Narratives

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Nieman Storyboard annotates Jeanne Marie Laskas's first-person story about a Yuma, Ariz., gun store and the people who work and shop there: "I really wanted to understand the other side. I really and truly did. I didn’t want to get into a debate about gun rights. It was a cultural question: What is your mindset that you really truly believe in what you believe? It was really hard to find a way of doing that that wasn’t judgmental, that wasn’t silly."

Alex Pappademas interviews the documentary filmmaker, who discusses the Interrotron, moments from The Thin Blue Line, Fog of War, and The Unknown Known, and how he began writing in his mid-50s: "I was called by the New York Times and I was asked to write op-ed pieces on photography … I had a hard time at first, and then much less of a hard time. I started writing quite a bit. I wanted to write a self-help book — From Writer’s Block to Graphomania in Two Easy Weeks."

The eight "story shapes" from Kurt Vonnegut's famous (rejected) University of Chicago master's thesis have been boiled down to six by Matthew Jockers, an English professor, Dan Piepenbring writes, but his take on stories has more to do with words and emotions than conflict and resolution: "By Jockers’s conception, even Waiting for Godot, which Vivian Mercier famously and favorably described as 'a play in which nothing happens, twice,' is positively brimming with plot."

Pulitzer-prize winner Diana Marcum talks to Nieman Storyboard and explains how she searched California's Central Valley for the stories of a devastating drought: "It takes a little bit of time. We hang out, we just sort of invite ourselves in, and we eat samosas with the Singh family, and say, 'Oh, can we look at your almond tree?' And we do a lot of listening, maybe to things that would never end up in the story. People really want to talk, you know. I mean we all do."

News that a sequel will be published prompts Roy Peter Clark to analyze the tense wait for the jury's verdict in To Kill A Mockingbird: "Just when it feels the waiting will go on forever the clerk says, '"This court will come to order," in a voice that rang with authority, and the heads below us jerked up.' The suspense that expands over six pages is dispelled by action that occurs in less than two, in storytelling that is among the most powerful in American history."

Matt Tullis's students at a mid-sized liberal arts university with religious roots got their eyes opened when Esquire's Mike Sager — one of 14 writers who talked to their class — dropped a few f-bombs, but Tullis writes that it's all good: "I wanted my students to feel uncomfortable, because that’s what good narrative journalism does to you. It takes you to a place you haven’t been and wouldn’t necessarily go, and it does that for the reporter as well as the reader."

Nieman Storyboard asks Tommy Tomlinson, Stephen Henderson, Kelley Benham French, and Lisa Pollak to each pick five of their favorite narratives from the past year and explain what they liked so much about them. Here's French on “The Witness” by Pamela Colloff in Texas Monthly: "I’ve seen a man die by lethal injection, but not like this. Through the eyes of Michelle Lyons, who witnessed 278 Texas executions, we see the death penalty from both sides of the glass."

Jack Limpert recalls a story he rejected for The Washingtonian and why he reconsidered. "Like Something the Lord Made," the story of a heart surgery pioneer who wasn't even a doctor, won a National Magazine Award and became an HBO movie. Limpert's award acceptance mentioned other magazines that passed on the story: "I was trying to make the case to fellow editors that if you read a story that brings tears to your eyes, publish it no matter what."

Jodi Kantor talks to Nieman Storyboard about her story on a young single mother struggling to cope with low wages, constantly shifting schedules, and other hardships of life in the part-time economy: "Jannette told me that she had a three-hour commute and that she was constantly worried she was going to lose her son’s child care because her schedule is so crazy," Kanot said. "As she was speaking, my brain was thinking, 'How fast can I buy a ticket to San Diego?'"