Chapter 157: In the Beginning

The best thing that was supposed to happen to me early in my career was, if not a disaster, then certainly close. I was hired at a small daily newspaper in New Jersey to report on several towns. I did not enjoy covering night meetings and schmoozing with pols but I loved writing feature stories. I was good enough for my boss to gift me what seemed like a dream job: writing features full time.

A year later she sat me down and told me that my run was over. I was being reassigned to the courthouse beat. I was devastated. I knew I was flailing because my shortcomings were there for all to see, or rather not see: the absence of my byline in the paper. Publish, or perish. Or in my case, start covering trials.

The new assignment made me a journalist. But I remained haunted by what had gone wrong with an assignment so filled with promise. 

In the end it was not about the writing or reporting. 

It was about the ideas. 

Or rather, their absence.

I did not know how to find stories. It was one thing to pick up on an event taking place in one of my towns and spin a feature out of it. Journalism’s default mode: working off the news, no matter how mundane the event. But when it came to generating ideas of my own I was lost. 

I’d scan the local weeklies to see if anything popped out. I thought maybe I should think big and spent far too long on what I envisioned as a series on chiropractors. I wince at the memory. Another editor threw me a bone – an otherwise meh story that he thought I could use because he hadn’t seen anything from me.

In time I got better at this, even if the ideas did not always sit well with my editors: I wondered, for example, who worked the overnight shift at the donut shop in one of my towns on my second job in the Chicago suburbs. 

My editor did not like the story I wrote – maybe you’d be happier working someplace else - but the piece did help me see that my curiosity, cockeyed though it was, could be a place to start my search for stories.

I tell my students that the wonderful thing about stories not connected to the news is that they represent journalism that exists only because an idea occurred to them. Heady as that thought is, many find it as intimidating as I did when I was young.  Over the years I’ve tried different ways of prompting ideas, drawn from my own struggles: for instance, I have them come to class  not with story ideas but with questions that emerged from spending time in the neighborhoods they covered. I recall one in particular: Why is that old house on a block filled with apartment buildings still occupied? Who lives there? Who built it? 

But many still struggle, and the more they do the harder it gets – metaphorically spinning their wheels on a muddy road – especially when they’re convinced that their classmates, and later, their colleagues, have so many great ideas they could auction them on eBay. 

There are journalists who do have a lot of ideas and journalists who are just as creative but who need to work an idea over before it takes shape. So too are there ideas that seem promising but fizzle and other ideas that at first seem to hold little promise only to blossom into something exciting upon further reflection and reporting.

There are any number of tips for finding story ideas, and if you don’t believe me Google finding story ideas. Those tips are useful, but only up to a point in that they do not capture the very different ways people think, see and absorb what is around them and then transform those impressions into stories.

I know writers who see stories in conversational asides and others who, while quick to dismiss an idea as not quite right nonetheless see in that idea the germ of something altogether different and exciting for them. 

Ideas can be universally understandable – the profile of the last speaker of a lost language, say – and deeply personal: the story of someone whose life speaks to that writer, whose challenge comes in making everyone care as much as she or he does.

We are drawn to stories because they speak to us in ways that, if not always apparent, help do nothing less than order the universe.
We are also drawn to stories that are just flat out fun – a quick thrill, before we move onto something else.

But in the end, there remains the question of how to find them, and what to do once we think we have. I put the question to several writers I know: three are journalists and one is a novelist.

What struck me was how differently they approached this core part of their work. I’ve broken their responses into what I think of as the phases of story discovery: the hunt; the verdict; the assessment; and the shape of what’s to come. 

First, the hunt: The worst way to come up with ideas is to stare at your blank computer screen and attempt to summon up potential stories. Don’t try to devise ideas in a vacuum. Be proactive. Do some research. Scan the websites for newspapers, magazines, and news sites. Ask friends who are journalists.

It was a lot tougher coming up with ideas when I started in journalism in the pre-internet days. Accessing numerous newspapers and magazines from around the country was a chore. Today it’s easy. Miles Corwin, author and professor

Then the verdict: “When it comes to ideas, I think of something a mentor once said when I discussed an idea with him: "That's a subject, not a story." At least for me, even the most interesting idea has to come with a story -- a narrative -- or it's likely to be too boring to write (and read). – Jeffrey Toobin, author

Next the assessment: In arts journalism, there are two major kinds of ideas: one, ideas for stories; and two, ideas within stories. When I'm writing criticism, I need to tease out the ideas contained in whatever I'm writing about -- the concepts, themes, motifs, principles, and values that inform the work from within. To find them, I need to think analytically about the work, and that can be laborious. The best method for me is to walk away from the work and go to a place with minimal distractions: no phone, no internet. It helps me to take a walk or go for a bike ride along the river. Oxygenate the blood stream, and think systematically, considering every aspect of the work carefully, one piece at a time. Doing that tends to work for me, and when it doesn't, at least I got a little exercise. - David Hajdu, author and professor

And finally, the shape of what’s to come:At the macro level, sometimes, when I’m doing historical research, I’ll stumble across a ready-made “found story,” where I could see the novelistic arc all at once—big historical sweeps (my first two novels). But then the question is, what is the form that I will use to tell the story?

And then, close up, at the micro-level, I’ll often get an idea for a specific scene when I’m not specifically looking for it—when I’m out walking, for example, or ...at the gym—it’s the ‘in the shower’ concept, where your brain is off-line (this is one reason I don’t bring my phone with me to the gym) and your mind can wander, and all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, your mind just kind of presents you with an idea (but usually, I’ve found, only after you’ve immersed yourself in a lot of material, only when your unconscious has a deep well to draw on).

Recently I read a piece by Annie Ernaux in the New Yorker, ‘On Cancer and Desire,’ about her affair with a man while she was going through chemo. She says she wasn’t able to write about her cancer until she found the right structure: she began to describe the photographs that she and her lover took, post-tryst, of the spaces they were in. Clothes strewn down the hallway, objects knocked off a desk in the study, etc. She says, “It was only when I started writing about these photos that I was able to do so [write about her cancer], as if writing about the photos authorized me to write about the cancer.” And then she says: “I expect life to bring me not subjects but unknown structures for writing.” Which I thought was so interesting, and true, I’d just never heard anyone put it that way before. She’s talking about form, which, for me, is the thing you need to find first before you can begin to tell your story. It’s not the subject that is the idea, it’s the form. - Julie Otsuka, novelist. 

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Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be tortur