Write Stuff

There’s a tradition among journalists of “collecting string,” facts and impressions gathered in daily reporting that can become the stuff of a far larger story with wider sweep and a richer texture. Here’s how Jere Hester describes the practice: “Fill your notebooks – and your minds – with impressions, details. Take the time to ask those just-curious questions that seemingly don’t have anything to do with the deadline piece you’re working on. The stuff you don’t think is important now will make sense later as the story grows.” “Collecting string” is one of the most useful habits any reporter can develop.

Laura Silver’s extraordinary essay in the City Section of the April 20 New York Times, “The Fire, and the Mystery”, reminded me of this. Laura had been collecting string – both factually and emotionally – for more than a decade about a chance conversation she had with her aunt and grandmother 12 years ago:

It was the spring of 1996. The three of us had spent a pleasant afternoon on the Brighton Beach Boardwalk at the famed Russian restaurant Tatiana: my grandmother, she was alive then; my Aunt Deena, we were on tentative speaking terms that year before her death; and I, the only granddaughter.

We drank hot coffee with vanilla ice cream in clear glass mugs. I was 25, Deena 51 and Gramma somewhere past 90. But then Deena blurted out something that stopped me midswallow. “You had another aunt, you know, who lived right around here,” she said. I took notes on a napkin: 1950s. Fire. Mermaid Avenue. Dead.

The image of the napkin says so much about the power of reporting. So, too, does the writing. The period can be the most effective weapon in a writer’s arsenal. It forces the reader to stop and think. In Laura’s essay, I found myself unable to get those five words out of my mind — 1950s. Fire. Mermaid Avenue. Dead. They created the framework for an essay about a mystery and a quest for a deeper understanding of a family and a life.

Before I turn this over to Laura, there’s one other writerly aspect of the essay I’d like you to consider. It’s Voice — the affect, or tone, of the writer. I’m often uncomfortable with writers who insist they’re trying to find their voice, which sometimes can result in overly self-conscious, even self-involved, writing. And I think it’s a big danger for people starting out in the business. My advice is to let the reporting do the work. Again, through the image of scribbling on a napkin, Laura established the personality of a reporter who would visit graves in a cemetery, sift through decades-old records, all to find out more about this mystery. That allowed her distance even as she explored the intricate emotional landscape of her family history without making a reader feel uncomfortable or intrusive. That voice had a lot to do with the authenticity and power of the essay.

Here’s what Laura had to say about the reporting and writing process, which began a few years after the initial conversation, and went through about 30 drafts before she sent it to the Times:

I’m not sure if I have that original napkin, but the idea stuck with me so strongly that I didn’t give up on it for 10 years…I wrote this piece in fits and starts, gathering steam, then losing it, then taking a break for additional research. It started as a more reported piece, with a visit to the site and interviews with local residents and shopkeepers. But that wasn’t the most compelling part of the story, for me or for readers. The more I worked on it, the less I thought about the site of the Mittlemans’ house and the more I pushed myself to explore the hard, personal parts of the story.

Whew. It was worth all those hundreds of hours. Seeing the photo of my long lost relatives in the paper was a moving experience and a real gift, as if, finally, they were receiving an honor that had not been bestowed upon them in their lifetimes.

Shout Out

In another example of Voice, Damian Ghigliotty and Matt Townsend spent a night with the smokers at “smoke-free” Shea Stadium. The story had a lot of attitude, but more the smokers’ than the writers (although one of the writers did get thrown out even when he wasn’t smoking). The story adopted a conversational voice with the reader, as you’ll see in this kicker that ended with a zinger:

How far we’ve come from the days when pitcher Johnny Podres used to light one up between innings on the way to winning the World Series for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955.

So what will the rest of the season be like for smokers at Shea? Head for the top of the upper deck? Employ a lookout for security guards? Or come up with another strategy?

“This is my first game of the season,” Mr. Rhoades said. “But I guess I’ll have to now.”

Of course there is one other option, but it was not discussed that day.

Writing Tips

It’s difficult to explain how to write with voice. It’s easy to sense the writer’s voice when you read William Faulkner, Mark Twain or Tom Wolfe. But it’s not as easy with a journalist, when some of the conventions of the craft can seem to smother a writer’s personality. Often, the problem comes when you use journalese rather than simple, direct language. Another error is when you use the insider jargon of courts or cops or whomever you’re covering. Keep reminding yourself how you’d tell the story to your best friend. But perhaps the most common mistake young reporters make is trying too hard and coming off as forced or, even worse, false or pompous. I like the writing coach Jack Hart’s advice:

The best strategy for developing an authoritative voice is simply to be yourself…You create an individual style once you start to feel like yourself when you write. The words must become as comfortable as your skin. If you’re relaxed at the keyboard, your audience will feel a personal connection as they read.

E.B. White kept his advice simple. “The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity,’’ he said. Keep yourself in the background, at a remove, so that the personality comes through in the reporting, not in your calling attention to yourself or the writing.

Shout Outs

Some of the South’s best writers remind me of the best beat reporters. In travels to their literary haunts, I’ve been deeply struck by how William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Willie Morris and Flannery O’Connor brought to life the character, and characters, of their native South. These authors so saturated themselves in their surroundings, it pours out in their writing. It’s a good lesson to remember. The more reporters immerse themselves in their neighborhood, the more they can evoke a sense of place in their writing.

O’Connor spent much of her adult life – she died at 39 – in and around her farm home near Milledgeville, Ga. Consider the detail and imagery she packs into this description in her story, “You Can’t Be Any Poorer than Dead”:

The old man had started an acre of cotton to the left beyond the fence line and had run it almost up to the house on the one side. The two strands of barbed wire ran through the middle of the patch. A line of fog, hump-shaped, was creeping toward it, ready like a white hound dog to crouch under and crawl across the yard.

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Mississippi is about the last place most New Yorkers would turn to for inspiration. Shadowed by its sordid civil rights history, dismal support of public education and rural poverty, Mississippi often brings up the bottom in any list of states ranked for quality of life. The latest report in the news here is that Mississippi does lead in one thing – obesity.

Yet, in a trip crisscrossing the state from Natchez to Yazoo City to Oxford to Jackson, your itinerant Write Stuff correspondent found inspiration in the words and places of native Mississippians like Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Willie Morris and William Faulkner. Perhaps because of their region’s past — “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,’’ Faulkner once famously wrote – the state’s legendary storytellers have much to teach those of us interested in writing and how to improve it.

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Shout Outs

Details. The Write Stuff loves reporting details that put readers at the scene or help them understand what makes a person, business or organization work. We’re reminded of the standing orders to reporters at the St. Pete Times to “get the name of the dog.’’

That wisdom has been passed down by Roy Peter Clark and others. Such details add authenticity to your story and help produce compelling writing. We’ve got lots of good examples this week. Here, Mat Warren in the New York Times painted a vivid picture of a funeral of a Thai-born U.S. soldier:

While four Buddhist monks in orange robes chanted and fanned incense, family members and friends gathered in a Queens funeral home to pray for the soldier, Chirasak Vidhyarkorn, an Army specialist. Sitting silently, mourners bowed their heads before his coffin, which was draped in an American flag. White and yellow Thai orchids surrounded the coffin, and a small statue of the Buddha sat on a mantel underneath a picture of the soldier in his uniform.

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Shout Outs

Nothing enlivens and empowers writing more than specific detail. When you’re out on the street reporting, create a special place in your notebook for every imaginable detail your senses can take in. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many of these nuggets you’ll use to power your story.

Watch how Barry Paddock creates a delicious image as he observes New York Knick Nate Robinson bite into a new Domino’s dessert pizza (the emphasis is mine):

There was a mild crush of cameras as Robinson took his first bite of the Oreo pizza, the crowd waiting in some suspense for his reaction. “Oh my goodness, I have to have another bite; I’m sorry,” he said, a dot of vanilla icing sticking to the upper left corner of his lip.

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Shout Outs

It all starts with the reporting. After a summer of internships, we’ve got some real-world proof of that maxim.

Tim Catts’s reporting for BusinessWeek.com literally helped an Ohio waitress win $1 million. Presented on his second day on the job with nothing more than a tip that a CNBC stock-picking contest might be rigged, Tim spent half his summer investigating every angle on the story. He showed how the contest could be manipulated, showed how the top four finishers probably gamed the system, how another had a long record of stock manipulation complaints. His reporting prompted CNBC to investigate its own contest and disqualify the top four finishers. That led Tim to Ohio and the “fifth-place’’ finisher, a waitress who had never owned a stock in her life (This story appeared three weeks before the winner was announced, showing just how fully Tim owned this story):

It’s Friday afternoon in the tiny Appalachia town of St. Clairsville, Ohio, and Mary Sue Williams is about to begin her shift as a waitress at Undo’s, a spacious Italian restaurant that overlooks Interstate 70. She enjoys taking care of her regulars, she says, and after nine years in her job, she has accumulated plenty of them. Even with dozens of the restaurant’s tables empty, she cuts quickly across the floor to the bar to refill an empty water glass. “I’m going to do this until I can’t walk,” Williams says, insisting that she wouldn’t quit for a million dollars.
That conviction may soon be put to the test.

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