The beginning reporter, exercising’ caution, can learn something about “story” from fiction. News stories and works of fiction differ, of course. News consists only of actual persons and events, with nothing invented, whereas fiction consists of imagined characters and scenes. The reporter’s goals, too, usually differ from the fiction writers. Most news stories are designed to inform or explain, whereas fiction is written to entertain, evoke emotion, or stimulate thought.
But the essential elements of the “story” are the same: people and action. Journalists can use the analogy to fiction as long as they remember that the people they deal with are real and the actions they report are only those that could be proved in court.
Teachers of fiction define story as struggle. Call it conflict or merely action; the important thing is that something must happen. ‘Without action, we have no story’.
The simplest fiction plot involves one central character struggling to solve one basic problem. As the action (story) progresses, the character encounters obstacles which require further action. In a good plot, the protagonist may move two steps backward for each step forward. At any rate, he or she keeps moving, struggling against obstacles or opposing forces. Struggle is the essence, and the story ends when the protagonist wins, loses, or quits. The reader is interested as much in the struggle itself as in its outcome.
In fiction or drama, the conflict may be either internal or external. The central character may struggle against a personal foe, against the forces of nature, against society or some segment of it, or against his own selfish impulses. In sophisticated fiction, the opposing force is seldom personified. It is only a situation, with no heroes or villains, against which a fallible human being struggles. This is the brand of fiction that most closely resembles reality.
Fiction stories must include motivation and sequel-causes and effects. So should news stories. But perhaps the most important thing that reporters can learn from fiction is that all stories involve people individually or in groups-in action. Events never happen in a vacuum. People are always involved in them, and- except for natural disasters-people usually cause them. The struggle may be anything but dramatic, the obstacles not even obvious, but struggles and obstacles are present in news as in fiction.
In its totality, news is the daily chronicle of mankind-people talking, arguing, fighting, trading, planning, building and destroying, winning and losing, making love and making war. It is the story of individuals and nations, humanity and inhumanity; and any definition that omits the human element misses the point entirely. All news concerns human beings. Even when a story is primarily about natural phenomena- storms, eclipses, droughts, floods, or earthquakes-we write about their effects on people or how people view them. We are human beings writing about human beings for human beings.
From all this, we can derive three rules for the beginning writer:
- Put proper names into your story-names of individuals and organizations.
- Use strong verbs-as strong as the action justifies.
- Write mostly in the active voice, which stresses the actor. Most events don’t just happen; people cause them.
Avoid Overdramatizing Before you charge off in a cloud of purple prose, bent on turning every story into a drama, a word of caution. No story is more than an abstraction from reality. It is never life itself. Until it is written, it isn’t even a story. It is merely an event, an idea, or a set of circumstances that becomes a story only through the reporter’s perception and skill. And ethical reporters must always ask themselves whether they are seeing the “story” clearly and coolly or whether they are exaggerating the conflict and overdramatizing. Journalism has no place for the editor who “never lets facts stand in the way of a good story.”
Life, unlike fiction, is seldom melodramatic. It has few clearly defined heroes or villains, and even those can’t be labeled as such. They can be characterized only through fair, objective reporting of their deeds and words. The “villain” in real life is seldom an individual or even an identifiable group. More often it is a situation that has developed over such a long period that the early causative factors-and the persons responsible for them- have been long forgotten. Society itself-the circumstances under which it exists, its customs, and its restrictions-is at the root of many evils. Thus the reporters who look for a specific culprit usually are either wasting their time or distorting reality. Nor should the reporter seek out controversy. Like violence, controversy usually will make itself known. It is true without conflict no story exists. But conflict doesn’t necessarily imply either violence or controversy. For example, a scientist searching for a cure to cancer is engaged in a conflict-against the forces of nature and the frustration of failures. This is by no means a controversy. Even when a controversy exists, the reporter must take pains to avoid portraying a simple difference of opinion as a confrontation.
Other Storytelling Limitations As tellers of stories, journalists have several limitations. They have neither the time nor the space to develop a story as thoroughly and “realistically” as the fiction writer. Much of the minor action and physical description the fiction writer uses to make a scene vivid must be omitted as unimportant; the reader of news is more interested in the outcome than in the events leading up to it. Therefore, reporters seldom tell the story chronologically. Instead of keeping the audience in suspense, they begin where fiction writers would end-with the climactic action and its net effect.
Nor do journalists have the fiction writer’s freedom of expression. They can’t comment on the action or enter the characters’ minds. They write only what is said or done, not what a person thinks or feels, which means that they often must present action without fully explaining its motivation.
In fiction, the story usually ends when the protagonist wins, loses, or quits. In news, it’s not that easy. First, we have no protagonist in the fiction sense, because reporters don’t take sides. Second there are few winners and few losers (except in the sports report), and sometimes you can’t tell one fm the other.
Further, the action refuses to stop at a convenient place. Some human struggles seem to continue without end, and the only way journalists can approach the fiction writer’s “satisfactory ending” is by quitting when they have presented all the facts available at the moment.
