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Dear Storyboard community,
In journalism, a single story can never tell the complete truth. Lives are complicated, memories are hazy, different points of view reveal new or conflicting details. Every story is a simplified narrative to some degree.
This week's guest on the Nieman Storyboard podcast, Mallary Tenore Tarpley, urges us to look beyond the “tidy narrative.”
Her new book, “Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery,” is a deeply reported memoir about her diagnosis and treatment for anorexia following the death of her mother when Tarpley was 11 years old. But alongside that personal story — and Tarpley’s reporting and research about eating disorders, treatment, and recovery — is a deeper look at illness narratives and how journalists often approach them. Whether for reasons of dramatic tension or space limitations or pressing deadlines, many gloss over “the messy middle” between a person being sick and “fully recovered.” And what does it even mean to recover? Tarpley encourages writers to lean into nuance:
As journalists, we don't necessarily always ask about that middle. We are more interested in the extremes, but it's in that middle that we find meaning, and it's in that middle that we can really get clarity around who someone is. Around what strength looks like for them. Around what hardship looks like for them. What resilience looks like.
So I always encourage journalists to think about these questions of how did you get from point A to point B? Or what was that like? Or how do you describe your recovery? Or what were some of the small moments for you that illustrated recovery?
Very often we tend to think in more grandiose terms where we say, “What was the turning point that led to your recovery?” And for many of us with eating disorders and other mental health struggles, there was not necessarily one big turning point. Oftentimes it is just this slow accumulation of baby steps, but there are moments maybe that were pivotal in some way, shape, or form, and so being able to get a little bit more granular with our questioning and asking, “Tell me about a time when you recognized that you made a choice in service of recovery. What did that look like? Share the details of that with me. Walk me through that moment.” And really trying to tighten our questioning and going deep so that we can understand more about the messiness.
Tarpley has written a powerful book encompassing her own story and the stories of many others. For resources including screenings, treatments, and free-to-low-cost support for eating disorders, please visit the National Eating Disorder Association.
The journalist and author reflects on the process of writing, researching, and reporting on her own life for her debut book, “Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.”
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Links of note
- “There's No Place at Home: A Mother and Her Trans Teen Decide to Leave the U.S.” A moving interactive feature story at The New Yorker, reported and produced by Sam Wolson, with illustrations by Lilli Carré, about a mother and her trans teenager in Maine as they weigh leaving the U.S. following President Trump's executive order and other efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for minors. I'm struck by how their home and garden also serve as characters in the piece, as they decide to leave both behind.
- The Brooklyn Public Library has announced its longlist for the BPL Book Prize, honoring outstanding works of nonfiction and fiction that capture the spirit of Brooklyn. Get the full list here.
- “Why I Hate Your Podcast.” An attention-grabbing headline, followed by helpful advice from journalist-producer Bill Wyman on how to sharpen your podcast production and interviewing skills. “Ask real questions. Cable news has degraded to the point where hosts will begin every other purported question with the phrase, ‘Talk about ….’ Sometimes a guest will have known or have worked with a famous person. I hear hosts say things like, ‘Do you have any stories about XXXXX?’ That’s not a question: It suddenly puts your guest on the spot to come up with a good story. You need to open a door for them, even if it’s as simple as ‘Was XXXXX pleasant to work with? Is it true that she once XXXXX?’ Those are much more effective prompts.” (Hat-tip: Siobhan McHugh.)
- At Sound Judgment, Elaine Appleton Grant examines how to add urgency to our storytelling by using the element of time: “I ask myself a question that turns out to be useful: What organic deadlines do my main characters face?”
Finally, as we wind through August, and you continue to plot out the stories you want to tell, the stories you can’t help but tell, a word of advice from another prolific storyteller: “Think of your energy as if it's expensive, as if it's like a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it.”
And keep sharing your stories,
Mark Armstrong
Editor
Nieman Storyboard
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