The Real Story

In the age of technology, books and newspapers face stiff competition. Americans spend huge chunks of time watching television, surfing the Internet, gawking at You Tube and scrolling through Facebook. How can writers begin to compete?

By never forgetting that we’re storytellers, regardless of the medium we use. Whether we write TV scripts, web copy, blogs, Facebook postings, editorials, features, short stories or novels, it’s the underlying human story that hooks readers.

In an interview with “Rolling Stone” magazine, Don Hewitt, who recently stepped down after 36 years as the executive producer of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” explained the guiding principle of the show this way: “A producer came to me one day and said, ‘Why don’t we do a story about acid rain?’ I said, ‘Acid rain isn’t a story. It’s a subject. Tell me a story about somebody whose life was ruined by acid rain, or about a community trying to do something about acid rain, but don’t tell me about acid rain.’”

Hewitt said that most stories on “60 Minutes” rely on the dramatic structure common to all good stories: conflict, struggle and resolution. He called them, “little morality plays.”

It’s not the facts about the city council meeting, the teabag protests, a family’s deportation to Guatemala, the fictionalized account of a woman’s immigration from England to America that fascinate us. It’s the human story behind the facts. It’s the human emotion—told through specific details, descriptions, anecdotes, conversations and narratives—that pull us into a story.

Just like everyone else, I received an e-mail link a few weeks back to a You Tube video of a woman named Susan Boyle. She recently wowed judges on a show called “Britain’s Got Talent” and became an instant You Tube sensation hours after she belted out a song from “Les Miserables” that brought the house down. But why all the fuss?

It’s the human story behind her performance that’s taken the world by storm. Here was an unemployed, plain-looking, 47-year-old woman dressed in a party frock, who had never performed in front of a large audience, who turned a house of skeptics into true believers. She was sensational, yet humble—and she touched a chord in us all.

No matter what the medium or genre, as long as we never lose sight of the Susan Boyle stories and the “little morality plays” underneath the facts, opinions, events and plots, we’ll pull readers in and keep them hooked.

Yes, readers need to know who, what, when, where, why and how, but not to the exclusion of the story’s beating heart. An infusion of dramatic structure—conflict, character development, dialogue, struggle, anticipation, climax and resolution—can pump life-blood into fiction and nonfiction alike.

Not every story involves a life-and-death struggle against evil, like the recent rescue of the American sea captain held hostage by Somali pirates. But a simple story about a local group’s efforts to install a bicycle lane on a busy street might have a dramatic backstory. Maybe their efforts were set in motion by the tragic death of a beloved local teacher who was struck by a car while riding her bike on the street’s narrow shoulder. If the human toll is never revealed, readers may never understand the group’s passion, doggedness and eventual triumph. That’s the real story.

The human struggle is always the real story, no matter what the medium. Writers should plumb it for all it’s worth.