About to embark on my first 100/120-inch serial...any suggestions?

Think about it like a movie - you want an Act I, an Act II and an Act III if this truly is a narrative. You want plot points along the way. You want an "inciting incident."

Franklin's book is a good one. So is the "New New Journalists." So is the Neiman book "Telling True Stories." You can also pick up the Pulitzer Prize's feature winners anthology. Tom French is in there, Jon Franklin, Ron Suskind, etc., etc., and all at their best.

You may also want to pick up a book on screenwriting. You can apply the same principles.

People are subconsciously adjusted to the pace of film screenwriting and story telling. Take advantage of that.

I love this kind of storytelling, to the point that it's all that I'm really interested in any more, which is why it'll probably be bye-bye newspapers for a while.

Don't listen to people telling you that stories shouldn't be 100-120 inches. That's crap. Narratives take longer because they have to unfold through scenes, etc., etc.

 

Can't stress this enough: Make it personal.

Tell people's stories. Maybe consider looking at it from another player's/coach's/administrator's/paren'ts opponent's viewpoint in each part of the series.

What sustains a major piece is if the reader becomes invested in someone else.

 

Probably a lot.

This is the attitude in our business that kills a lot of creativity before it can even bloom.

"That CAN'T be worth that much space."

It is if it's interesting. Most Pulitzer Prize features are about nobody men or children on the street who represented something bigger.

Perhaps Utah Valley State works as a great prism on what it takes for a school to move up to Division I, something several schools a year try to do.

 

UVSC is trying to be the first school to go from the juco ranks to D-I. Also included were the prospects of landing in a conference, chances of football starting up, profile of long-time athletic director, and a sidebar about athletics from the perspective of a few coaches.

The men's b-ball coach is Dick Hunsaker, who took over for Majerus at Utah for a year on an interim basis while he took a leave of absence.

Also it did not run in the regular sports section, but a community weekly that is distributed with the paper.

 

So you can also prepare to write some NCAA investigation stories in the near future, as well. Nice.

 

Here's the short list:

Raw eggs, .32 caliber automatic with high-powered scope, a baby's arm holding an apple, a fine-tooth comb dipped in expensive olive oil, and, I cannot stress this enough, five minutes of feeverish masturbation every two hours.