continued discussion with spring 2016 sfuadmediaandstorytelling class on narrative choices, via "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" + Storify

1. D E C I S I O N S , D E C I S I O N S
Narrative & Curation, Part 2

2. Paris Review Interview, the Art of Nonfiction
 INTERVIEWER
 Do you use notebooks when you are reporting?
 TALESE
 I don’t use notebooks. I use shirt boards.
 INTERVIEWER
 You mean the cardboard from dry-cleaned shirts?
 TALESE
 Exactly. I cut the shirt board into four parts and I cut the corners into round edges,
so that they can fit in my pocket. I also use full shirt boards when I’m writing my
outlines. I’ve been doing this since the fifties.

3. Frank Sinatra Has a Cold: Lede
 FRANK SINATRA, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand
and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar
between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for
him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent
during much of the evening, except now in this private club in
Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out
through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room
beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled
around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the
clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo.
The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who
stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation
upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood
that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of
November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.

4. Nutgraf?
 Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari
without fuel -- only worse. For the common cold robs
Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting
into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only
his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of
psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people
who work for him, drink with him, love him, depend
on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra
with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations
through the entertainment industry and beyond as
surely as a President of the United States, suddenly
sick, can shake the national economy.

5. Structure/spine
 FRANK SINATRA, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a
cigarette in the other…
 But now, standing at this bar in Beverly Hills, Sinatra had a cold,
and he continued to drink quietly…
 The two blondes, who seemed to be in their middle thirties, were
preened and polished, their matured bodies
 I had seen something of this Sicilian side of Sinatra last
summer at Jilly's saloon in New York, which was the only
other time I'd gotten a close view of him prior to this night
in this California club
 NOW SINATRA SAID A FEW words to the blondes. Then he turned
from the bar and began to walk toward the poolroom. One of
Sinatra's other men friends moved in to keep the girls company.
Brad Dexter, who had been standing in the corner talking to some
other people, now followed Sinatra.

6. FSHAC
 Sinatra/Ellison exchange
 ON THE FOLLOWING Monday, a cloudy and unseasonably cool
California day, more than one hundred people gathered inside a
white television studio, an enormous room dominated by a white
stage, white walls, and with dozens of lights and lamps dangling: it
rather resembled a gigantic operating room. In this room, within an
hour or so, NBC was scheduled to begin taping a one-hour show
that would be televised in color on the night of November 24 and
would highlight, as much as it could in the limited time, the twenty-
five-year career of Frank Sinatra as a public entertainer.
 What you got there," Sinatra said, nodding to the singing image of
himself on the television screen, "is a man with a cold." Then he left
the control booth, ordering that the whole day's performance be
scrubbed and future taping postponed until he had recovered.

7. FSHAC
 The CBS show, narrated by Walter Cronkite, began at ten p.m. A minute
before that, the Sinatra family, having finished dinner, turned their chairs
around and faced the camera, united for whatever disaster might follow.
 THE NEXT DAY, STANDING in the corridor of the NBC building where he
was about to resume taping his show, Sinatra was discussing the CBS show
with several of his friends, and he said, "Oh, it was a gas.”
 BY FOUR A.M. FRANK SINATRA led the group out of The Sahara, some of
them carrying their glasses of whisky with them, sipping it along the
sidewalk and in the cars; then, returning to The Sands, they walked into the
gambling casino. It was still packed with people, the roulette wheels
spinning, the crapshooters screaming in the far corner.
 THIS WAS HIS SECOND night in Las Vegas, and Frank Sinatra sat with
friends in The Sands' dining room until nearly eight a.m. He slept through
much of the day, then flew back to Los Angeles, and on the following
morning he was driving his little golf cart through the Paramount Pictures
movie lot.

8. FSHAC
 Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red.
Pedestrians passed quickly across his windshield but, as
usual, one did not. It was a girl in her twenties. She
remained at the curb staring at him. Through the corner
of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it
happens almost every day, that she was thinking, It looks
like him, but is it?
 Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward
her, looked directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction
he knew would come. It came and he smiled. She smiled
and he was gone.

9. Storytelling lexicon (TTS, p. 235)
 Anecdote
 Flashback
 Flash forward
 Foreshadowing
 Full circle ending
 Full dialogue (real time speech)
 Half dialogue

10. Creating an arc
 In media res
 Internal monologue: considered a new and
uncomfortable technique when new journalists such
as Talese introduced it
 Kicker quote (quote at the end of a paragraph)
 Key details: if an object is a focus, it must serve a
purpose
 vignettes

11. Sense of place (TTS)
 Collective details: elements that create a sense of a
group of people or objects vs. individuals
 Establishing shots: general sense of scene before
going into detail
 Figurative language (metaphors, personifications)
 Contrasting textures: people/places in conflict
 Thematic details: details that enhance a large
point/idea in the story

12. Characterization and POV (TTS, p. 238)
 Characterization: direct, indirect, complication,
exposition, main or mini arcs
 POV: how the story is being approached, the choice
of person in which it’s told, the diction of the piece,
the stance of the writer and distance;
Distance: close: the reader is in the character’s head;
middle: backs away a bit, is a close observer; remote:
the reader sees what anyone could see from that
vantage point

13. Structure
 As discussed in every other CNF class:
 Chronological
 By order of importance
 Driven by the introduction of characters
 Segmented or ordered by typographical devices (see
TTS, p. 239, also Storify)
 Constructed by scenes (think play structure)
 Unifying structure: held together by unifying
elements

14. Narrative + Interactivity
 The Displaced
 Downloads of the Times VR application on the
weekend of the film’s debut broke all records for
Times apps, and many viewers commented that they
understood the refugee crisis differently after
viewing the film, Pirog says. “A lot of parents,
especially, drew parallels between what was
happening to these kids, and their own. You could
see how bright they are, and how limited their
opportunities are going to be.”

15. Deciding how to tell a story
“We wanted to show that this technology could be used
to tell a story that I believe nobody would deny is the
most important story in the world right now. I think if
you tell a lighter story, particularly for your inaugural
effort for a brand new technology like this, the danger
is it just looks kind of like a gimmick. We already had a
sense for what virtual reality could do, immerse you in
worlds not your own. We wanted to skip past the
testing out the technology phase and actually use it to
tell an important story.” — NYT Magazine Editor Jake
Silverstein

16. Audience Considerations
You’ve said that you think about writing as putting on a
show for the reader, and obviously VR is an actual
show. How much did that play in wanting to use it for
“The Displaced”?
I do think of writing as putting on a little private show for an
audience of one. But I also just think magazine making is
putting on a show, and in this case, the VR was obviously a big
part of that. I think a lot about the audience, about the reader,
what they’re going to experience, when we should be asking a lot
from them, and when we shouldn’t, when we should be making
things easier on them and when we should be making things
more challenging. —Nieman Storyboard Interview with
Jake Silverstein

17. Storytelling Driven by Empathy?
 Other examples include an interactive storytelling
project focused on the killing of Michael Brown,
which includes witness testimony.
 Storyboard Methodology: How can this be used for
your own plotting out of stories:
 Character sketches
 Location scouting
 Capturing of important dialogue and narrative
moments

18. Storify curation
 What is the focus of this piece, not just the topic, but
the focus? This includes considering its purpose
(news? idea? list? etc)
 How is it arranged narratively? This also includes the
relationship between narrative and multimedia
elements.
 How would you describe the narrative voice of the
piece? Does it have one and did the curator use text
to create a sense of transition between elements?
 How would you characterize the curatorial choices
made? What suggestions or questions do you have?

19. Next steps
 Make revisions based on feedback.
 Clean up grammar and spelling mistakes (if
necessary, copy the text into a word doc and spell
check)
 I did not realize the storify embed doesn’t work on
wordpress hosted blogs (versus personally hosted
blogs), so just use hyperlinking for your piece.
 Coming up