When NPR’s Morning Edition set out to explain the intricacies of the federal budget last Monday, its story started the way a lot of budget stories do: with a number. A very big number: $2.13 trillion.
In every other respect, David Kestenbaum’s three minute package was quite unlike other budget stories I’ve read or, for that matter, written.
The story is an especially useful example for those of us who have worked mostly with words in print, and not just because we’re no good in math. Kestenbaum’s report shows that, when it comes to simplifying complicated stories, a sense of humor and theater can play a big role in keeping the listener/viewer/reader engaged. Production values, and presentation values, count for a lot.
Kestenbaum’s story contains no laundry list of government programs, no bureaucratic acronyms, no inside baseball about the budget process. Instead, it spotlights one pretty important dimension of this complicated story: just how big a trillion really is.
After government, one of the richest storehouses of complicated stories is the world of business. Let’s take Enron.
There are a lot of doors into this maze, but Slate.com seems to have opened one of the most interesting: Who blames whom for what? And they’ve addressed this question with the kind of journalistic innovation tailor-made for the web.
Have you played the ENRON Blame Game? – Click on some of the key players and see whom they blame for this tangled trainwreck of a story.
Why do these stories work? Why do so many other stories about the federal budget – or Enron — remain mired so deep in quicksand that the audience can only hope to escape before drowning?
I like NPR’s trillion dollar story because it enlightens me (how big is the federal budget, anyway?), it engages me(wouldn’t it be interesting if I actually had some idea how big one trillion is?) and it entertains me (how often can you say that about a story about the federal budget?)
Slate’s Blame Game works especially well on the web because it’s interactive. But involving visual journalists early enough in the process could result in similarly creative presentations in print as well.
The game is a painless, quirky way of learning about a story I know I should be informed about but have little visceral interest in.
Isn’t that the way with a lot of complicated stories? Readers know they should be interested. It’s just that they’re not. Unless the journalist figures out how to make them interested.
So how do you do that? How do you make complicated stories simple enough, engaging enough, that we ordinary viewers/listeners/readers can get interested in them? Think of your own audience. What’s the complicated story they would most appreciate having you simplify for them?
Once you’ve settled on the complicated story, you need a system that will help you generate sufficient curiosity, clarity and reliable, relevant information to simplify it.
Consider a three-step process: framing the idea, reporting the story, and producing and revising its presentation.
Framing the idea: Brainstorm questions
Since curiosity is the engine that drives readers through complex stories in search of something, let curiosity be your guide. What do you wonder about this story? How big is a trillion, anyway? Who does Enron blame for the mess it’s in?
Jacqui Banaszynski of the Seattle Times recommends a great starting point: a fast-paced brainstorming session with a handful of colleagues or, better yet, some people off the street.
One rule: Everything you say must end with a question mark. No statements. Just questions about this
complicated issue you’re wrestling with.
Banaszynski is a Pulitzer prize winning reporter who’s now an editor at the Seattle Times and a journalism teacher at the University of Missouri. Since she’s figured out how to do both of these things on a full-time basis every week – teaching classes in Columbia, Missouri and running a team of reporters in Seattle, Washington — I figure she’s got special credentials when it comes to complicated.
And guess what? It turns out her system really works. I tried her brainstorm idea a couple of ways for this story: on my own (18 questions in five minutes of fast typing) and with seven colleagues (25 questions scribbled on a chart-pad in seven minutes).
- Piques your interest.
- Piques audience interest.
- Involves significant stakes.
- Involves suspense or intrigue.
- Relates to what this story is really about.
These criteria will help you pick the most promising questions to answer on behalf of your audience. You can’t answer them all at once, of course, so you need a repertoire of stories you can pick from: a spot story for tonight, a profile for the weekend, a trend piece for next week. Here’s the list that Banaszynski picks from:
- Profile
- Explanatory
- Issue or Trend
- Investigative
- Narrative
- Descriptive/Day in the Life
Reporting the story: Focus on questions, story form
Remember you’re answering specific questions for your audience in a particular story form.
Without that kind of focus, reporting a complicated story can go on forever. That’s why the reporting does go on forever for some of us – or at least until a news director or editor calls a halt.
What graphics or other devices might help you simplify this story effectively? Report with those elements in mind.
Finally, remember that you need to keep narrowing your focus so that, by the end of your reporting, it’s clear to everybody what this story is really about.
That clarification is one of the most difficult tasks before you. You need all the help – and all the silence – you can get to achieve it. Anne Lamott has an interesting antidote to all the voices cluttering your head. You know the voices: “This sucks!” “Why didn’t you do the other story?”
Lamott includes this suggestion in the chapter titled Shitty First Drafts in her book, Bird by Bird. You can wait for your first draft to take her advice, but I think it applies just as well during the reporting stage.
Producing the story: Drafting and Revising
If a writer as accomplished as Anne Lamott can give herself a break with her first drafts, don’t you figure the rest of us are entitled, too?
So the first step is to relax and write the most interesting, relevant stuff you’ve got. You get a free pass, at this stage, on a couple of biggies: you have permission to oversimplify this complicated story you’re writing. And you have permission to leave the boring stuff ’til the end.
By the time you finish, you’ll need to make sure you haven’t oversimplified to the point of distortion, and you may need to find an interesting way to use some of the BBI (boring but important) material you’ve left at the bottom of your first draft. For now, write the most interesting story you can.
For both your first draft and revisions, consider these tips from Roy Peter Clark and Don Fry (and find more detail on each tip in their book, Coaching Writers)
- Slow Down the Pace of Information
- Introduce New Characters or Difficult Concepts One at a Time
- Recognize the Value of Repetition
- Don’t Clutter the tops of stories with Confusing Statistics, Technical Information or Bureaucratic Names
- Use Simple Sentences
- Remember that numbers can be numbing.
- Translate Jargon
- Look for the Human Side
- Let the Small Represent the Large
- Consider the Impact
- Eliminate Unnecessary Information.
Pay special attention to that suggestion about simple sentences. Columnist and writing coach Don Murray says it well: “The more complicated the subject, the more important it is to break the subject down into digestible bites, writing in short paragraphs, short sentences, and short words at the points of the greatest complexity when the meaning is too often lost.”
Before the story goes to your editor, read it out loud. Then invite a friend or colleague to give it a critical read. Here are some excerpts from a critical read I got on this story from Poynter colleague Chip Scanlan.
Chip put his finger on a problem that afflicts a lot of complicated stories: cramming in so much that digesting the important stuff gets tough. Here’s hoping this version goes down a bit more easily.
