Interviewing to Tell a Story

Students run for cover as a plainclothes police officer, centre, watches on. (Peter McCabe/Canadian Press)

On September 13, 2006, eleven Dawson College students were victims of a shooting rampage on the campus of this small Montreal school. Writer Aaron Derfel wrote a strong, captivating feature story for the Montreal Gazette based on that incident. In that story, he displays the kinds of interviewing skills that we have discussed lead to strong anecdotes. After reading "The Fight for Their Lives," find a compelling section of the story. What questions do you think the reporter might have asked to capture the moment or scene?

Driving the Narrative Through Scenes

Writer David Hayes approaches an unusual, some might say even "quirky" subject in the feature story "Die Hard." His backstage look at the production of a commercial brings us to a place few people ever see and contains a "crisis" that even fewer will ever face. Look back over Hayes' advice to feature writers in Chapter 4. How well or poorly does he follow his own advice in writing "Die Hard?"

Setting the Scene and Recreating Events

CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman (CBS)

For this week's class we are going to discuss structuring feature stories around the concept of "scenes." The chapter you are to read talks about how much can be learned from how television and movies script their stories around scenes that can be visualized. In addition, while we are primarily focussing this semester on writing for print publications, there are many great feature writers for television news programs. One of the best, in my opinion, is Steve Hartman of CBS News, who often reports for a program titled "Sunday Morning" on CBS. This week, he did a story on a rare relationship between a taxi driver and one of his fares. It's available on-line here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5304943n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

(you may have to cut and paste the above into your browser for access, due to the length of the link).

Please view the story before class on Tuesday (we will watch it in class) and ask yourself how Hartman uses a sense of "scene" and what techniques he uses to recreate an event effectively as a feature writer. Please post your ideas as "comments" below.

Research For Your Feature Story

Now to your own research for feature story 1. To continue the metaphor we were discussing in class today (thanks to Doug!), good research is a little like good teaching or a fine performance: the audience should instinctively know and appreciate the effort that went into it, but it should be such a seamless part of your story that they don't see the "wires" showing. A good feature story has a broad range of research, from first person observation to personal interviews, to on-line searches (with the precautions discussed in class today), background reading of stories that have been done in other publications or media on the same subject or issue. The goal is to know what else has been written about your subject before it became your subject. With that in mind, before Thursday's class post on this blog under "comment" a two sentence description explaining your story and its intended audience. Below that, list the sources of research you propose to do in support of telling that story. It could include people you are going to interview, articles you propose to read, websites you intend to use, books, magazines, audio or video archives, studies--anything that will help make your story more compelling.

"The Golden Bough"

John Vaillant has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic–Adventure, Outside and Men’s Journal. He lives in Vancouver with his wife (an anthropologist and a potter) and their two children.

All good feature stories involve research. It's one element of feature writing that separates narrative stories, from creative works like novels or short stories (although they, too, can involve research, especially those based upon fact, which we sometimes refer to as non-fiction narrative or literary journalism). Before class of Sept. 9th, read the assigned piece by John Vaillant (seen above) titled "The Golden Bough." It's a story that contains a good deal of research on the topic and uses the result of that research to create a compelling story from a topic that might not be instrinsically interesting to a wide audience. In what specific ways does Vaillant's research support his main storyline?