Story Craft

Mic drop? A veteran longform writer trades notebook for headphones, text for sound

Cynthia Gorney fumbled with gear and interviews to report her first podcast

By Cynthia Gorney • October 18, 2018

Cynthia Gorney in her home writing office, learning to podcast

Don’t be a turkey: Earn your flight wings

What an impatient longform wannabe is learning from writing short

By Jacqui Banaszynski • October 17, 2018

Annotation Tuesday!

The Pitch: Can’t wait? A Marie Claire editor tries to answer pitches within 48 hours

Senior editor Kayla Webley Adler scouts for both hard-hitting and fun stories with women at the center. Helpful hint: pitch a story – not a topic

By Katia Savchuk • October 16, 2018

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Notable Narratives

A conversation with Nathaniel Rich on “Losing Earth,” human inertia and storytelling as “a moral act”

By Rebecca Boyle

September 21, 2018

In the longest single piece ever published by The New York Times Magazine, the author takes on a crucible decade in the battle against climate change

Notable Narratives

Can you say … Thanks, and we miss you?

By Matt Tullis

July 13, 2018

On Mister Rogers, Tom Junod and the art of reverence

Notable Narratives

Writing through a whiteout: David Grann and “The White Darkness”

By Steve Oney

March 13, 2018

In his New Yorker piece on an explorer following Shackleton's footsteps in Antarctica, the reporter struggled through his own writing blizzard

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Jack Hitt and the birth of live-action TV news in “What Goes Up”

By Katia Savchuk

December 12, 2017

For Epic magazine, he writes about a daredevil helicopter pilot for a Phoenix station who "kept breaking the fourth wall of journalism by beating the cops"

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer’s stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”

By Katia Savchuk

September 25, 2017

A writer and editor talk about wrangling 60 staffers and a deluge of copy -- and creating a riveting portrait of the human face of the opioid epidemic

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”

By Katia Savchuk

September 12, 2017

The reporter talks about his piece, published jointly with Esquire, on a recanted allegation of child sex abuse that had sent a father to prison

Notable Narratives

The late Alex Tizon and “My Family’s Slave”: his first memory, and his last byline

By Jacqui Banaszynski

September 5, 2017

The Atlantic story, published just weeks after his death, drew a firestorm of criticism; a Pulitzer winner and friend examines the craft, and the loss

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Joe Kovac Jr. and a tale of murder, a manhunt and a midnight run

By Steve Oney

August 29, 2017

The reporter for Georgia's Macon Telegraph shows that even on regional newspapers with tiny staffs, writers can dream large with gripping narratives

Notable Narratives

Pat Beall and “Sexually abused as a child: A Post reporter’s journey to finding hope”

By Scott Gold

August 15, 2017

The Palm Beach Post investigative journalist talks about why she decided to write about her long-ago trauma -- and her struggles with first person

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Nicole Lucas Haimes and “Who Killed Julian Pierce?”

By Katia Savchuk

August 3, 2017

The writer and documentary filmmaker talks about a story on a murdered Native American activist that was nearly 30 years in the making -- and became an obsession

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Luke Mogelson and “The Desperate Battle to Destroy ISIS”

By Francesca Borri

July 10, 2017

The writer talks about his tour-de-force story for The New Yorker about an Iraqi SWAT team's fight to save their city -- and the price they paid to do it

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Jason Fagone and “What Bullets Do to Bodies”

By Davis Harper

June 26, 2017

The writer talks about his Huffington Post Highline profile of a trauma surgeon, and wanting readers to get a “visceral sense of what physically happens inside a person when he’s shot”