This is the handout for my workshop on short narrative writing. I used to do this workshop quite often, but haven’t done it for a couple years. The handout was originally posted at No Train, No Gain. I am posting some of my NTNG handouts here, with some updating, because NTNG is no longer online.
A common conflict in newspaper newsrooms today is newsholes getting tighter and writers complaining about space limitations on their stories. While space is not limited online, busy digital readers still favor tighter stories. Without question, some stories lose important substance as they get cut for tighter newsholes. But writers should not assume that length restrictions preclude quality narrative writing. Listen to some of your favorite ballads. Study the storytelling of the songwriters. They tell powerful stories in fewer words than the average daily news story. Use those techniques in your stories.
Study the song’s narrative structure
Follow the story arc. Jack Hart, retired writing coach from the Oregonian and author of A Writer’s Coach, teaches writers to follow a story arc of exposition-rising action-climax-denouement. Generally speaking, if a reporter gets an interview with the mother of a young man killed in a senseless act of violence, we figure that’s going to take a lot of space. Especially if the mother poured her heart out to you and told you how she begged her boy not to carry a gun but couldn’t stop him. You think you’re going to need 25 inches to tell that story, maybe 35, maybe more. See how this story arc plays out in the 305-word Johnny Cash song, “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”:
Exposition. The exposition is where you introduce your protagonist and set the scene. “A young cowboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the farm.” In the first line of the song, we meet the protagonist and learn about a basic characteristic that will lead to the central conflict of the story and ultimately to his demise. The short story doesn’t have room for wasted words. You need to start moving your story along from your first words. The second line gives us more character development (“A boy filled with wanderlust who really meant no harm”) and the action starts in the next line as he’s getting ready to go to town: “He changed his clothes and shined his shoes and combed his dark hair down.”
Protagonist engages the complication. The story shifts from exposition to rising action, Hart says, when the protagonist engages the complication, or the central conflict, of the story. That comes at the end of the first verse and in the chorus, when Billy Joe’s mother cries and begs him, “Don’t take your guns to town.”
Rising action. The story unfolds in the next two and a half verses, as Billy Joe laughs and falsely reassures his mother he can shoot “as quick and straight as anybody can.” Besides, he says, he wouldn’t shoot without a cause, he’d gun nobody down. Even in this 305-word story, Cash had room for foreshadowing. Billy Joe’s cause for trying to shoot someone turns out to be ridicule. But his promise is half-right: He won’t gun anyone down. The next verse has Billy Joe riding off, outwardly carefree (“a song upon his lips”). But as he reaches the cattle town and walks into a bar, we see that is a façade. He drinks his first strong liquor “to calm his shaking hand.”
Climax. Cash showed how you don’t need a lot of space to set up the climax of your story. He did it with 11 words: “A dusty cowpoke at his side began to laugh him down.” This shows the effective use of archetypes. We needed some description of Billy Joe at the beginning of the story. But we have no description of the mother, just her tears and her plea to Billy Joe, echoing throughout the story. The tears and the plea develop her character sufficiently. We don’t need description of her appearance or the background that leads to her fear for her son. The reader/listener understands the worried mother. Similarly, the reader/listener has seen the laughing dusty cowpoke stirring up trouble in lots of Western movies. Since the character is an archetype, we don’t need a full description of his jangling spurs and sinister mustache. We don’t need the dialogue of his ridicule, his inflammatory words. The reader/listener pictures the dusty cowpoke, hears the ridicule and feels Billy Joe’s anger rising. Then the climax itself takes just a few words. We knew it was coming from the mother’s first plea and from Billy Joe’s cavalier reassurance. No need to draw it out. “Filled with rage, Billy Joe reached for his gun to draw, but the stranger drew his gun and fired before he even saw.”
Denouement. This is where you draw your story quickly to a close following the climax. The crowd gathers around the dying youth and wonders at his final words: “Don’t take your guns to town, son. Leave your guns at home, Bill. Don’t take your guns to town.”
Conflict/Resolution. Ken Fuson, formerly of the Des Moines Register, says every story is basically a story of conflict and resolution. Cash shows how effectively you can establish the conflict and resolve it without using a multitude of words. The central conflict is between Billy Joe and his mother: her begging him not to take his guns to town, him reassuring her of his manhood. We have a secondary conflict, too, between Billy Joe and the dusty cowpoke. The conflicts are resolved together, when the dusty cowpoke outdraws Billy Joe and in his final words, Billy Joe recognizes too late that Mama was right.
Dialogue. Look at a story you’re having trouble cutting. How many quotes are you using? Don’t use quotes for information. Use them for dialogue. Sparse use of dialogue draws attention and adds power to the quotes you use. Look at Cash’s use of dialogue. He uses two quotes: Billy Joe’s reassurance and Mama’s plea, echoing through the song and finally in his dying breath.
Setting. In a short story, you don’t have as much space to develop each story element thoroughly. Character, plot, conflict and theme are the most important elements of this story and each is fully developed. Setting is less important here, but not neglected. We actually have four settings. One setting (“cattle town”) takes only two words to cover. Two take only a word (farm and bar). The fourth setting, the route from farm to cattle town, is only implied by motion. We see and hear Billy Joe riding along, singing, wearing his guns. The reader fills in the mesas and tumbleweeds and sagebrush without a word from the writer.
Hearing the notes that aren’t played. Playwright and screenwriter David Mamet wrote a thoughtful piece for the New York Times, Hearing the Notes that Aren’t Played, telling how a piano teacher told his wife not to play certain notes in a musical piece, saying the listener hears them anyway. The same principle, “We hear it anyway,” Mamet said, works in writing. The reader hears some of the notes we don’t play. The reader fills in the tumbleweeds and the jangling spurs and the dusty cowpoke’s cutting words, and they actually gain power by their absence. The reader becomes a more active participant in the story, filling in important details rather than becoming a passive sponge absorbing every scrap we can empty from our notebooks.
Scenes. The story unfolds in scenes, which don’t need to be long and do need to move the story along. This story has three scenes: Billy Joe and his mother at home on the farm, him getting ready to go to town, her begging him to leave the guns at home, him reassuring her; him riding off to and entering the cattle town; him in the bar, first drinking, then confronting the dusty cowpoke, then dying.
Action. Short as the song is, it bristles with action. Verbs give your story its sense of action. Check out the verbs in this song: grew, filled, meant, changed, shined, combed, cried, take, leave, laughed, kissed, said, shoot, gun (down), rode, walked, laid, drank, began, laugh, reached, drew, fired, gathered, wondered. Most are powerful words. They are loaded with action, emotion, violence. Every sentence revolves around active verbs. The only passive verbs in the song really give action to adjectival phrases, rather than weakening a sentence: filled with wanderlust, hung at his hips, filled with rage. When you’re finished with your story, print it out and circle the verbs. Read just the verbs in order. Are you using active verbs? How strong is the action in your story?
Repetition. Of course, a newspaper story can’t use a chorus to repeat a theme as frequently as Cash did in “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” But other forms of repetition can emphasize points or build momentum.
Another story structure. Storyteller David Weale of Prince Edward Island looks at story structure in a slightly different way from Hart. He sees six pillars of the story: the hook, the set-up, location, character, the pay-off, get out deftly. Again, you have all these pillars in the Johnny Cash song. You don’t need a lot of words to tell the story.
Other songs. Listen to some other songs that illustrate the craft of storytelling. “Harper Valley PTA” is a great meeting story. “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” is a court story. “Stewball” is a sports story. “Kentucky Rain” is a missing-person story. Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative journalist Tom French likes to use “Eleanor Rigby” as an example of narrative skills. Compare the characterizations of Eleanor and Father McKenzie with character development in some of your recent stories. Lennon and McCartney take no more than 38 words to develop either character, yet we see them both so clearly. Crime novelist Bruce DeSilva, recently retired from the Associated Press, uses “Love at the Five and Dime” and Dick Weiss uses “75 Septembers,” each of which spans a lifetime in a brief song. So do “Cat’s in the Cradle” and “In the Ghetto.” Listen to your favorite storytelling songs. Identify the techniques used and try to apply some of those techniques in your next story. (My list of storytelling songs reflects my age; please add some great new storytelling songs in the comments.)
Watch commercials. Television commercials are another effective short storytelling form. Instead of flipping channels during commercials, watch some commercials and analyze the storytelling techniques.
Adapt to your medium. Of course, newswriting is not the same thing as songwriting. You may need to use some attribution; the songwriter simply narrates. You can’t select just the interesting facts and details. You have some important facts that you need to get into the story. Journalism ethics require fairness, while many songs take sides. Don’t use the differences between songwriting and your medium as excuses to keep you from strong storytelling. Use them as challenges that will hone your skill as you overcome them to write the most engaging, memorable stories.
Read aloud. No one writes a song without singing it and listening to it to work out the pacing and the rhythm. Similarly, you need to hear your story as you write it and especially when you think you’re done. Read the whole story aloud, so you can hear the flow, the pace, the dialogue.
Rewrite. Too many reporters feel they need to perfect their lead before they can move on. They never get into the flow of the story because they keep interrupting that flow by looking for the perfect word. The fictional novelist William Forester has great advice for writers in the movie “Finding Forester”: “You write the first draft with your heart; you rewrite with your head.” Let that first draft flow without trying to make it perfect. Then go back and examine each passage, trimming the excess words and seeking the perfect words to make your story sing.
Great examples of short narrative (please add some links you like):
Roy Wenzl’s “mystery child” story
Brady Dennis’ After the sky fell
Resources to help make your stories sing:
Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools, the blog and the book
Roy Peter Clark’s Five Myths about Short Writing
Tim McGuire’s Tight Writing is Key
[…] Make Your Story Sing: Learn from songwriters how to tell stories in just a few words « The Buttry D… (tags: writing howto bestpractices music lyrics) […]
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Great article! I tried to think of some modern story songs, and the first that came to mind was “Brick” by Ben Folds Five (which also made spinner.com’s top ten list of crushingly sad songs).
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/brick-lyrics-ben-folds/07ee220659b6f4a548256de9002e3913
Less well known, but an awesome song, is Better Than Ezra’s “A Lifetime”:
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/a-lifetime-lyrics-better-than-ezra/b10bbfd79b4f8c7348256aa90012fbac
(Good heavens, does anyone tell *happy* stories in song?)
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[…] My own “Make your story sing“ […]
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[…] Make your story sing […]
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This is such a great piece, and I really appreciate that it’s based on Jack Hart’s advice. I will be referring back to this when I’m writing journalistic pieces, short stories, poems and songs. I’ll be passing it on to my songwriter friends, too. And (most importantly to me right now), I’ll be referring to this piece frequently this month while I teach a group of high school juniors about songwriting as an American tradition of storytelling. This is such a valuable resource for a very specific task, and I can’t thank you enough for it!
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[…] We will make the point that you can use story elements in long-form journalism, which still works online, and in short narrative. […]
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[…] Make Your Story Sing: Learn from songwriters how to tell stories in just a few words (stevebuttry.wordpress.com) […]
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[…] I discuss narrative writing in the homecoming and twins posts linked above as well as a post about writing short narrative. […]
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[…] Make Your Story Sing: Learn from songwriters how to tell stories in just a few words […]
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[…] Make Your Story Sing: Learn from songwriters how to tell stories in just a few words […]
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[…] Watch how quickly a good television commercial establishes a character or setting, or how quickly it resolves a conflict. Read my post on learning narrative techniques from songwriters. […]
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[…] Make Your Story Sing: Learn from songwriters how to tell stories in just a few words […]
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Thank you for sharing this thoughtful post. As I read I could hear songs with great narratives applied to your lesson on narrative and films which hit it out of the ball park in the first few scenes. Happy New Year 2016.:)
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[…] journalism ethics on my blog and evangelicals in politics for Poynter. Inspired by Roy, I’ve used music in my own writing workshops (but, unlike Roy, I don’t actually play or sing myself). And last month, when I was in town […]
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