our nut graph

We are a group of journalism students and one professor in a course with the cryptic title of Advanced Feature Writing. In searching for a definition and a direction, we’ve been reading and deconstructing some of our era’s great long-form, non-fiction narratives to figure out what makes them work and why they are so satisfying. And in our twice-weekly workshops, we’ve been learning some of the simple rules of the road of narrative reporting and writing.

Show, don’t tell. Seek out characters, scenes and dialogue. Write it like you’d tell it at the dinner table, in simple, direct, conversational English. Chronology is your friend and the simplest of organizing principles. Be sure to ground your story in time and place. Observe, process and narrate. Find people who face a conflict or a test or a moment of truth and, if possible, a resolution. Once we find these stories, we intend to produce our own work in the pages of a book and on this website. So please stay tuned. The process of finding the voices of our characters---and our own voices as writers---has just begun.