This is one of 10 essays I offer as we close 2021 that I hope will help broadcast journalists tell stronger stories in the year ahead.
Since this is the first installment, let’s start with narrowing the focus of the story.
By telling narrow but deeper stories, writers help viewers understand information more clearly. This process of finding focus is really about simplifying the story.
To focus a story, the writer must understand it. This may be counterintuitive, but I find that the more I know about a story, the sharper my focus becomes. When you are wallowing around in a subject, every detail may seem to weigh the same. As you get more informed, the important stuff begins to pop out.
Here is a checklist that will help you start finding focus:
- What is the most interesting part of this story? (This is the main thrust of the story.)
- What surprised me? (This may be the lead.)
- What did I learn that I didn’t know before? (This is a main surprise, which we usually put early in the story.)
- What will viewers want to know? In what order will they ask those questions? (This will determine the story frame.)
- What do I want viewers to remember and feel at the end of this story? (This is the most memorable sound bite.)
- What comes next? (This will lead you toward the end of the story.)
These details will help you answer the key question that will focus your story: “What is this story about?”
The answer should not be a long-winded account of all you know. Try to answer the question in one sentence.
Jon Franklin, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for his work as a science writer for the Baltimore Evening Sun, said writers should craft a focus statement about their story. The “focus statement,” Franklin said, “should be three words in length.” (You can get away with a free “an,” “and” or “the.”) Think of it as “who did what?”
Let’s try out this idea.
Few stories have more complexities hidden in them than stories about war. The list of the possible stories we could do includes:
- The generals
- The soldiers
- The civilians left at home
- The conflict involved
- The weapons
- The president in wartime
- The foreign policies that led to the fighting
- The history of the nations involved
- The strategy
- The diplomacy to end the fighting
It is tempting to believe that the most compelling war stories involve lots of shooting and bombing. People who have never been in a war may not understand what soldiers do. War is mostly not about shooting and bombing. It is about mind-numbing boredom and routine intermingled with moments of terror and adrenaline, followed by more tedious grunt work and sleep deprivation.
To get to the real story of war, you have to get down to the level of the soldier. Everything the presidents, the diplomats and the generals do affects soldiers on the front line. War stories also involve war victims — the refugees who abandon their homes, huddle in camps and pray for peace.
A college professor of mine loved to show us old black-and-white war documentaries. I figured they would be boring and slow. I settled in to endure one of the films and learned the principle that changed how I thought of “story focus” forever. The lesson comes back to me around this time of year because it is about being away from home at Christmas.
The film that flickered from the projector in that college classroom was an Edward R. Murrow CBS News documentary about the Korean War. CBS’ “See It Now” program moved 15 reporters and cameramen to Korea for one week to attempt to capture the face of war. Here is how the program opened:
“Christmas in Korea”
(The show opens with the sound of a shovel digging into frozen earth in the background)
Murrow says:
This is Korea, where a war is going on. That’s a Marine, digging a hole in the ground. They dig an awful lot of holes in the ground in Korea. This is the front. Just there, no-man’s-land begins and, on the ridges over there, the enemy positions can be clearly seen. In the course of the next hour, we shall try to show you around Korea a bit.”
The photojournalist steadily focused on one Marine, chunking his shovel again and again against a frozen ground. (You can watch this clip here, the start at the 2:00 mark)
Murrow and producer Fred Friendly didn’t include one general or government official. They told the complex story of the war through the frontline soldiers fighting the battles, patching up the wounded and digging the holes.
My three-word summary of “Christmas in Korea” is “soldiers endure war.” The story was not about communism, it was not about foreign policy, and it was not about the generals and politicians who got us into that war. Viewers learn a lot about the war’s background, but “Christmas in Korea” had a laser-beam focus on the effect the war had on the soldiers and nurses who were closest to the pain, death and loneliness.
MURROW INTERVIEWS AIRMAN MORIARTY: I’m Airman Third Class Brendon M. Moriarty. I was born and raised in County Kerry, Ireland. I been used to mountains all my life, but it’s the mountains (of) Killarney, not the mountains of Korea. I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Nora, I will be home in two hundred and ninety-two days, then we will celebrate Christmas, New Year’s and St. Patrick’s Day—we’ll celebrate everything together. Okay darling, good-bye.
The last line chokes me up.
I remember that sound bite from Airman Moriarty 49 years after I first saw it while sitting in a darkened college classroom. The viewer realizes that Airman Moriarty knows, to the day, how long it will be until he is back in Nora’s arms. By the time the program ends, viewers will not remember the number of days (292) he has until he goes home. But they will always remember that he knows exactly how long it will be.
My wife, who is a psychotherapist, tells me that people always remember what they feel longer than what they know. To make the story memorable, tell the viewer something he/she wants to know and make the viewers feel something while they learn what you are teaching.
When you cover a story about the COVID-19 pandemic, focus the story. Maybe:
- “police refuse vaccines”
- “pandemic exhausts nurses”
- “omicron scares investors”
Remember the mantra, “Narrow and deep stories, not wide and thin reports.”
(Some ideas in this series are included in my college textbook, “Aim for the Heart”.)
Al Tompkins will expand on his storytelling and writing teaching in two Poynter seminars: The Poynter Producer Project and TV Power Reporting. Click the links to see the schedules, meet our all-star visiting faculty and apply. Thanks to a grant from CNN, we offer 50% tuition scholarships to NABJ, NAHJ, AAJA, NAJA and NLGJA members. Both seminars take place over three days at Poynter in St. Petersburg, Florida, or you can attend virtually.
