J243 Advanced Narrative Writing

Advanced Narrative Writing is primarily for 2nd year students. 1st year students I would urge to take Introduction to Reported Narrative Writing unless you’ve had some experience writing larger narrative stories. People outside the J-School I will usually not have room for, but if you’re interested, contact me in advance to be put on a waiting list.

This course is based on the belief that the best way to hold a reader’s attention for more than a few paragraphs is through the art of storytelling. If you want your reader to stay with you for a newspaper feature story, a magazine article, or a “long reads” piece on a website, you have to learn what good storytellers have been doing for thousands of years to make people sit up and pay attention. As a reader, you know the difference between writing that makes you eagerly turn the page and writing that makes your eyes glaze over. We’re going to work on writing the first and not the second. This course will be of particular interest to students who want to write for magazines, although well-crafted narrative stories are increasingly valued by good newspapers and websites as well. And an ability to write strong narrative is the foundation of effective work in every other journalistic medium, from radio to TV to film. Think of it this way: your ultimate ambition may be to play the violin or the clarinet, but you’ll have an enormous head start if you’ve already mastered the piano.