This week’s readings on structure and long-form pieces of journalism were quite interesting to read in conjunction. In his book and New Yorker article, John McPhee outlines different ways to structure long-form articles and books alike, centering chronology and main characters that remain consistent throughout pieces. Transitions, too, he writes, are important to ensure that readers can keep track of the line of the article and remain engaged. However, I found McPhee’s description of structure types to be extremely formulaic. Unlike academic writing, which often follows a rigid essay or study structure, I typically do not think about structure in journalistic writing as something so prescriptive – likely due to the more creative, storytelling aspect of it. My process of writing articles normally starts with a draft that is written intuitively, which I then revise and restructure afterwards. Some of the long-form articles we read this week also shed this rigid structure.
Kathryn Schulz’s “The Really Big One” in the New Yorker starts with a gripping lede – the first-hand account of the 2011 earthquake that struck Japan. However, it takes her a while to actually get to the topic at hand, not the great earthquake mythologized to occur in California along the San Andreas fault line that is referred to as “The Big One,” but rather a more disastrous potential earthquake stemming from the Cascadia subduction zone. She then goes through a series of historical examples of earthquakes as well as a way to physically imagine the intensity and mechanics of this potential earthquake. While she has one notable character included in the lede, that character is not really followed throughout the story. Despite not following a structure that may not be typical within long-form articles, I found Schulz’s story to be fascinating – especially considering the amount of technical information she needs to convey to readers.
Jennifer Senior’s “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind,” conversely, centers one family grappling with the death of their young son, brother, and soon-to-be fiancé, Bobby, on September 11th, 2001. The tension driving the reader to keep reading the article in this case takes the form of a physical artifact: the final diary that Bobby wrote before his death, the possession of which sparked tension between his mother and girlfriend. The story is for the most part structured around these characters, who each describe their grief and how the twenty years since 9/11 have shaped them. However, structure itself plays a role in this story. Senior describes how a 22-year-old Bobby critiqued the fact that she concluded her first five pieces in the New Yorker with a quote from others. She writes, “I credit Bobby with teaching me a valuable lesson: If you’re going to cede the power of the last word to someone else, you’d better be damn sure that person deserves it.” Thus, of course, she leaves the last words of this piece to Bobby – a snippet from his final diary in which he reflects on his perception of his role in life. This piece exemplifies the way that structure can itself play a role in a story and not just act as an apparatus for storytelling.
