The art of the narrative interview: Sequencing your story

EDITOR’S NOTE: The fourth post in our series on narrative interviewing describes how a reporter begins to zoom in to explore defining moments and plot points in a character’s story. Previous posts outlined the difference between reporting for news and for narrative, the pre-interviewing needed to find a character and make a successful story pitch, and the interview that outlines a story arc.

Your story idea is solid and focus is clear. You have a compelling character for readers to follow. You’ve outlined the character’s journey through a situation or ordeal. Now it’s time to identify the main beats of that journey.

Fiction writers call these “plot points.” Something happens that sets the story into motion. Soon something else happens. Then another thing, and so on. All of these happenings are linked in part by chronology and — typically, but not always — an element of cause-and-effect.

In this stage of narrative interviews, I look for what I call “pivotal moments” and “defining moments.” They’re similar, but with an important distinction. One involves external or situational factors. The other is largely internal.

A pivotal moment is when something happens that causes the story to pivot in a new direction. Often it’s an event or situation shaped by external forces. The hiker, miles from help, is bitten by a venomous snake. The wide receiver leaps into the air in the end zone; catching the ball means winning the game, and not-catching it means losing. Often, these moments are self-evident thanks to their inherent drama. They make vivid scenes.

A defining moment is also pivotal, but nothing actually changes except a character’s perception. It’s an “a-ha” moment, the realization of some insight or truth that changes everything. A wife answers the phone and learns her husband has a second family. A detective realizes the prime suspect didn’t actually do it. The external situation hasn’t changed at all, but the internal shift rocks the character’s world. These don’t always make for action-packed scenes, but they open the door to internal dialogue and getting in a character’s head.

Often pivotal moments and defining moments are linked by cause and effect. Like a series of tumbling dominoes, these events cascade into action, each one triggering the next. That sequence informs story structure when it’s time to sit down and write.

People who tend to free-associate often share things out of chronological order. Let them. Unless I’m pressed for time in an interview, I try not to interrupt and just let them run. Then, after they’ve talked themselves out, I take a break, read through my notes and identify gaps and questions about the sequence in which things occurred.

Pulitzer-winning feature writer Lane DeGregory told me she scribbles questions in the margins of her notebook that arise during an interview. That way she doesn’t have to interrupt the person she’s talking to, but doesn’t forget things they mentioned that she wants to know more about.

I recently spoke on a panel of “fact crime” authors assembled by the Mystery Writers of America,  where my book, “In Light of All Darkness,” was nominated for a Best Fact Crime award. The moderator asked us about our storytelling process, and I was surprised when we all said the same thing: We start with a timeline.

In all of my books, the timeline has been integral throughout the process, from the minute I start reporting to the very end, when I’m fact-checking. It helps me stay grounded in time and immersed in the “narrative now” of the story — the time frame in which most of the scenes are unfolding. Those primary scenes also are the point that suggest supporting scenes — flash backs and flash-forwards — which determine verb tense shifts.)

My timelines have evolved with each book project.

For “What Stands in a Storm,” a narrative account of the biggest tornado outbreak on record, I had a series folders filled with Word documents listing chronological events unfolding from different Points of View: Main Characters (people in the path of the storm), Meteorologists, First Responders and Community Members (people helping victims in the aftermath). I highlighted Pivotal Moments from each POV and merged them into a master timeline — a Word document into which I pasted screen shots of radar screens, text messages between characters, Facebook posts, 911 calls and first responder radio transmissions, all of which were time-stamped. This created the backbone for a story that unfolded minute-by-minute.

In “The Stahl House,” a book about the making of a historically significant Modernist house, I created a spreadsheet with columns for Month, Year and Event. I color-coded based on theme, which helped me see patterns that threaded through the story and informed my chapter structure. In the example below, pink reveals the Stahl family storyline. Yellow reflects moments related to the architecture and construction of the Stahl House. Blue is for photographer Julius Shulman. Green is related to John Entenza, the Arts & Architecture magazine editor who created the Case Study House Program. White indicates historical events that I could reference to anchor the story in time. Those events often place a story in time for readers better than specific dates. For example, mentioning the first time man walked on the moon conjures a black-and-white moving picture framed by a console TV with rabbit ears and big knobs.

My most recent book, “In Light of All Darkness,” is an insider account of the Polly Klaas kidnapping in 1993. I used a spreadsheet to log the timeline, which grew to more than 800 lines. Again, I color-coded, which helped me identify thematic threads (green for moments that advance the investigation, purple for “red herrings” that lead investigators astray, red for roadblocks or problems, orange and yellow for pivotal moments that should be written in-scene) and Point of View (blue for law enforcement agents, yellow for volunteers). I added a column on the right to keep track of primary sources to reference when writing scenes.

This is when I realized another valuable use of the timeline spreadsheet: It’s an index that provides a 30,000-foot view of the narrative, but also allows me to “zoom in” and get granular. That’s an important function to consider when choosing a timeline format.

Pro tip: Pick a format that works for your particular brain. I’m a visual person, so I see patterns in the color-coding that lead to insights and cause-effect relationships. I also need to see a calendar format with only a few key moments, because my brain likes the left-to-right flow of weeks stacked on top of each other in monthly blocks.

I printed these out and taped them to boards that surrounded me as I wrote. It’s particularly useful when writing transitions. Whenever I change scenes, I make sure to signal when and where a scene is taking place relative to the previous scene. Time cues such as “An hour later at the police station across town…” or “Five days earlier…” will orient the reader in time and space, which is essential when a narrative deviates from strict chronology.

I also had other boards with maps and photos, which helped keep me oriented in space/geography as well as in time. Here’s what my workstation looked like as I was writing the first draft of “In Light of All Darkness:”

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Kim Cross is a journalist, historian author of three nonfiction books, including “In Light of All Darkness.” She teaches feature writing in Harvard Extension School’s master’s degree program in journalism and is a founding instructor of the Hemingway Center’s Sawtooth Writing Retreat.