Search results for “writing the book”

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Reporting and writing historical narrative: Author Adam Hochschild on accessible prose + scene/setting + character + plot

Reporting and writing historical narrative: Author Adam Hochschild on accessible prose + scene/setting + character + plot

Several years ago, Adam Hochschild, the acclaimed author of King Leopold’s Ghost and other nonfiction narratives, told a Vanderbilt University audience that academic writing doesn’t have to be boring. Scholars of history and science — theoretically…
June 29, 2014

The Best of ‘Draft’ — control the narrative, keep it short & other advice on writing

Recommended reading from the New York Times’ Opinionator series “Draft,” on writing: “Keep It Short,” by columnist and author Danny Heitman: To shorten my articles, I often worked through several versions, and…
June 13, 2014
Pinned: A boxer, a triple murder, an art mystery, a writing conference and how to get organized

Pinned: A boxer, a triple murder, an art mystery, a writing conference and how to get organized

Pinned this week for your storytelling pleasure: pieces on a jailhouse boxer, an old triple homicide in Texas, a billion dollars’ worth of recovered European art, a one-day writing conference and…
March 21, 2014
Want to write great narrative? Study screenwriting.

Want to write great narrative? Study screenwriting.

“That’s all fine,’’ the L.A. film executive said briskly, “but who’s the antagonist?’’Cut to: Me, author of a soon-to-be published biography of the 1940s/’50s wrestler and pop culture figure who…
March 14, 2014
The Bread Loaf files: Ted Conover, Cheryl Strayed, Richard Bausch and Robert Frost on craft, dedication, discipline, poetry and what to ban from your bookshelf

The Bread Loaf files: Ted Conover, Cheryl Strayed, Richard Bausch and Robert Frost on craft, dedication, discipline, poetry and what to ban from your bookshelf

This week’s theme: semi-obscure archives that might prove valuable to your narrative storytelling. On Tuesday, we highlighted Mark Berkey-Gerard‘s posts on multimedia narrative, which he warehouses at his classroom-based website, Campfire Journalism. Today,…
February 27, 2014
20 writing and editing tips from Tracy Kidder + Richard Todd

20 writing and editing tips from Tracy Kidder + Richard Todd

In the book Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, memorably instructive lines for writers and editors appear on almost every page. The authors, the Pulitzer-winning nonfiction writer Tracy Kidder and his…
February 21, 2014
Robert Caro, Part 1: On finding book projects, reporting, sacrifice and sources

Robert Caro, Part 1: On finding book projects, reporting, sacrifice and sources

Hearing Robert Caro talk about his work is like getting a master class in longform journalism. A Nieman Fellow, Class of 1966, Caro is the bestselling biographer of Robert Moses…
February 12, 2014
The Storyboard shortlist on crime writing and empathy

The Storyboard shortlist on crime writing and empathy

Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff tweeted the following yesterday morning:This reminded us of an NYU course that Ted Conover has taught, called “The Journalism of Empathy,” in which graduate students are…
October 30, 2013
Storyboard 75: The big book of narrative, devoted to excellence in journalistic storytelling

Storyboard 75: The big book of narrative, devoted to excellence in journalistic storytelling

Since the first stirrings of the Nieman Foundation’s narrative writing program nearly 20 years ago, the staff has tended a treasure trove of resource material devoted to excellence in journalistic…
October 3, 2013

"Why’s this so good?" No. 79: Joan Didion, Hemingway, and mathematically musical writing

Joan Didion finds herself counting syllables.If this is part of her brilliance, and it is, it's largely because of who she is as an observer; meticulous but detached, intimate yet…
June 18, 2013