Writing Tools

I had lunch the other day with Tom French and Kelley Benham, one of America's great power writing couples. (I predict their love child will become the next Flannery O'Connor.) Conversation turned to Tom's current project: reporting and writing a series of stories on an important zoo in Tampa. The story will run over several days, yet how many is still to be determined.

Fresh Nap and sweetener story board.

To describe the organization of Day One, Tom reached across the lunch table and grabbed three packets of "Fresh Naps," a brand of moist towelette, and two pink packs of sweetener. He spread them across the table in this color pattern: WHITE PINK WHITE PINK WHITE. Each packet represented an imagined section of the story -- the white ones a main narrative string, the pink ones a developing subplot. As we talked about the story, Tom moved the pieces like a Three-Card Monte dealer, describing some possible connections and transitions. Tom returned the packets to their places, but I confiscated them. Never miss a chance to claim a writing tool. Who knows? Maybe they'll wind up in a journalism museum at Indiana University, along with Ernie Pyle's typewriter.

Gay Talese's story blueprint for his profile of Frank Sinatra.

Coincidentally, Tom had an occasion this summer to meet Gay Talese, whose story "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" was selected as "the greatest story ever told" in Esquire magazine. This honor was accompanied by a reprint of the story, along with an instructive hand-written outline created by Talese to sketch the structure for his profile of Old Blue Eyes.

The outline looks like Tom's five packets, except that it is richly annotated. Talese creates six boxes, each describing a key scene in the story:

Scene I: The Daisy Discotheque
Scene II: NBC Studio Rehearsal
Scene III: NBC Show
Scene IV: The Fight, Las Vegas
Scene V: LA filming of "Assault on a Queen"
Scene VI: Recording Session

I wish I had seen this story blueprint before I began writing my AIDS series, "Three Little Words."  It would have made the organization of the 29 parts more efficient and effective. At the time, I stumbled upon a strategy that looked like this: I read through my volumes of notes, and any time I found a scene, "Mick meets Jane in the hospital," I'd record it with a cross-reference onto a 3x5 index card. By the end, I had about 125 scene cards, and these became the basic elements of a 29-part narrative. Like Tom, I was wheelin' and dealin'.

Hand-written chart to help Superman writers and articles keep track of their storyline.

In a cool book titled "The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics," author Dennis O'Neill includes the image of a hand-written chart created by Mike Carlin to help "the Superman writers and artists ... keep track of plots and subplots during the death of Superman storyline."

So there you have it, the secret tools of creating an architecture for your story. Five packets. Six boxes. One hundred twenty-five index cards. Wall chart. Each serves as a kind of "story board" to determine what goes first and what comes next.

Here's an assignment for you. If you are having trouble organizing your stories, use the five packet paradigm. Before you sit down to draft your story or write your lead, go get yourself a cup of coffee.  Grab a handful of sugar packets. Spread them out on a table. Begin to imagine the big parts of your story. Report back to me on whether it works. Good luck.