Editor’s Corner
August 7, 2009
Speaking from Places No One Wants To Go
By
Andrea Pitzer
Traumatic events make for powerful stories. Yet when trauma has baggage, as it almost always does, readers can become suspicious. Those of us who love narrative might be tempted to say that it conquers all. But are there some experiences which are perceived as being so subjective—or about which readers may be so committed to an opinion—that writing a piece as a pure narrative might work against the story?
Domestic violence, mental illness, and sexual assault are among the topics that can provoke questions about the authoritative voice. A reader might well accept a version of events as “true” to one person’s recollection without being willing to recognize that version as factual. When a legal outcome is also at stake, and differing viewpoints become critical to the story, an entirely subjective presentation runs the risk of being a less-than-full picture of events, and perhaps even an inaccurate one.
Narrative does have techniques for working around these issues: scenes of interactions between the subject and those with contrary views, careful injection of summary material in small doses or single sections, and inclusion of sidebars or source material online can help.
Reporter Phoebe Zerwick makes use of similar techniques in the latest Notable Narrative “Why Didn’t They Stop Him?” The piece, from August’s O Magazine, centers on the story of a woman who survived abuse that nearly killed her (and did kill her daughter). Yet Zerwick makes sure we don’t dismiss her article as more advocacy than journalism by anticipating the moments when context, facts, and quotes from lawyers or policemen will make her story stronger.
I touched base with Laurie Hertzel, senior editor for books and special projects with the Star Tribune, to get her perspective. After reading Zerwick’s piece, Hertzel offered these words:
How do you handle the storyline when you’re not entirely sure what the storyline is? As long as there’s a lawsuit pending, and incidents in dispute, it’s hard to tell this purely as a tale without appearing to take sides. When we get to the part of the story that is in dispute— when did the silver Blazer drive by? Before or after the police were there?—Zerwick handled it deftly, stepping back from the storytelling and allowing each side to speak, emphasizing neither.
I like the scene-summary-scene approach and think it was effective here, though I think shorter summary interspersed more often might have given the story a better pacing.
I don’t think that the topic in and of itself means pure narrative could never work, but because domestic violence is an issue that has been written about a lot, there might be audience fatigue. Choosing an angle like “why police can’t stop it” was wise. It’s more than just the standard telling a tale, which, while never actually standard, can feel so when it’s a topic that has been written about before. |
Reporters took a similar approach to a three-day series that appeared in the The Washington Times this week. Much of the series is not narrative. But several scenes from the first installment, “Mentally Ill Struggle in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” recount ride-alongs with a police crisis unit trying to rescue at-risk residents of the Crescent City. These scenes provide a powerful sense of events on the ground in what could easily have been a skim-through strip story on the debate over the closing of an urban hospital.
The patients who are rescued sit in trailers, remaining nearly as lost as those the workers are unable to haul in. There may be no easy answers for the “city that care forgot” or simple ways to understand the traumas we each hope never to experience. But these stories provide a way to connect to people whose lives are impacted daily by our engagement, or lack of it, from the policy level to the personal.
[Read our interview with reporter Phoebe Zerwick on how her story ended up with the structure it did.]