Narrative journalism can present readers with a really highly effective and rewarding expertise. As a substitute of cut-and-dry details and figures, this type of writing focuses on growing wealthy characters and telling a narrative whereas explaining or analyzing a fancy problem.
However writing a story piece — particularly your first one — could be intimidating. These articles are terribly time-consuming, require a giant mental and emotional dedication, and should contain prices editors aren’t keen to cowl. The expertise and completed product, nonetheless, could be effectively value it.
Final month, I hosted a webinar on breaking into narrative journalism with panelists Jane C. Hu, a contract author based mostly in Seattle; Brady Huggett, the enterprise editor at Spectrum; and Pamela Weintraub, the senior editor for science and psychology at Aeon and the co-editor in chief at OpenMind journal.
Hu shared her expertise researching, pitching and getting funding for these character-rich, sophisticated tales. Huggett and Weintraub talked in regards to the laborious work that goes into enhancing them. All three gave useful recommendation to freelancers.
You can too hearken to the recorded webinar, which is able to take you about an hour, or much less for those who go into settings and alter the pace from “regular” to 1.25. (That’s what I all the time do.)
Listed below are among the foremost takeaways from the webinar:
What’s narrative journalism?
- It tells a narrative.
- It goes deep on a selected particular person or place.
- It has a dramatic arc, similar to a piece of fiction.
Is there a minimal size for efficient narrative fiction?
- These articles sometimes are a minimal of two,500 phrases.
How lengthy does it take from acceptance of the pitch to publication?
- It might probably take a number of months to so long as a yr, and even longer.
- Writers ought to anticipate to submit a number of drafts and undergo an intensive enhancing course of.
Does it pay effectively and are bills coated?
- Many publications both have small budgets or none in any respect for journey.
- Publications sometimes received’t pay greater than their normal freelance price.
- Freelancers will most likely want to hunt out a grant or fellowship to complement the payment and to cowl journey prices.
- Freelancers might want to produce other, shorter initiatives going on the similar time to herald earnings.
What’s the marketplace for narrative journalism?
- Many publications and editors wish to run narrative articles.
- Many might publish only some per yr as a result of these tales require heavy enhancing and, if they’re lengthy, might pressure the freelance finances.
How ought to freelancers pitch a story article?
- Freelancers can ship an editor a brief pre-pitch of 1 or two paragraphs to gauge curiosity.
- Pitches for long-form narrative articles should be extra detailed than a pitch for a simple characteristic story and may very well be two or three pages lengthy.
- Freelancers ought to severely contemplate conducting a number of interviews and substantial analysis only for the pitch, particularly if the author has no earlier relationship with the editor or is new to narrative journalism.
- Be sure that the principle character has agreed to take part within the story earlier than pitching. Many topics are fairly keen to be interviewed even earlier than the author has a agency task, particularly somebody whose story has not been instructed.
- The writing of the pitch ought to “sing” and show to the editor that this freelancer is able to writing compelling characters, sketching vivid scenes and setting a story arc. Think about together with within the pitch a lead that units the story up and a nut graph.
Assets:
New grant accessible
I additionally wish to level out a reasonably new grant, the Kari Howard Fund for Narrative Journalism. Kari Howard was an award-winning editor on the Los Angeles Occasions for almost 25 years, the editor of the Nieman Basis’s narrative website, Storyboard, and the storytelling editor at Reuters Information. She died final yr at 59.
The Worldwide Girls’s Media Basis, which runs the fund, said that Howard “championed the form of writing that issues itself with small moments: Of resiliency, dignity, absurdity, gut-busting humor or heartbreak. The sort that makes you are feeling as if you simply met somebody — {that a} life exterior your individual is actual.”
Grants will probably be a most of $5,000. Candidates could also be print journalists or print journalists main a multimedia workforce. Tasks reported and printed in English anyplace on the planet are eligible. All reporting and publishing should be accomplished inside six months of the award of the grant.
