EDITOR’S NOTE: The 2o19 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University was a full immersion into the craft, challenges and characters of story work. We are scrambling to mine as many of those riches as we can, including full transcripts of some of the talks, and share them he … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: The 2o19 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University was a full immersion into the craft, challenges and wonders of story work. We are scrambling to gather as many of those riches as we can and share them here. We start with some bulleted insights from a few … | Continue reading
ook around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now. History is happening. We are changing the world. So sings Eliza Schuyler in “Hamilton,” a magical musical set in the late 1700s about the politics, peril and promise of founding a New World. Now imagine that th … | Continue reading
his sentence contains everything that good narrative writing should. There’s the specific detail of the narrator, and there’s universality — the wonder we humans experience when faced with a child growing up. It seems remarkable to me that we constantly marvel at perfectly normal … | Continue reading
Why I like it: I imagine my high school grammar teacher, Ms. Weiner, trying to diagram this sentence. We all seek characters to drive our stories. Here, Kerouac lists requirements for the characters that attract him — in an explosion of words that burn, burn, burn with poetry tha … | Continue reading
torytellers in any medium can learn from those in others. Writers must know how to paint mental images through the hieroglyphics of text, apply (and break) rules of grammar to ensure clarity, and translate specialty jargon into widely understood language without undermining acc … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the tenth and last in a series of Monday odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has bee … | Continue reading
aria Streshinsky, executive editor of Wired, wouldn’t say the magazine has grown skeptical about the promise of technology. But compared to the optimism of past editorial regimes, she and editor-in-chief Nick Thompson, who took their posts in 2017, have brought in a healthy dose … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the ninth and penultimate in a series of Monday odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from a different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson … | Continue reading
hen I first discovered that Earl Shaffer — the first man acknowledged to have hiked the entire 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine — lived nearby, I went through his brother John Shaffer with an interview request. It was really the only way. In the ’90s, when I bec … | Continue reading
ne day last October, Cara Solomon sat alone in an empty field in Alabama, the unmarked site of a lynching. She wasn’t carrying a reporter’s notebook or thinking yet about how she might write about this place. She was just trying to be still, imagine, and feel the gravity of wha … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the eighth in a series of Monday odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from a different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a ne … | Continue reading
key character in a story I was struggling with was a woman with a broken heart. She’d been cheated on by the man she had married, but continued to love him even after he went to prison for attempted murder. By the time I met her, she’d been living on her own for 20 years … | Continue reading
hen I encountered this sentence, I took it personally. I like being brilliant. I like it so much that I don’t write as much as I should. It’s uncomfortable to start writing, to try to flesh out a thought, and then to lose my way. All too often my ideas are not as brilliant as … | Continue reading
or several years, I have been captivated by a porpoise. The cetacean in question is the vaquita, a Mexican marine mammal that is shy, adorable, and totally screwed. The reasons for its imminent demise are too complex to explicate here — read the story, people! — but suffice to … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the seventh in a series of Monday odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a new … | Continue reading
‘m not much on Valentine’s Day. I liked the grade school tradition of exchanging Valentine’s Day cards with classmates. (Is that just a U.S. thing?) Each of us was supposed to have enough cards for everyone so no one felt left out. But even back then, I was acutely aware that som … | Continue reading
s journalists, we strive for terse, pithy sentences. Then comes this sprawling description of writing in which the writer becomes a silversmith, watchmaker, weaver and, ultimately, a chemist. Using the word “carefully” twice, Oz takes this creative magic we call writing and strip … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: Storyboard recently revisited the long-standing debate over the ‘nut graf’ — variably called the summary nut, the billboard, the transition, the significance graf, the so-what passage, the foreshadow. Veteran writer and story coach Chip Scanlan weighed in with a st … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fIfth in a series of Monday odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a newsm … | Continue reading
very August when I was young, my mother would take me to the store to buy some back-to-school notebooks. Maybe some pencils. Sometimes even a plastic pencil sharpener. This was a long time ago, but I still remember how those blank pages made me feel. Something cool was about to h … | Continue reading
ldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” turns 70 this year. At a time when writing about ecological emergency is emotionally and politically fraught, the “Almanac” is a balm of wisdom and reverence for nature. And few essays have had more impact on green schools of thought than “ … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fIfth in a series of Monday odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a newsm … | Continue reading
Editor’s note: This week we tackle the never-ending debate over what is called, in journalese, the “nut graf” — that so-what paragraph or section that pulls out of the news or narrative to provide context and significance. In earlier posts, veteran writer and story coach Chip Sca … | Continue reading
Editor’s note: This week we tackle the never-ending debate over what is called, in journalese, the “nut graf” — that so-what paragraph or section that pulls out of the news or narrative to provide context and significance. In earlier post, veteran writer and story coach Chip Scan … | Continue reading
Editor’s note: This week we tackle the never-ending debate over what is called, in journalese, the “nut graf” — that so-what paragraph or section that pulls out of the news or narrative to provide context and significance. Today, veteran writer and story coach Chip Scanlan weighs … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a newsman for … | Continue reading
ason Rezaian’s twin allegiances were baked into his life and his journalism. He was born and raised in Marin County, California, the son of an Iranian father and American mother. He held dual citizenship in Iran and the U.S. In 2009, he landed a rare opportunity to report for The … | Continue reading
ew Yorker writer Rachel Aviv often writes about psychologically complex people — like a Nebraska woman who confessed to a murder she didn’t commit, and a mother from the Philippines who works as a nanny in New York to support her own nine children, whom she hasn’t seen in 16 ye … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third of a series of odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a newsman for … | Continue reading
onference panels can be frustrating things. Several subject experts droning on, absorbed with the minutiae of their own work, sometimes failing to make bigger points, often repeating what other panelists have already said, usually running over the allotted time, then fielding que … | Continue reading
n the original context of “The Overstory,” this sentence applies to a young man — a teenager, actually — who tumbles into the little-known language of coding and programming in the nascent days of computing. The boy is the awkward son of Indian immigrants who are desperate to fin … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: While we did not annotate this project by ProPublica Illinois, we are including it in “Annotation Tuesday” because the story itself, as published, was an innovative example of annotated journalism. ffective reporters prize public records — documents produced, and … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of a series of odes that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from different first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting culture. The author, Don Nelson, has been a newsman fo … | Continue reading
Editor’s note: This is another in our Shop Class series. The goal is to break down the work that goes into creating stories, and offer prompts, suggestions or exercises to help you practice the craft that becomes art. he assignment is to observe and collect concrete, sensory deta … | Continue reading
very writer procrastinates. Even John McPhee, one of the most prolific writers of our time. “I’ll go hours before I’m able to write a word,” he has said. “I’ll make tea. I mean, I used to make tea all day long.” I don’t know any writer who doesn’t suffer the same affliction frequ … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: For something a bit different, we offer the Monday bonus: an eight-week series (give or take) of poems that chronicle the legacy newsroom. Each is written from first-person perspective. Together they create the mumbled narrative of a special and sadly contracting … | Continue reading
ince Tyrone Beason moved to Seattle in the mid 1990s, the city has undergone record-breaking growth and transformation. Gone are the funky old hangs of the 1950s and ’60s, the low-slung brick stores lining the streets, the warrens of warehouse districts – most replaced by glass-a … | Continue reading
here is much to consider in “The Three-Body Problem,” the first in a trilogy by Chinese science fiction novelist Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu). Much of it – physics, astronomy, technology – is beyond my understanding, but the core of the story is epic and stark: A young woman … | Continue reading
ear Reader, As the holiday weekend approached, a newspaper friend asked me why, as editor of a community newspaper, I reprinted the editorial “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” on Christmas day every year for 15 years. Usually right there on Page One. The practical answer: Y … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: The below note came to us from Cathy Grimes, a Nieman Fellow alum and faithful Storyboard reader. She said it was prompted by recent posts in which other writers wrote of being inspired by everything from “Hamilton” to thank-you notes to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein … | Continue reading
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the spirit of the giving season, the Poynter Institute gave us permission to use this piece (first published by Poynter Dec. 10) in which Roy Peter Clark teaches us all the things we can learn about writing (and life) by studying “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. … | Continue reading
he first sentence is treacherous: This is how I die. It stands alone, in italics – first person, no quote marks. It reads like an epitaph beneath a photograph of six people huddled close – some wearing breathing masks, one a hardhat – so what stands out are the eyes and, where … | Continue reading
hen I first saw Pop-Up Magazine in San Francisco a couple of years ago, I struggled to describe the experience to friends. What do you call a show where you might watch a singer in drag pull a golf club from his cleavage, view the animated history of a man who helped pass a const … | Continue reading
s a newish multiplatform editor at The Washington Post, I’m always looking for help writing great headlines. My mind isn’t naturally filled with puns, I haven’t read reams of poetry and my musical tastes tend to run to classical, jazz and other instrumental fare rather than songs … | Continue reading
n a full-circle illustration of the way life sometimes imitates art, screenwriting led Sarah Berns to smokejumping. Then smokejumping led to a cinematic memoir, written with a director’s eye and the architecture of a screenplay. “When I went to college I fell in love with film, a … | Continue reading
Editor’s note: Photos from this project, published in the 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine, are used with permission and gratitude. As a National Geographic reader for more years than I care to confess (since about the time the 1959 Antarctic Treaty was signed), I learn … | Continue reading
If this choice for One Great Sentence seems odd, rest assured we’re not going to go all holiday sappy on you. That’s what the … | Continue reading