“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 called himself Gorgeous George. I’m on the phone with … Read more
One night in January 2013, deep into the writing of Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, I found myself alone at the keyboard, crying. Weeping, really. Thinking back, the storm of depression and anxiety that made me bawl that night was … Read more
A couple of years ago, in a Storyboard piece on John McPhee‘s gorgeously built Encounters with the Archdruid, the acclaimed author Adam Hochschild wrote about narrative structure: A few years ago I was with a … Read more
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, we call to your attention the archived lectures … Read more
The new student of multimedia narrative may want to bookmark an archive on digital storytelling by Mark Berkey-Gerard, who teaches online journalism at Rowan University, in New Jersey. A Columbia Graduate School of Journalism alum who has won … Read more
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 longtime editor, Richard Todd, … Read more
The story of the week has been Roger Angell’s “This Old Man” (The New Yorker). Angell is widely revered for his body of work on baseball, but in this piece he writes about what it’s like to be 93. As … Read more
Editor’s note: A great many Storyboard readers are journalism students, nonfiction writers in MFA programs, and beginning reporters and editors. The pieces in our Essays on Craft department cater to such readers but also to veterans in search of … Read more
Editor’s note: Let’s start the year with a bit of narrative alignment. From the Storyboard archives, here’s the Orange County Register’s Rebecca Allen, explaining the difference between a news feature and narrative: A narrative is a story … Read more
Part 1 of our recap of the Tow Center’s recent Future of Digital Longform conference, at Columbia University, included Emily Bell talking with Joe Sexton about the impact of “Snow Fall” on narrative storytelling; and Chartbeat’s Josh … Read more
