Story Craft

Full life, tight space? Consider narrative shorthand.

An interesting writing move recently caught my eye in Rosalind Bentley's Atlanta Journal-Constitution profile of poet laureate Natasha Trethewey. For lack of a better name, I’ll call it the "narrative…
October 17, 2013
Roy Peter Clark
Snap Judgment's Glynn Washington on storytelling influences, NPR, race, narrative intention, pacing and structure

Snap Judgment’s Glynn Washington on storytelling influences, NPR, race, narrative intention, pacing and structure

Detroit Week continues here on Storyboard, with an appearance by radio storyteller Glynn Washington, a Motor City native and host of the hot NPR show Snap Judgment. We recently ran Part 1…
August 15, 2013
Paige Williams
Collected wisdom: Orlean, Atkinson, Powers, Corchado, Britt, Merida, Bennett and more

Collected wisdom: Orlean, Atkinson, Powers, Corchado, Britt, Merida, Bennett and more

If you missed a post or two in our weeklong recap of this year's Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, here's the roundup: On Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Times' Kelley Benham and…
August 2, 2013
Charlie Lewis
Skip Hollandsworth: National Magazine Award winner, screenwriter, tipmaster

Skip Hollandsworth: National Magazine Award winner, screenwriter, tipmaster

Mayborn Week continues: Skip Hollandsworth, a veteran writer for Texas Monthly, specializes in the kind of true-crime narrative yarns that are always bigger in Texas. In 2010, Hollandsworth won a National Magazine…
July 31, 2013
Charlie Lewis
Kelley Benham and Tom French on "Never Let Go," book collaboration, first-person writing, memory and love

Kelley Benham and Tom French on "Never Let Go," book collaboration, first-person writing, memory and love

Tampa Bay Times reporter Kelley Benham went into labor four months early and delivered her daughter, Juniper, at 23 weeks: a baby who weighed 20 ounces and was no taller…
July 30, 2013
Charlie Lewis
Toolkit: Better writing through poetry + metaphor (bonus: a writing exercise)

Toolkit: Better writing through poetry + metaphor (bonus: a writing exercise)

In case you missed it, Nieman Reports, one of our sister publications, featured a few pieces recently on poetry and metaphor. The discipline and the device serve narrative’s need for…
July 5, 2013
Paige Williams
How'd you find that hijacker story, Brendan Koerner?

How’d you find that hijacker story, Brendan Koerner?

Brendan Koerner‘s new book, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, dropped last week to critical acclaim. It tells the story of a…
June 24, 2013
Paige Williams
Pamela Colloff and Tom Junod talk storytelling

Pamela Colloff and Tom Junod talk storytelling

At the recent City & Regional Magazine Association conference in Atlanta, Esquire’s Tom Junod and Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff interviewed each other for an audience of narrative lovers. Atlanta magazine's Tony Rehagen kindly…
June 6, 2013
Paige Williams
Best of Storyboard: the essence of story, in a short, haunting song (+ fried chicken)

Best of Storyboard: the essence of story, in a short, haunting song (+ fried chicken)

The haunted “third of June” cannot pass without calling out Tommy Tomlinson‘s classic piece on the essence of story, via Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.” Tomlinson, a onetime Pulitzer…
June 3, 2013
Paige Williams

Professor Hersey: one student, the iconic author of ‘Hiroshima,’ and 6 timeless takeaways

I would never presume to define “presence,” but I knew it when I saw it: the handsome, tall, man who’d just walked into the seminar room had it in…well, tweeds.…
May 30, 2013
Peter Richmond