Story Craft

Editor’s Note: This essay originally appeared in the Fall 2000 issue of Nieman Reports, the Nieman Foundation’s quarterly magazine. Narrative writing is returning to newspapers. No one has added up…

The doctor at the Army base had a young corporal as his assistant to keep track of the paperwork. The young man was curious about the doctor’s affairs. He was…

Think of the great characters from fiction. Gustave Flaubert’s romantic and unfocused Emma Bovary. Mark Twain’s spunky Huck Finn. Larry McMurtry’s lusty Gus McCrae. Margaret Mitchell’s willful Scarlett O’Hara.Each is…

We’ve heard it to the point of numbness: “Get people into your stories. Tell it in human terms.”Who’s to argue? Yup, human beings are more interesting than paper creeping through…

This essay is based on presentations given in advanced feature writing seminars the author taught at The Washington Post. On Thinking About Intimate Journalism It’s the kiss of death for anyone aspiring…

“It wasn’t by accident,” wrote Hemingway, “that the Gettysburg Address was short.” His 1932 letter to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, went on to lament every writer’s tendency to write too…

When writers, readers, English teachers, librarians, bookstore people, editors, and reviewers discuss extended digressive narrative nonfiction these days, they’re fairly likely to call it literary journalism. The previous term in…