A beagle barreling down a gravel driveway to enthusiastically greet its owners as they emerge from a marigold sedan. A graduate student propping his phone on the bathroom sink and hurriedly mirroring the how-to video’s directions so that his necktie isn’t crooked before he presents his dissertation. An excitable 3-year-old girl grinning ear to ear as she toddles into her parents’ bedroom carrying a tray loaded with a plate of buttery pancakes and a handmade Mother’s Day card, scrawled with crayon.
These descriptions paint clear pictures in readers’ heads of characters performing actions in certain settings. As we expand on these elements, they form scenes: the building blocks of narrative structure. Journalistic articles are often called “stories” for a reason, and that is because many of the most engaging articles employ narrative writing on some scale.
Any reporter can tell you that Jane Doe’s garage caught fire last Tuesday, but a reporter who interviews Doe and relays details acquired about how the fire started in sequential order—how sparks from an overloaded circuit ignited some loose sawdust as she was weed-eating in her backyard while listening to Phil Collins through her wireless headphones, unaware until a neighbor waved his arms within her field of vision and pointed to the rising flames—that reporter has taken the time to “show” what has occurred instead of simply “telling” their readers. Showing makes the difference. Scenework morphs Jane Doe into more than just a name in an article; she becomes the main character in her own story.
When the subject of an article becomes a fleshed-out character, a reader is more likely to empathize with someone’s lived experiences or cheer for that person’s successes or mourn those losses. Long-time Free Press readers may recognize reporter Brian Johnson’s 2006 article, “Deepest Midnight: Cedric Willis and The Failure of Mississippi Justice,” or Donna Ladd and Imani Khayyam’s joint story, “A Hunger to Live: The Struggle to Interrupt the Cycle of Violence.”
Judge Tomie Green released Cedric Willis (pictured) from jail after serving 12 years for a crime courts later ruled he was innocent of committing. The Jackson
