Feature writing combines the literary craft of fiction with the fact-gathering and storytelling skills of the journalist, historian, and documentary filmmaker. These true stories can be both timely and timeless; the narrative becomes a vehicle for something more expansive—some bigger truth, insight, or meaning. Like literary fiction and creative nonfiction, great features have many layers and truths. These stories must also be factual, written with the highest level of journalistic accuracy.
This workshop will focus on the reconstructed narrative—a story with a main character who struggles through an ordeal and arrives at some resolution or insight. In other words: It has a narrative arc. You will learn the publishing process from pitch to publication, with emphasis and practical exercises on immersion reporting, interviewing, story structure, editing, and fact-checking. You also learn organizational techniques essential for stories with many sources, and tools that enable you to reconstruct scenes that you cannot witness as a writer.
This curriculum is designed for newspaper, online, magazine and book writers who already have some experience with the fundamentals of writing features—interviewing, reporting, gathering primary sources. If you already have some ambitious story idea for a long reported narrative, this workshop is for you. You’ll sharpen your immersion reporting tools by writing observed scenes (those you can witness in person). You’ll also learn how to report and write cinematic reconstructed scenes (those you cannot witness) through narrative interviewing, Google Earth, timelines, documents, video and audio recordings, and other primary sources. You will also learn different approaches for organizing your research and developing a narrative story structure.
https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/events/feature-writing-the-reconstructed-narrative
Also check out other Arts events in Archer City, Literary Art events in Archer City, Workshops in Archer City.
