Story Like a Journalist starts with a chapter breaking down lessons from the journalism classroom, and helping you apply them to your work. It also contains worksheets for creating an overall Story Bible, with overview documents. You will start filling in more detail as you complete worksheets in the subsequent sections. There are over 100 worksheets in the collected volume. You will probably not need all the worksheets to complete any one project, but there are there to help with different aspects of idea development. Sometimes the instructional material accompanying each technique or exercise may be enough to get you writing.
To have a solid story, you will need to define each of the following. The workbook has exercises to help you narrow down possibilities and create a reference that helps keep those decisions consistent.
Who? = Character – WHO are these people who’ve showed up demanding a place in your novel, anyway? You know they have a story to tell, and for some specific reason, you are the writer in the best position to tell it.
Approach uncovering character the same way a journalist approaches a profile piece.
What? = Premise — WHAT is this story about? Premise define the heart of your story. You need a keystone to hold onto, so you don’t get lost in all the things your story COULD be. Premise is your keystone, and it works like the legend for a road map.
Approach refining premise the same way a journalist approaches a news story.
When? and Where? = Setting – WHEN and WHERE the heck are your characters? They have to be somewhere, waiting for the story to start. And that place shouldn’t be random. Setting makes the story specific, and allows readers to feel like your characters are real people, living real lives in a certain time and place.
Approach exploring aspects of your setting the same way a journalist approaches
making a documentary.
How? and Why? = Plot and Theme – A plot that doesn’t build to a theme is hollow, no matter how much excitement you build into the on-page action, there’s no substance so the story won’t be memorable. A character contemplating a theme without the framework of a plot is drifting, no matter how much she has to say, there’s nothing concrete to prove her points or to challenge them. Her ideas just slip away. But when you get HOW and WHY working together, you can build a pattern of events and meaning that will touch our emotions and maybe even change the way we think.
Approach intertwining plot and theme the same way a journalist approaches a memoir
or biography.
If you are looking to improve a specific aspect of your writing (for instance, you have trouble nailing down character motivations and backstory), the workbooks are also available as individual topic volumes.
Look at what each of the 5 W’s brings to your writing!
Including all of the 5 W’s and H makes for a sound news story, because the reader is given all the information needed to not only understand what is going on, but what it means. Similarly, if you take any of these elements away from your fictional story, it becomes more difficult for the reader to connect. If you focus on the WHEN and WHERE of your story world, giving pages of worldbuilding details without introducing the reader to a character, then we don’t have anyone to care about, and we won’t see why the worldbuilding details matter. If you give us a character, and focus on developing WHO that person is, but don’t offer a conflict driven plot, it is then difficult to see that character as proactive, or to judge their mettle as a person. You can have both the WHO and the WHAT, but leave out perhaps the hardest to define element . . . WHY your story is being told in the first place. Without theme, characters can be well defined, and even busy doing agency-filled things, but if there is no theme, few readers will go away thinking about your story.