Story Craft

We promote narrative nonfiction here at Storyboard but occasionally look outside the genre for storytelling inspiration. Paul Harding, who won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel “Tinkers,”…

In Thursday’s post we excerpted nice lines from the five National Magazine Award finalists in feature writing. These included Luke Dittrich’s “Heavenly Father!...,” from Esquire, about survivors of the Joplin,…

To follow up on our latest Notable Narrative we flagged down Arizona Republic reporter Shaun McKinnon this week as he boarded a plane from Washington, D.C., back home to Phoenix,…

Lori Waselchuk describes herself as a “documentary photographer and arts activist.” We’ve wanted to talk with her for a while about her latest project, “Grace Before Dying,” which focuses on…

[The third installment in an ongoing series of posts by Julia Barton about audio narratives. –Ed.]A ghostly crowd of voices parades across the public radio airwaves every day: politicians and hosts,…

Our February Editors’ Roundtable tackled “The law creates barriers to getting care for the mentally ill,” a story by Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Addressing the difficult question…

Our February Roundtable looks at “Law creates barriers to getting care for mentally ill,” by Meg Kissinger. In her narrative, Kissinger touches on violence, mental health and 40 years of…

Our January Roundtable looks at “After the battle, Mike Sword’s war within,” by Beth Macy. In her story, Macy explores the death of a combat veteran in southern Virginia, tracing…

Our last Roundtable of 2011 considers “California and Bust,” in which superstar business reporter Michael Lewis turns his keen eye away from analyzing European financial problems, looking instead toward the…

There's long-form narrative, and then there's book-length narrative. Both are "long," but a story that's 300 pages long is a different proposition, for both writer and reader, from one that's…