Tips from an internet stranger

FOUND IN THE LIBRARY

Google, undoubtedly, knows how I stumbled across Mike Sager's website. I do not. I have never read any of his articles for Esquire or any of his books. But I do find his list of writing tips freshly rendered and instructive. (And I would link them, but his website is Flash-like and the URL never changes.) Sure, some of it is old news:

Make every word count.

Show, don’t tell.

When in doubt, cut it out.

Make sure that your lede hooks the reader.

But most is at least dressed in memorable and concise new clothing:

Employ Holy Shit details.

Be careful of too much effect. It becomes affect.

Combine the everyday with the eye-popping.

And you may, like I did below, find a new pearl:

As dialog runs, have the characters do "business." The business should be "telling"—something that advances the story or the character in a subtle or not so subtle way.

What amused me most, however, were his sharply specific commands:

Do not start stories with the time, season, or weather conditions.

Do not start with "It was" or "It’s" or "When."

Think of something to describe besides clothes!

File your stories early, ten words shorter than the length assigned.

Best profile I've read this (very new) year

NONREQUIRED READING

Van Jones is an electrifying speaker. I have witnessed the sparks; I covered an event he spoke at for the Daily Cal about two years ago. I am ashamed to admit I made a dull article duller by failing to quote the guy. With any sense, I would have done what Elizabeth Kolbert did in the New Yorker this week: do nothing but quote the guy.

These kind of profiles--her article is billed as something else, but it really is a profile--must be straightforward. Spend a few days with the person, write up a transcript, insert some transitions, done. Kolbert's no lightweight--her book on global warming is both silky smooth yet informative--but she knows a good verbal sling artist when she hears one. And she knows how to get out of the way.

Sure, the article does not do much to consider the merits of Jones's talk. Just five quick paragraphs in the middle a 6,121-word piece. But that wasn't the point. (The headline and subhead suggest otherwise, but it is clear from the start who is the star of the show.) Read it. Be enchanted.

P.S. The article reminded me of my favorite profile from 2008: Larissa MacFarquhar's serving up of the chef David Chang. She both got the hell out of the way (starting from the first sentence) and--despite an early flash of her talent for brief, distinctive expression: "He is five feet ten, built like a beer mug, and feels that most food tastes better with pork"--turned her prose to simply an extension of his own style of speech. I could quote to display this, but you should just read the article.

Troubled economy hatches streams of mixed metaphors

EXTRA CREDIT

The lede of an A2 article in Wednesday's WSJ:

"President Barack Obama's $825 billion stimulus package is hatching against a drumbeat of dour economic news, from plunging consumer confidence to a stream of layoff announcements, some at firms that stand to benefit from the plan."

A plan can hatch, but how can anything hatch "against a drumbeat"? And how can a drumbeat include a "stream"?

If the first graf is a George Orwell nightmare, the second is a Malcolm Gladwell joke.

"The developments are raising new doubts about whether the plan will be enough, or come in time, to moderate an increasingly sever downturn."

For those who don't know, Gladwell, a former Washington Post staff writer and bureau chief, and current New Yorker science writer extraordinare, catch phrase whiz and bestseller machine, once did a riff for This American Life on a newsroom competition to use the phrase "raises new and troubling questions" in as many stories as possible.

When stories fall onto your doorstep

NONREQUIRED READING

Digging neck deep in the archives, finding a Deep Throat, FOIAing to beat the beasts, pounding down doors, running the risks of others—from such stuff is journalistic legend made. Yet, sometimes great stories can be plucked from right off the front page. Where almost everyone turned away, Tom Junod turned his gaze. The result is Falling Man, an article Esquire’s current editors figure to be one of the best seven the mag has ever published.

(Given all the teary-eyed talk about Esquire’s decade-plus of revolutionary perfection and glory under Harold Hayes, the selected seven heavily weighted to the present: three from the days of Hayes, one from the forgotten middle decades, the other three from 2003 to the present. This is not to knock the newer items; my first swallow went down very smooth. But if it really was ‘the best magazine ever’, as GOOD Magazine figures, wouldn’t that make up the whole selection? Is this a case of pressure to say ‘Look! We’re still good!’? Or is the nostalgia overdone?)

Regardless of all-time merit, the article is undoubtedly a slick piece of writing. Junod took a clever idea and executed it well. To me, the simplicity is most striking. The sentences are short, repetition is common and the structure is straightforward: We are introduced a character, name first, usually in section-opening bold, and we run with them for a while. Then we hit a return—five small stars—and we pick up another character, again with their name leading the section. It’s almost as if each name is falling down the page.

What do you think?

*A search of Google News and nytimes.com seemed to indicate that non-required is hyphenated in all cases except when it comes before "reading". This held true in both for the book series and in lower-case usage. Is this right, or just a case of poor copy editing? For that matter, what's the rule on lower-case and copy editing?

The perfect equation

FOUND IN THE LIBRARY

I was searching for an AP Stylebook rule when I came across this post:

Strunk & White + AP Stylebook + hustle > J-school

Exactly what I'm banking on.

P.S. Anyone know a good AP Stylebook source online? So far, I have only come across these two.

Another spin with the tornado

NOTES ON A PULITZER

It’s not the first time I’ve seen the ‘what they would have seen’ construction in a nonfiction narrative. It is a useful form, as it works an author’s image into their characters lives, though it can seem forced. But Keller’s effort here is a fine example. She not only puts the image in physical space where it is now in time—behind us—but tops it off with an apt simile:

Had she happened to lift her pale blue eyes to the rear view mirror as she left the city limits, she would have seen, poised there like a tableau in a snow globe just before it's shaken up, her last intact view of the little town she loved.

# # #

As an excellently reported narrative piece often does, Keller’s piece more than once left me wondering: “How the hell did she get that?” Two examples:

To check the screens, Pietrycha, a slender man with short sandy hair and the preoccupied air of someone who's always working out a math problem in his head, quickly rolled his chair back and forth, back and forth, screen to screen to screen, taking frequent swigs from a Coke can.

The specials at Duffy's Tavern that night, according to the green felt-tip lettering on the white board above the bar, were: "All You Can Eat Spaghetti w/garlic breadsticks, $4.99" and "Cajun NY Strip w/onions and peppers and potato salad, $16.99" and "2 stuffed walleye, $13.99." The soup was cheesy broccoli.

How does she know he rolled back and fourth in his chair, swigging from his Coke can? Did she watch a video of the place? Did she ask him exactly how he watched the screens? Was he doing that the day she was there and she asked him? I’ve got to ask her. (Her description of him, by the way, is quite elegant).

And why did she jot down the specials from the board? In other words, if she jotted down that, how much else did she jot down? On the rare occasions I’ve had the opportunity to do a narrative-style piece, I wrote down everything I notice. But menu boards, until now, might have been overlooked.

# # #

While from the headline on you know what is coming, you know the story is about a tornado, Keller still manages to drum up tension within her story. A simple, but well-done example:

At 5:58 p.m., Dena Mallie saw it from her driveway in Peru.

As it blossomed darkly, a huge batwing erasing the sky around it, a Utica contractor named Buck Bierbom saw it from his back yard.

Rona Burrows saw it. She leaned out the front door at Mill Street Market, where she worked as a cashier, and looked up at the sky.

Lisle Elsbury saw it from the alley behind Duffy's.

It was a great black mass, a swirling coil some 200 yards wide at the ground--it was wider in the sky--heading northeast at about 30 m.p.h. They looked up and saw it but they thought: No. Couldn't be. Could it?

I know what “it” is from the start, but I can still feel the tension building as I read that passage. Positioning the tornado within all those lives, names her readers might know, towns and streets others might identify, also personalizes.

A tornado tragedy

NOTES ON A PULITZER

What struck me most about Julia Keller’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning series on a tornado that ripped up Utica, Illinois, was not her meticulous reconstruction of events, or her attention to detail, or her metaphors and similes. All are laudable, aspects of an incredible story told incredibly well, but what struck me most was her folksy tone.

I once read a Nicholas Lemann essay where he said good magazine writing almost always consists of creative inspirations within an established theme. The parts are almost always identical: anecdotal lede, biographic information, use of scenes, etc. Newspaper writing, I feel, is not particularly different. Keller’s inspiration was her tone.

“Maybe, just maybe”, “slapping down all his chips”, “with an affection that ran deep and true”, “she knew everybody right back”, and “people who must've wondered what on earth had gotten into sweet little Gloria Maltas” are a few of the examples that popped out at me. Taken out of context, they seem less striking. But their effect, on both tone and pace—all lengthen and extend—were profound in my reading of the article.

However, they leave me curious. Their placement is irregular and mixed with elegant metaphors and similes that refer to orchestra conductors and finicky artists. So do both high-culture references and conversational, almost down-home come naturally for her, or were the expressions adapted from the interviews she did. Undoubtedly their use is a conscious choice, to reflect the personalities who people her story, but I wonder if the expressions flowed naturally from her pen, or it was done—entirely successfully, in my reading—to insert the feelings of a culture she is not fully a part of.

(Just found her biography on Pulitzer.org. As she was born and raised in West Virginia, college'd there and later in Ohio, and only then located in Chicago, I guess she was bred on that style. But given she carries a doctorate in English—her thesis looked at literary biography—and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard in 1998, it seems she’s got an ear tuned to each pitch.)

Early on in the story, when she is reconstructing Shelba Bimm and Lisle Elsbury’s thoughts, she falls into the same expressions. A similar question arises: did she turn direct quotes into thoughts, or did she insert their own expressions into recollections of thoughts?

Writing, Theory of

THE SYLLABUS

It sometimes seems there are as many renowned works on journalism as renowned works of journalism. The temptation can be strong. At a younger, more uncertain age I was drawn to every guide book and “How To” that popped up on my radar—“Yes, tell me how to interview someone!” However, it didn’t take me long to find an excess of advice numbs the ability to learn. Practice is the most valuable teacher.

Yet, it is advice that stretches our weakest writing limbs. Otherwise you just keep moving through the same grooves. Besides, in my case, my books must be my professors. This student cannot survive on works of journalism alone. The key is finding a ratio between the two. As unequal is better, I guess I'm doing well. I'm at about 8-to-1 here.

A note on pairing: While the first group, Schools of Thought, was included with an eye to the first two groups in the previous list, Gonzo and Immersion, no strict pairings were envisioned. In fact, The New New Journalism includes interviews with many of the authors in the Blockbuster group. I’m just in a Narrative mood at the moment.

WRITING, THEORY OF
Schools of Thought
The New Journalism, Tom Wolfe
The New New Journalism, Robert S. Boynton

Narrative
Stein on Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies, Sol Stein
Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction, Jon Franklin

Writing, Practice of

THE SYLLABUS

For a long time, I’ve kept a saved document titled simply “booklist.” Whenever I read an enticing book review, come across a best-of list or a friend recommends a work, I add a name to the list. It’s got contemporary fiction, literature, graphic novels and, naturally, a lot of journalism.

When I was first toying with the idea of J-School 2.0, I went to the list and copy and pasted all the journalism works into a new document—my reading list. Best to start with what you want to read than someone else’s idea of a journalistic canon, I figured. But there was one problem: there was no unifying theme.

What I posted the other day is an attempt to unify a small selection of those works into a couple categories. Class themes, if you will.

WRITING, PRACTICE OF
New Journalism
Hell’s Angels, Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer
The Executioner’s Song, Norman Mailer
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe
The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe
Red-Dirt Marijuana and other Tastes, Terry Southern
Paper Lion, George Plimpton
Immersion Journalism
Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin
Rolling Nowhere, Ted Conover
Whiteout, Ted Conover
Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich

Bestsellers
Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis
Moneyball, Michael Lewis
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean
A Civil Action, Jonathan Harr
Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden
A Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger
Novelist
The Harvest Gypsies, John Steinbeck
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Mark Twain
The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
Roughing It, Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
In Front of Your Nose, 1945-1950 (Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell)
Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway [added 12.1.2009]
News of a Kidnapping, Gabriel Garcia Marquez [added 12.1.2009]

Notes on Assembly:

1) I happened to be reading Hell’s Angels when I made the list, so it seemed like a good excuse to go gonzo—to plunge into New Journalism.

2) I paired Immersion with New Journalism as that’s where I feel the next generation went. Besides, I love Conover—Newjack and Coyotes would be on the list if I hadn’t already devoured them—and it seemed a good excuse to read two more of his books.

3) Immersion, however, is looking quite thin (Into Thin Air is another obvious pick that I’ve already read, ditto Nickeled and Dimed). Suggestions, anyone? Or maybe re-reading is in order?

4) Good books often sell poorly and poor books often earn good sales. But any solid work of journalism that is bought in droves by an increasingly reading-phobic public deserves attention. Hence, the Bestsellers category. (It also neatly groups a collection of books in disparate styles on disparate topics.)

5) I’m not sure why I paired Bestsellers with the Novelist category. New master works of narrative journalism plus works of journalism by narrative masters equals insight?

6) The Mark Twain emphasis in the Novelist category was unintentional. I may cut out one of the longer works.

7) I didn’t include Down and Out in Paris and London or The Road to Wigan Pier because I’ve read them.

8) The list will evolve based on factors like whether the books are in at the library, personal whims, your suggestions.