storytelling - A few words over

Tag: storytelling

The Art of Writing the Tough Profile

Gay Talese’s famous “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” is a legendary profile for many reasons, perhaps most notably because the iconic singer wouldn’t talk to him directly. Talese nonetheless delivered an incredible profile of Sinatra, without the benefit of a direct interview.

I thought briefly of Talese’s story when I read Nick Paumgarten’s excellent New Yorker profile of Ninendo creative genius Shigeru Miyamoto. What is clear from the story is that Paumgarten actually had very little opportunity to spend time with the elusive Miyamoto. The only scene in which he directly interacts with his subject is in a Nintendo corporate conference room, through the use of a translator.

And yet, Paumgarten still manages to make the most of that limited access. Here’s a snippet of his really effective use of observation, description, and vivid detail:

Miyamoto, dressed in a striped button-down shirt and black pants, regarded me with a wide smile. Up close, I could see that he had freckles and a few gray hairs. His upper lip sticks out a bit, like that of a character in a Matt Groening comic strip. He was carrying a beat-up and bulging old leather diary with a painted, hand-tooled relief of a horse on its cover. A friend had made it for him. It was where he jotted down thoughts and ideas. He said he was very busy: there was a deadline looming for the release of a new handheld device with a 3-D display that requires no 3-D glasses. Also, it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of Super Mario, and he was judging a competition in which thousands of players had used a Nintendo program to make and submit their own Mario animations. Miyamoto himself was to narrow these down to fifty finalists.

As Minagawa translated each of my questions, Miyamoto often buried his face in his hands or rubbed his eyes and frowned, as though Minagawa had misheard me and, instead of asking Miyamoto to parse the differences between entertainment and play, was telling him he’d gone broke. But it became clear, once he began talking, animatedly, with extravagant hand gestures and giggles of delight, that the apparent anguish was merely an expression of deep thought, a counterpoint to his ebullience in answering.

Paumgarten makes the most of a very constrained, limited interview. The doesn’t just get Miyamoto’s quotes, but we see him, hear him, and get a sense of his personality. He might be sitting in a boring conference room, but that doesn’t stop Paumgarten from still creating a vivid sense of his subject.

It’s a good reminder that we don’t always have ideal settings or opportunities to interview subjects, but that’s no excuse for doing a bad job telling the story.

Author name:: Matt
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Long-form narrative and the art of cooking slow food

In the Washington Post last week, Joel Achenbach wrote an interesting feature on the diminishing opportunities for long-form narrative nonfiction in the newspaper-death-spiral/Twitter/iPhone era.

As seems to be the case anytime that I read about trends in the magazine and news business world these days, the outlook isn’t promising.

There seem to be two lines of thought: one is that modern audiences don’t have the patience or the attention span for longer narratives, which is why they watch reality TV shows and love Twitter. The other line says that people still want good journalism and storytelling: the problem has to do with the business model of publishing, not with the demand for good narrative. Achenbach gets to the heart of the problem:

Good stories take time to craft. Good writers, editors, copy editors, photographers, etc., all expect a living wage. The real question in the months and years ahead is whether there’s a business model that can support good stories. Norman Sims, journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst: “The great stories will survive. But the question is who’s going to pay for them. . . . This is not fast food. This is slow food. And it’s expensive.”

And that’s part of the challenge as a writer. There are lots of opportunities to deliver “fast food” writing: short, punchy pieces. Sidebars. Lists. Examiner.com would rather I write five short posts a week than one long, thoughtful one. Getting the chance to write good, long-form narrative is a big challenge.

For what its worth, call me a optimist. There’s no question that there are a lot of ADD Americans out there who lose interest after 140 characters. But most people still crave good stories, true ones or fiction. It’s in our DNA. I see it with co-workers who are counting down the days until return of Lost, gripped with “what’s going to happen next.” I see it on the Metro, with commuters nose down in Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer books. I see in in my 18-month old daughter when she begs me to keep reading to her at night.

Author name:: Matt
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The stories we tell

One of my favorite shows of all time was Six Feet Under. What made the show so great was that, even though every once in a while something extraordinary happened, most of the drama came from every day life decisions: where to go to school, whether to stay in a relationship, or when to change careers. The show was compelling because the narrative of every day lives doesn’t lack for drama. We all make decisions that might not matter to the rest of the world, but matter a lot to us.

The more I read, study, and think about narrative, the less is seems to do with writing. Narrative is about storytelling, and storytellers are everywhere: sports announcers, radio talk show hosts, car salesmen, speed daters. Everyone spins a story – yours or theirs – and creates a narrative about what happened or what will happen. The Bears lost because they got sloppy. Obama won because he gave people hope. The new iMac will make your life easier.

And when we tell stories about ourselves, we reveal our character: who we are or how we’ve changed. People tell these stories all the time, consciously or not, to define themselves to others.

When I was still single, I would often tell my “worst date” story to women I was out with for the first time. The “worst date story” recounted a nightmarish date I had just one summer when I was still in college: I was invited to a woman’s home for dinner and I proceeded to accidentally drop and shatter her blender, destroy her telephone, and spill food all over her dining room floor. Afterward, I tried to make up for my clumsiness by taking her out for dessert. On the way, I stopped for gas. After filling up the tank, I left the nozzle in the tank of my car and drove off, breaking the nozzle. The cashier ran after me, screaming and flailing his arms like he was on fire. I didn’t have enough money to pay for the damage and didn’t have a credit card. This was before the debit card era, so the three of us – me and my date in the front, the Iranian gas station attendant in the backseat – drove a few miles down Wilshire Boulevard to my bank, where I took out $100 to pay for the broken nozzle. We returned to the gas station to drop off the cashier and get a receipt and sign a few papers. And then we got ice cream.

I loved to tell this story on first dates for three reasons: first, it made my dates laugh; second, it showed them I didn’t take myself too seriously and could laugh at myself; and third, our date was bound to be much better in contrast.

Often, people share one major, defining narrative, a story that they feel defines their lives. As John Barth wrote, “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

The American defining narrative is simple: we were a bunch of scattered colonists living under British rule, but we came together and demanded freedom and independence. Our unity helped us not only to beat the British, but to grow into a large, prosperous nation. That founding narrative, boiled down to five words – we fought to be free – provides the backbone for much of American politics. Land of the free. Home of the brave. It defines what we think we are supposed to be.

My brother’s defining narrative – I’ve heard it many times over the years – goes something like this: when he and his wife got engaged, they decided to quit their jobs, move to San Francisco, and start a new life there. Their parents were shocked and told them it was reckless. They went anyway. No jobs. No place to live. No savings. Rising debt. But they believed in themselves. And soon, my brother found a great job and his wife opened a photography studio in their loft apartment. They were happy. Stressed, but happy. The job my brother found established his reputation as a dynamic, smart professional and helped him later become one of the youngest Senior Vice Presidents in the history of Disney. They moved back to Los Angeles, built a home and a family, richer from the risks they took.

Their story says the following: they weren’t afraid of risk and change, and in turn, they succeeded. It is a narrative that defines not only their relationship, but how they look at life. For them, as my sister-in-law likes to say, “change is good.” Risk is good. Believing in themselves brings success. It’s not just a story, it’s an outlook on life.

All of these examples remind me that the storytelling process is natural and intuitive. We tell stories every day, and our stories have underlying themes and meaning. But writers often go out of our way to make the process difficult and complicated. We tend to overthink things and try to invent new ways to do something that we already do all the time. We try a little too hard to construct “gotcha” ledes and memorable closing lines, rather than focusing more on the story that flows in between.

Author name:: Matt
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