Narratives

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Lane DeGregory spent months watching Ted Andrews, an 81-year-old artist with ALS, as he struggled along with his wife, Carolyn, to maintain control of the end of his life. DeGregory writes about her reporting process for the Tampa Bay Times story: "We had to learn to be patient, listen to the same stories five or six times, let him have his say, lay his legacy – then gently steer him back to what we needed to ask."

Roy Rivenburg was a graduate student when he clipped and saved a Kathy Sawyer story about an execution. Now he interviews Sawyer, who says: "I’ve always tried to step back and see the overall arc and meaning of the story (the trendy word these days, I guess, is 'narrative') and decide where its heart lay. Then I would try to accumulate as many meaningful details as possible that would allow the readers to feel almost as if they were actually there along with me."

Katia Savchuk interviews Jessica Weisberg about her Atavist story on a southern California family torn apart by Child Protective Services, and how she approached reporting on them: "For this story, I could just hang out at the Brannings’ house with my notebook and iPhone. Something about the ability to be quiet physically while you’re reporting can be a real privilege. Another big advantage of longform, in radio too, is there’s a lot of space for complexity."

Some University of Vermont mathematicians have programmed a computer to analyze more than 1,000 texts on Project Gutenberg, and reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's story shapes lecture, they found that about 85% of them fit one of six narrative arcs. But Veronique Greenwood warns of some flaws: "The book that fit the Icarus arc best was a collection of 196 yoga sutras. Another odd marriage was the ‘Cinderella’ arc and its top fit: Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy."

Kari Howard and Brian Kevin discuss and annotate his Down East story that revisited a 30-year-old drug bust. Kevin talks about how he balances in-depth reporting and writing with the production demands of a regional magazine: "I sometimes hear more accomplished writers chatting on this or that podcast about the time they’ll lavish on a marquee project for a big-budget mag, focusing on only that piece, and I just can’t even wrap my head around what that must be like."

Davis Harper and Jeff Maysh annotate Maysh's story about a young nurse who robbed banks, an "unreliable narrator" of her own story: "This story helped me realize that sometimes you don’t have to make the decision on who is telling the truth, or why," Maysh says. "I think you’ve got to be very clear that someone is an unreliable narrator, and allow the reader to make their mind up. That’s a tool from fiction, because some of the best fiction uses an unreliable narrator."

Kari Howard talks to David Wolman and Julian Smith and annotates their Epic magazine story, "The Cold War," on feuding ice cream vendors in Salem, Ore. Howard writes about how rarely longform journalism takes the kind of comic turn seen in that story: "Maybe it was so appealing because it reminded me of a favorite movie called 'Comfort and Joy,' which is like a Scottish version of this story — an offbeat comedy pitting one ice cream 'mafia' against another."

Allison Eck interviews Jon Mooallem about his story on Gavin Pretor-Pinney and the Cloud Appreciation Society, including how Mooallem weaved amateur cloud-watching's history into it: "History is always my favorite part to write, and typically to read, too. It tends to feel so crisp, with a clear momentum that the sloppy narrative you’re cobbling together from your shaggy real-time interviews and contemporary reality never does. What a relief when everyone’s long dead!"

Rachel Aviv talks to Steve Weinberg about her story on the police shooting of a mentally ill Albuquerque man and her circuitous route to the story, which began when she was doing research into acts of domestic violence committed by police officers: "My search terms somehow led me to a petition by a father in Albuquerque whose son had been killed by the police. The petition made it sound as if the son was one of many who had met the same fate."

Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore, biographer of Benjamin Franklin's little sister Jane, annotates her story “The Prodigal Daughter,” in which she weaves her mother's history and Jane Franklin's into a single layered narrative, drawing heavily upon her many years of archival research: "The parts of the book that get imported into the essay are like the reduction of a sauce that has been simmering so long you don’t even remember turning on the stove.”