My search for a definition of narrative, begun in the previous column, continues.
This time, I’ve enlisted the help of the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors, a group with a long history of supporting narrative writing in newspapers.
When I spoke to the group last month at their 57th annual convention, held this year in St. Pete Beach, Fla., I asked them for the answer to a reporter’s question that set me on this hunt in the first place: “What is narrative, anyway?”
Most reporters and editors display good news judgment. It’s a basic skill, the ability to recognize and report news of interest and importance to an audience, to answer that fundamental question, “What’s the news?”
Less well developed, I argued, is our narrative judgment, what I think of as the ability to see a story within in the news and to use reporting and writing skills to tell it in ways that engage the reader’s attention.
Humans appear to be the only species with an innate love for stories, which is why I titled my talk, “Why Your Kids Never Say, ‘I’m Sleepy, Tell Me An Article,’ And Other Secrets of Narrative Writing.”
But loving to hear a story and learning to craft one are two very different things. Narrative demands lifelong commitment, study, and practice.
Answering the question, “What is narrative, anyway,” is a good way to start.
At the end of my talk, I collected more than 60 definitions to add to a growing lexicon.
I hope you’ll add yours to the list.
* * *
It’s a story with beginning, middle and end. It looks through the camera of life to deliver a theme, a message, and a reason to keep reading.
— Kim Marcum
Orlando Sentinel
* * *
A story that reaches readers in an emotional way, by engaging them with tangible, sometimes visceral details.
— Lisa Wrenn
The Contra Costa Times
* * *
Narrative is the process of taking the reader for a trip that feels both foreign and familiar. It relays an unfamiliar plot and characters with details that are recognizable and immediately identifiable.
— Jeff Houck
The Tampa Tribune
* * *
A story that transports me from being a time-starved newspaper reader back to a place where I read for the pure joy of it. Where I care about the smallest details of the characters, and I can’t forget about their story days, even years later.
— Rick Press
Features Editor
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
* * *
Narrative writing is non-fiction writing that’s had the techniques of fiction writing — plot, character, setting — applied to it.
— Anne Smith
Features Editor
The Palm Beach Post
* * *
Narrative: story with heart, honest and true.
— Mary Lou Nolan
The Kansas City Star
* * *
Narrative is the poetry that connects the numbers, the music to go with the math.
— Casey Seiler
Albany Times Union
* * *
Narrative is story telling that pays special attention to character, setting, and movement in time. It uses detail and emotion to reveal a glimpse of wisdom. The main character often faces a conflict or challenge, and the story often moves towards resolution.
— Tom Huang
The Dallas Morning News
* * *
Narrative is narration storytelling, describing the color and scene, the smells, and touching all the senses, bringing someone who was not there into the picture.
— Joanna Hernandez
New York Times Regional Newspapers
* * *
Narrative is telling a story in a way that makes the reader feel like he’s sitting on his Mama’s knee.
— Maggie Walsh
Features Editor
Post Register
Idaho Falls, Idaho
* * *
Makes me feel like (the story) is happening to a real person. Someone I could know (or be).
— D. Parvaz
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
* * *
Narrative is telling a story that includes a sense of place, time, feeling, and emotion, yet can also include the details of an article. The difference is that the story includes the details instead of the details making up the whole of the story.
— Jennifer Errico
San Gabriel Valley Newspapers
* * *
Narrative writing, to me, has the ability to bring the reader along for the ride in a compelling, engaging way.
— Denise Joyce
Chicago Tribune
* * *
A story with a beginning, middle and end, told through the emotions, motivations, and physical actions of a central character. Narrative stories also follow the “hero’s journey,” explaining how the person changed, either profoundly or in some small way, as a result of the circumstances that confronted him. Narrative is not about using vague “color” but only these details that reveal something about the central character.
— Amanda Kingsbury
East Valley Tribune
Phoenix, Az.
* * *
Narrative is suppressing the urge to tell. Narrative is showing the reader a story and putting him at the scene, in the middle of the plot. An editor at The Virginian-Pilot told me, “Put me there. Let me see and smell the sights.”
— Tamara El-Khoury
Senior, University of Maryland College of Journalism
* * *
Narrative is walking through a few feet of life, noticing incidents and details, and trying to make sense of them.
— Nancy Gilson
The Columbus Dispatch
* * *
What is narrative? Seduction.
— Dale Parry
Deputy Managing Editor
Detroit Free Press
* * *
Narrative is a story you can read that night in bed, the next day during a break, or a month from now. It’s a story you clip to show to someone else. It tells a tale worth reading.
— Mary Dolan
The Journal News
White Plains, N.Y.
* * *
Narrative is writing rather than just reporting. A reporter gathers information and regurgitates it — sometimes projectile-vomits it — into the computer. A writer arranges the information in a way that draws pictures, evokes tears, holds the reader’s attention. A good writer does this without emotional manipulation and forced phrasing, but like telling a story over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.
— Suzy Fleming
Features Editor, Content
Florida Today
* * *
I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it. I guess, in addition to the standard literary descriptions of storytelling and character and plot, I would say that good narrative is defined by a willing suspension by the reader of the normal journalistic requirement to know all the facts up front. Good narrative instantly earns buy-in from the reader to be taken on a journey and be told a story.
— James O’Byrne
Features Editor
The Times-Picayune
New Orleans, La.
* * *
Newspaper writing that unfolds like a story, from the point of the view of the characters, rather than a summary that unfolds from the point of view of the reporter.
— Mark Lorando
Asst. Living Editor
The Times-Picayune
New Orleans, La.
* * *
Narrative is vivid description and details that pull a reader into the setting of a story.
— David Moore
Features Editor
Ocala Star-Banner
* * *
Bringing a reader into the scene portrayed, making them a viewer of the events as they unfold. It brings them to an understanding of why this story must be told.
— Karisue Wyson
Washington Post Writers Group
* * *
Collecting and organizing facts and details and using them to tell a story.
— John Katsilometes
Accent Features Editor
Las Vegas Sun
* * *
Telling a story in a way that a reader’s humanity is personally touched — and shared.
— Linda O’Connell
Assistant Managing Editor, Features
The Morning Call
Allentown, Pa.
* * *
Narrative is when the who, what, when, where, why, and how are enlivened with sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that the reader might not ordinarily get from a straight news story. There is an element of surprise and suspense to engage the reader.
— Suzanne Loudermilk
Bradenton Herald
Florida
* * *
It’s what you liked hearing when you were a little kid. A story. With a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has big characters, small characters. A hero. Sometimes a bad guy or bad event. It has a place, sounds, colors, and feelings. That’s a narrative.
— Vivian Salazar
Features Editor
Amarillo Globe-News
* * *
Narrative writing is telling the whole story, not the facts and figures but what they mean and why they’re important and how they changes lives, change families, could change the world.
— Margaret Wimborne
Assistant Managing Editor
Post Register
Idaho Falls, NY
* * *
A story that captures the reader’s mind and heart to the extent that he or she reads to the final word.
— Barry Glenn
Lifestyle Editor
Orlando Sentinel
* * *
Narrative is the tale told by the campfire in the dark.
— Kyrie O’Connor
Deputy Managing Editor, Features
Houston Chronicle
* * *
The art of telling a story as if the reader is right there in the room with you, listening as you tell it out loud.
— Bill Ristow
Features Editor
The Seattle Times
* * *
Narrative is a story. It has a beginning and an end. It has a rise and a fall, or a fall and a rise, or many rises and falls. Most importantly it has a character, or a subject, who faces a challenge and overcomes it. That challenge is a character, too — a beast, an enemy, with a mind and/or will all its own. Maybe it’s another character, or age, or disease, or a mindset, but it poses the conflict that shapes your story and ultimate resolution.
— Marc Ramirez
The Seattle Times
* * *
Narrative is everything that comes after “who” and “what.”
— Pat Thomas
The Palm Beach Daily News
* * *
A story about people and how they feel, not just how they act. Beyond behavior to the why, to the universal thread.
— Jan Tuckwood
The Palm Beach Post
* * *
Storytelling. The way you relay information to your best friend — in conversation.
— Stephanie Allmon
Waco Tribune-Herald
* * *
What is narrative?
- The good stuff
- The flesh on the bones of fact
— Stephanie Reid-Simons
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
* * *
Narrative is telling a story, ideally in a way that will compel someone to read or listen to it until its end.
— Ken Ross
Features Editor
The Sun Chronicle
Attleboro, Mass.
* * *
What is narrative?
- Gives me a sense of place.
- Makes me “feel” the environment (the scene, the person).
- Makes me want to stay with the story — each graf forces me to read the next.
- A “voice” without subjectivity. First person is great, but don’t use “I” (“I felt the crisp air,” etc.).
- Grabs me from the get-go.
- Describes (color, mood, temperature, wrinkles, scent).
— Mike L. Czeczot
Daytona Beach News-Journal
* * *
Narrative is story, but the whole story. Not just the skeletal outlines of fact, but the whole messy story, with plot and characters and contradictions and resolution.
— Sally Hicks
Duke University
* * *
Narrative is evocative, descriptive storytelling that elicits surprise and emotion from your reader.
— Shawn Ohler
Editor, ed Magazine
Edmonton Journal
* * *
When I think of “narrative,” I’m reminded of the Supreme Court Justice asked to define obscenity: I know it when I see it. It’s a feeling; it’s like trying to define a color. What is red?
— Cindy Decker
Asst. Features Editor
The Columbus Dispatch
* * *
Narrative is detailed storytelling that encloses the reader in a time, a place, and an event and sometimes has a resolution but can also leave the reader hanging.
— Cheryl Schmidt
Senior Editor/Features
The Tampa Tribune
* * *
Narrative is the story that digs beneath the surface, exposing dirt, ant mounds, old shards, and loamy soil. It’s fertile and you want to submerge yourself in it.
— Rick Holter
The Dallas Morning News
* * *
Narrative is the telling of an experience or an event through detailed descriptions of physical, emotional, and/or mental behavior that uses all five senses of the reader.
— Katina Paron
Children’s PressLine
* * *
A narrative takes you on a journey to a time and place; it makes you think differently about the world and yourself through its characters.
— Lisa Kresl
The Dallas Morning News
* * *
Narrative is a story told as if spoken and not written. It draws from the oral tradition of tales told at bedtime, around the campfires, or even at a cocktail party. As such, it must command and hold reader attention. Good writers hear their stories as they write and refine them. The best writers know to listen to their own words critically and improve them.
— Phil Kukielski
Managing Editor, Features
The Providence Journal
* * *
Narrative writing is painting a picture with words so vivid a reader can visualize and taste the action.
— Jewel Bush
Feature Writer
The Courier
Houma, La.
AASFE Diversity Fellow 2003
* * *
Telling the story in a way that reveals its essence, adding no detail or subtracting no detail that does not serve the story.
— Anne Valdespino
Freelancer
* * *
Narrative is more than just the facts, Ma’am; it’s the feelings.
— Susan Hopper
Assistant Managing Editor, Features
Naples Star Tribune
* * *
Telling a story as a story.
— Tom Szaroleta
The Florida Times-Union
* * *
This is like asking an addict to describe cocaine. Narrative is a compulsion, the quickest bait on the sharpest hook. The first taste of it makes you desperate for the rest, the end, the place where the circle swallows its tail. Narrative is a story about people.
— Amanda Henry
Arts Reporter
Wisconsin State Journal
* * *
Narrative is what happens in the mind of the reader when a writer — a user of abstractions and signs — does not define the reader.
— Glenn Mott
Managing Editor, King Features
* * *
Storytelling in its most informed and vital sense.
— Zilpha Underwood
Tallahassee Democrat
* * *
A story with a beginning, middle, and end that has compelling, telling details.
— Andrew Guy, Jr.
Features Writer
The Houston Chronicle
* * *
A story that reveals some universal truth.
— Gretchen Day-Bryant
Sun-Sentinel
Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
* * *
Storytelling. Getting the details beyond the basic who, what, where, when, why to give the readers a sense of being in a place they’ve never been, experience something they’ve never experienced.
— Leah Daniels
Anderson Independent Mail
Anderson, S.C.
* * *
Narrative is telling the stories people wouldn’t hear otherwise, giving them the details they might not notice for themselves, but wouldn’t get a complete picture without.
— Jessica Carter
Gwinnett Daily Post
Lawrenceville, Ga.
* * *
Writing that places the reader in the middle of the situation and makes them feel, hear, touch, and maybe even smell what is going on.
— Mary Holleran
Democrat and Chronicle
Rochester, N.Y.
* * *
A story in which the reporter reveals the facts through the experiences, expressed thoughts, and feelings of the sources — as if they were going through it themselves.
— Liz Kahn
Buffalo News
* * *
The ability to tell a story that is at once accessible, believable, and compelling all at the same time. It is a story that can make you laugh, cry, and think, maybe all three. But more importantly, it’s written in such a way that you remember the story long after it’s read.
— Steve Gosset
PR Newswire Features
* * *
Narrative is Jane Austen.
— Tracey O’Shaughnessy
Waterbury Republican-American
Waterbury, Conn.
* * *
The story you’ll tell your husband when you come home from work.
— Chris Beringer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
* * *
Narrative is an interesting way to tell a story. You can start at the end, or the middle or the beginning, but it needs to get the reader’s interest immediately.
— Diana Smith
Executive Editor
Reed/Brennan Media Associates
Orlando, Fla.
* * *
Describing the theater of life.
— Chris Ledbetter
Chicago Sun-Times
Coming next — Narrative: The Way We Tell Stories.
