page of the features section. That day, I received two phone calls. One was from the editor of a local magazine who offered me a freelance assignment. The other came from an English professor at the University of Tampa. She invited me to give a reading of the story. Those were a first.
The other day, I asked Franklin to what he attributed the staying power of the lessons in his book. He replied:
“I think the lessons had power when I was able to channel our forebears. Adapt the things they knew, re-digest it and recast it for the modern reader. It also dovetails into things we are just discovering about the brain and behavior.
"I first discovered complication resolution from that wonderful book, “The Professional Story Writer and His Art.” But the authors got it from Chekhov, and I’m sure Chekhov stood on the shoulders of giants. So in my own way I was sort of writing literary history.
"These ways of conceptualizing story go back at least three thousand years — and may be genetically controlled. Certainly the anatomy of story mirrors the anatomy of the human brain. Catch the harmonics of that and you will hold fire in your hands. (That from John Steinbeck.)
"I was half biopsychologist even back then.”
If you’re interested in writing narrative nonfiction, you owe it to yourself to get Franklin’s book, either by buying it or borrowing it from your local library. It’s formulaic, to be sure, but the formula works. I recommend you also take a look at “Jon Franklin and “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster,” a 2012 Nieman Storyboard article by its editor, Paige Williams, who interviewed Franklin and reproduces the annotation found at the back of his book. In her introduction, Williams, now a staff writer at The New Yorker, said the story “never fails to captivate or instruct.”
The same can be said for “Writing for Story.”
Watch a Yule log burn in the name of science, courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service's Fire Science Laboratory, one that starts with a flicker and ends with a roaring, terrifying blaze. Read the accompanying Atlas Obscura article about the science behind the experiment or just kickback and enjoy the flickering lights without the need to cut wood or worry whether your chimney works. A tradition that originated in Europe in the 12th century, the burning of a Yule log during the Christmas holidays was once believed to ward off mildew, hail and even toothaches.
"Transportation of the Mail"/Alfredo de Giorgio Crimi
Works Progress Administration Mural 1937
TIP OF THE WEEK
Don't let rejection defeat you. Have a new submission ready to go as soon as a turndown appears in your inbox. If you're accepted next time around, rejoice and delete it.
"Mail Service in the Arctic"/Rockwell Kent
Works Progress Administration Mural 1937
MISCELLANY
I helped pay my way through college as a lowly mail handler at the Westport, Connecticut. Post Office.
So I was thrilled the other day when I stumbled, among the murals created by struggling artists during the American Depression in the Library of Congress collection, a series devoted to all things postal. Faithful to the realism school of art, they showed what my mail handling forebears were up to nearly a century ago.
Here's what you're looking at, thanks to commentary provided by the General Services Administration, which oversees the murals hanging in government buildings around the country.
In "Unloading the Mail," top, "mailbags from France, Austria, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, and India are being transferred from the ocean liner RMS Berengaria onto a harbor boat that will take the cargo to shore for distribution. The recently enhanced New York skyline can be glimpsed out the window on the left and, in the mural's lower left corner, a man takes careful note of the mail being received."
"Transportation of the Mail," middle, "depicts the many methods of moving mail, goods, and produce to and from the suburbs: in the left foreground, a young girl hands an envelope to a mail carrier; this pair is watched by a messenger on his bicycle; and to the right of him, two men load a box into a cart. In the middle ground, three men prepare large bags and boxes for shipment. On the right, a man drives a soon-to-be outmoded horse and cart, while on the left a sleek black locomotive puffing smoke into the blue sky moves across the background. Displayed high on the post attached to the letter box, even the street names — Export Place and Rail Street — reference the transport of goods. "
"In Mail Service in the Arctic," bottom, "a group of native Alaskans bids farewell to the mail plane." Although it's impossible to make it out, the artist had some fun with his painting. "In the foreground, an envelope addressed to Rockwell Kent at Au Sable Forks, New York, changes hands between two women dressed in traditional fur-lined parkas and the driver of the sled." Way cool!
CHIP IN YOUR EAR
"Headlights"/Robin Schulz featuring Ilsey
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