Over the last two weeks, many Poynter Online readers have helped me grapple with the question “What is narrative, anyway?” But what about those times when you come back from an assignment and say, “There’s no story there”?
That’s what Josh Awtry, Design Director at The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., wondered after reading a virtual roundtable discussion on the definition of narrative.
“There are so many times when I hear reporters gripe about the fact that ‘there just isn’t a story there,'” he said in an e-mail. “And that they ‘can’t believe they have to make a story out of this; nothing happened.'” And yet, there in the paper the next morning is 12 inches of informative non-story.”
“Why don’t we, as an industry, embrace different ways of presenting information other than the linear story with a beginning and an end?” he wrote. “Why do we take perfectly good information and muddy it up with conjunctions, prepositions, and the like for tradition’s sake?”
Awtry wrote me to offer an alternative — he calls it “nonlinear storytelling.”
Take The City Council Meeting Story, for example. Every paper has them. There are times when there’s a real story to be had there — one with characters, drama, and above all, narrative. In that case, the reporter knows what to do and seizes it. But there are other times when it’s just a meeting where some things were approved and some action was taken. Wouldn’t this information better benefit readers as a grid? (Issue/Background/What happened/What’s next/Discussion)
This does two things — it lays out the information in a logical format for readers, but, almost more importantly, it frees up the reporter’s time and creative edge to pursue a worthwhile, “real” story. This format might even free up the reporter’s mind to study the grid, find an issue and then expand on it as a second day folo with people and drama.
Why doesn’t this happen more? Is it an issue of momentum and the fact that we’ve been doing basically the same thing for 100 years or more? Is it an issue of pride (reporters get paid to write and create, so, by golly, they’re going to do that)? Or is it just a case of lack of education and coaching (reporters just need to know that they have a bigger toolbox)? >>Read more of Awtry’s letter
Awtry’s idea, illustrated below with examples (“a first step,” he calls them), appeals to me as a time-pressed reader. It makes clear that effective news writing can be found not just at the intersection of civic clarity and literary grace, but visual power as well.
Grow Guide:
This originally came in as a 25″ traditional story. The designer and reporter worked side-by-side to rework it into something that had a lot of utility. The reporter was happy because a lot of the blurbs and her intro still retained the original color. Readers were happy, since the story didn’t jump and gave them a nice “clip and save” page.
–Josh Awtry
>>
Download PDF of Grow Guide
Fast Track:
Here’s an example I had laying around from the Marine Corps Times. It’s a great way to present information in a “what’s up/what’s next” format for scanning readers. The Times is a great example of having cake and eating it, too. They give information in a number of different ways by featuring a high brief count as well as long narrative stories with excellent photography.
–Josh Awtry
>>
Download PDF of Fast Track Plan:
The reporter embraced the idea of non-linear storytelling from the beginning here. When a local official came up with an idea to revamp the county hierarchy, we wanted to describe that plan to readers. She still ended up writing a traditional story, but the beauty of it was she used that space for narrative and local reaction to the plan. Most of the actual grunt work was accomplished by the text graphic. The clipboard is admittedly a little gimmicky; if it was done over again, we’d probably run without that.
–Josh Awtry
>>Download PDF of Plan
