Lars Anderson's SI piece on Tuscaloosa

Because the surprise ending has been revealed, I'll throw this out there with more specifics. What about starting the story with a small portion about Tinker/Harrison and transitioning to Hoffman/her boyfriend? Then, with every break, you could tell a little bit more of their stories. Finally, you get to the end, show her dead and Hoffman alive -- the tragic, and uncertain, nature of tornadoes. One house will be destroyed, one house across the street untouched.

 

It's a tragic story. Why not just tell it instead of screwing with the readers head. Not a story where the reader needs to be entertained by the artsiness of how story was crafted.

 

I've seen writers use this method, and it often makes the story flow poorly.

On another note, I think everyone should keep in mind that this story wasn't that long. It's not like you had to read 5,000 words before you got from the first section to the end. This was a one-sitting story for most readers, I'd imagine.

In any case, I'm all for use of literary narrative techniques in long-form journalism. And I really think this attempt worked well. I loved that transition from hopelessness to "How do you tell the story of the deadliest tornado in the history of Alabama?" I agree that discussing his own class seemed unnecessary, though I liked the perspective of imagining the author sitting on his Birmingham porch, watching as the tornado's ripped through Tuscaloosa. I can see the pros and cons of that half-section of the story. The rest, in my opinion, was excellent.

 

That story struck a little closer to home for me than usual, I guess. Two weeks previous, Lars brought his students into the media center at Talladega and I happened to have a passing conversation with them while they stood off to the side.

No more than six hours later, I was on the second floor of the Jameson Inn in Sylacauga, watching the Birmingham TV stations showing multiple live tornado touchdowns to the west and south and listening to the tornado sirens going off in town. I've been through several hurricanes and the Loma Prieta earthquake, but that was my first taste of a tornado warning -- and I was certain that the hotel tub was not a survivable option, but didn't have a decent alternative in mind.

The next day, that system tore through my old neighborhood in Raleigh, destroying several homes no more than two blocks from the house I had owned.

Two weeks later, the storm that hit Tuscaloosa and Ringgold was pretty much on a direct line for Helen and my cabin, but passed to the north by no more than four or five miles, damaging as many as 100 houses on Lake Burton instead.

Just one of those "there but for the grace of God I go" moments.

 

I loved the way it was written. I, too, was beyond shocked the girl died. Anderson did a tremendous job with the piece.

I had no issues with him declaring her death at the end.

 

This wasn't a story about Tinker/Harrison. It was a story about Tuscaloosa and tragedy. Leading and ending with Tinker/Harrison was terrific, and it made a very good story into a great one.

For those of you who disagree with the structure, there's probably no way to convince you that, as I believe, this way was right. It wouldn't have worked in most newspaper stories, but the idea that the drama has to be revealed at the top is ludicrous and outdated. Long-form writing plays by different rules, and that's a good thing. Done properly, long-form pieces are like movies, and this piece was like that. Would The Departed have been better if we knew at the beginning what happens in the elevator? Would Shawshank have been better if we knew at the beginning that Andy escaped and went to Mexico?

As I've said, I loved the structure that Anderson used. It started on a micro scale, zoomed out to macro to tell us the bigger story and to weave in additional characters and their drama. And then, when we understand how devastating the tornado was and have a grasp of the town, it intensifies the drama at the end when we learn that the young lady was killed. I was stunned to read that, and that's a punch to the reader that you won't get if you write everything at the beginning.

 

Grant was established relatively early in the piece, like on the second page of the magazine story or so. I do remember he was established.

 

In the second portion of the story, which leads "How do you tell ...": "'If it hits us,' says Anthony Grant, the Crimson Tide men's basketball coach, 'this place would have been shut down for several years. Who knows? Maybe longer.' "
In the second paragraph of the Kayla Hoffman segment: "Around 4 p.m. she jogged around campus with her boyfriend of three years, Michael Hughes, a decathlete on the Alabama track team."

 

Am sure Anderson would love to know your input on an otherwise stunning story.

 

It was a well told story. However, there was one big mistake. This part...

Not knowing where to go, Arenas then walked to a mall, which seemed to be untouched. He sat on a curb for nearly an hour, trying to process what he had just seen. What he didn't know—but would learn later—was that three bodies lay on the mall's roof, thrown there by the storm.

There were no bodies found on the roof of the mall. It was one of several rumors that started. Just like the one where there were 40 bodies in Forest Lake. No bodies there either.

A simple phone call could have avoided this error.

 

You say this because we're emailing this to Anderson in a few days, right?

 

Anderson had a fact issue with his Newton story also. He wrote that Newton was the only JUCO transfer to win a Heisman.