The readings this week provided information on a less talked-about aspect of storytelling, structure. Journalists must all eventually decide how to best shape their story for their readership, yet structure is rarely discussed. Rob Rosenthal, John McPhee, and James Stewart all suggest that structure is a crucial and overwhelmingly important aspect of the storytelling process. Reading their reflections, suggestions, and advice was extremely helpful in educating me on what my own journey could look like as I decide what the structure of my piece will look like. Likewise, reading Pamela Colloff’s New York Times investigation into how a con man’s testimony sent dozens to jail made it clear that structure is what allows the audience to best comprehend information, especially when the story has a lot of characters.
What connected all of these readings for me was the fact that structure seems to be a deliberate decision that each journalist makes when writing a story. Each author approaches this process differently, yet their lessons overlap in many ways.
Rosenthal, for example, describes story structure as a visual process. His napkin drawings illustrate how a narrative can unfold. What intrigued me most about this approach was that he seems to emphasize that the drawings he makes help shape the motion of the narrative, and aren’t necessarily meant to be inflexible. I thought the pictures were likewise really helpful when it came to showing structure as a rhythm rather than a strict outline. His examples, probably deeply influenced by his past in radio storytelling, show how structure helps determine the pacing of the piece. This was not something I had previously thought applied to the written word.
John McPhee takes a different approach to structure. What stood out to me most early in the article was how he used note cards to make sense of an overwhelming amount of information. His method seems more structured and methodical than Rosenthal’s, but just as useful. I especially appreciated his thoughts on how crucial order is in storytelling. McPhee, for example, has his beginning and ending planned out before he writes a story. I wonder, however, how he knows when the piece should end before he even starts writing. Finally, his honesty about the paralysis that comes with trying to condense so much reporting into a limited number of sentences really resonated with me.
Pamela Colloff’s story about the serial jailhouse informant is a perfect example of how the principles discussed by Rosenthal and McPhee can be brought to life in practice. Her investigation could have easily unraveled when she started to explain decades’ worth of legal records, yet she constructs a structure that guides readers effortlessly. Colloff begins with a single, vivid case that grounds the narrative in reality, then gradually introduces characters, scenes, and details that reveal more about the con man, Paul Skalnik. By switching from the micro to the macro throughout her piece, Colloff shows how to create an emotionally gripping story.
Seeing how Colloff’s structure holds such a complex story together made me think about how I might apply similar principles in my own writing. That’s where James Stewart’s perspective felt particularly useful. His advice that “using chronology as your paramount organizing principle doesn’t mean simply telling a story in strict chronological order” was eye-opening. Even chronology, something seemingly self-explanatory, can be used to make a story more interesting.
