Author:
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Chelsea J. Carter
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Source:
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Associated Press
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Date:
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2/25/1997
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Format:
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Short feature
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A tight, effective and very short account of a rescue by passersby of a boy from a sinking car.
This is a clean, concise and efficient narrative of a dramatic rescue. It's a newsy topic that would ordinarily have begun in this fashion: "A four-year-old boy was rescued yesterday after the car he was riding in...." Instead Carter lets the story unfold.
The story is so clean, Carter has made it look easy. But there are a lot of threads in this 17-minute event, nine characters to keep track of. Carter structures the story masterfully. The piece begins with the climax, the moment of greatest tension. It then backtracks to the story's inception. She isolates each development, each introduction of a character, in short sections. They're like mini-chapters. (We can imagine her charting each development and then writing a section to go with each.) The result is a compelling, nonmelodramatic and effective short piece.
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© 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College