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Roy Peter
Clark
Creative Nonfiction
Journalists should report the truth. Who would deny it? But such a statement does not get us far enough, for it fails to distinguish nonfiction from other forms of expression. Novelists can reveal great truths about the human condition, and so can poets, film makers and painters. Artists, after all, build things that imitate the world. So do nonfiction writers.
- Tags:
- Ethics,
- Quoting Sources,
- Writing
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Roy Peter
Clark
Special to the Digest
We call lots of things "stories" in American journalism, but very few of them are true narrative storytelling. Most journalistic accounts are reports, whose primary purpose is to pass along information to readers. Reports require certain writing strategies to help readers figure things out: the telling quote, the revealing statistic, the deep explanation, a piece of jargon translated for the general reader. Readers use the information in their roles as citizens, consumers, residents and parents.
- Tags:
- Finding the Narrator,
- Writing,
- Quoting Sources
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Jack
Hart
Second Takes Newsletter
We've heard it to the point of numbness: "Get people into your stories. Tell it in human terms."
Who's to argue? Yup, human beings are more interesting than paper creeping through a bureaucracy. Yup, real human experiences bring abstractions to life. Yup, readers are endlessly fascinated with the peccadilloes of their fellows.
So we all agree. So what? We still don't have many people in our stories.
- Tags:
- Capturing Character,
- Quoting Sources,
- Writing