The Elements of Story: Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing

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The Elements of Story: Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing Pub. Date: 9/7/2010 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Overview

Most writing books dwell on common issues of style and grammar. Yet most writers also confront complex problems of story design. This fifty-rule guide by Francis Flaherty, a New York Times editor, offers much-needed solutions and sage advice to address these concerns.

"Sometimes, say things sideways," Flaherty writes. "The reader will be grateful." "White is whitest on black," he observes. "Let contrast work for you." Through such hard-won, story-level insights, sprinkled with examples from real stories and leavened with a good dose of newsroom memoir, The Elements of Story merits a spot on every writer's shelf.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Playing on the title of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, Flaherty, a New York Times editor who teaches journalism at New York University, shares 50 simple and insightful tips on the many elements writers can convey in stories. Not a style guide, this is instead a nuts-and-bolts examination of the larger elements of a story. First and most adamantly, he stresses the importance of bringing a human face to every story. Flaherty gives us real and invented examples of the cream of the crop of nonfiction writing in the form of narrative news articles. VERDICT This book can be read in one fell swoop to expose yourself to the full spectrum of story elements—such as theme, motion, artfulness, truth and fairness, leads, and titles—or it can be used as a guide during the process of writing nonfiction. An essential read for both freelance writers and students of journalism.—David L. Reynolds, Cleveland P.L.

—David L. Reynolds

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061689154
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 9/7/2010
Pages: 293
Sales rank: 565,109
Product dimensions: 5.20 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 0.80 (d)

Meet the Author

Francis Flaherty has worked for more than seventeen years at The New York Times. He has written for Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Commonweal, and The Progressive and teaches journalism at NYU. He lives with his wife and two children in Brooklyn, New York.

Read an Excerpt

The Elements of Story
Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing

Chapter One

Shivers on Wall Street

Every story has a human element.

Whatever your subject, give it a human face if you can. Imagine a story about people who had enough money to invest in the American stock market in 1996, but, for various reasons, did not. Maybe they believed real estate was a better deal. Maybe they wanted to bet on bonds. Or maybe they thought overseas stock markets were the place to be.

But they were wrong. Nineteen ninety-six was a banner year on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising 26 percent.

A Times article about these unfortunates appeared in the business pages, and necessarily explored many technical subjects that readers expect to see in that part of the paper—the reasons for the large gain, comparisons to past years, the investors' mistaken theories, and the prospect that their ideas, dry holes in 1996, might strike oil in 1997.

Sounds dull. Sure, you say, this article may be useful to investors, but it hardly seems gripping.

Can it be both?

The answer is yes. There is an emotional center to this story. People who miss out on a good thing are prey to regret, anger and jealousy. Such feelings, in fact, were the original inspiration for the article.

For that reason, I wrote a lead that went like this:

They are on the outside looking in, noses pressed against the glass, stamping their feet in the chill, watching the festivities within.

Yep, that's right. These are investors who did not attend the Wall Street Revels of 1996. Stocks may have soared and portfolios mayhave swelled, but these people made less money than the overall market would suggest, or maybe none at all.

This lead displays for the reader the emotions of those left out in the cold. You can elect to write about made-up people, as this lead does, or about real ones, but do not ignore the human side. If you do, your tale will be ho-hum, like this hypothetical lead to the same story:

Nineteen ninety-six was a banner year for the stock market, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising 26 percent and the shares of many individual enterprises soaring far higher. But some investors, for various reasons, chose not to participate in the market that year. . . .

Boring! Even in significantly technical articles like this investing story, maybe especially in such stories, always fleck at the human feelings in play. As the late Jack Cappon of the Associated Press put it, "The tight housing market is also an old lady evicted with her four cats."

The Elements of Story
Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing. Copyright (c) by Francis Flaherty . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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