thoughtsignals

Greg Lindsay interviewed four magazine writers about the nuts and bolts of organizing and writing long stories. I very, very rarely write at the lengths he’s concerned with, but when I have I’ve always struggled with the process of organizing all that material.

Every journalist working above the metaphorical tree line of 2,500 words or so — where it’s hard to catch your breath and where telling the story demands scenes, dialogue, judicious compression, and philosophical expansiveness — must inevitably cross the chasm positioned squarely between reporting and writing. This is the point where everything that has been seen, heard, taped, and scrawled into notebooks must be reloaded into memory, weeks — even months — after the moments in question… and this critical point in the process is almost never discussed among journalists.

One tip I’m surprised wasn’t here: Write as you report — snippets of the story, different potential ledes, etc.

Link.