Writing Tools

I remember a moment in my young life when I realized that the perceptible world was not all that there was in the universe. Two other worlds existed that were invisible in the course of a daily life. You need a microscope to see one, and a telescope to see the other.

I'd like to turn that notion into a practical writing tool. Let's call it this: Learn when to use the microscope and when to use the telescope. Both of these modes help you zig when other writers want to zag.

Jim Dwyer used the microscope to find small objects from 9/11 that had stories hiding inside of them.  He discovered that one of the biggest stories of the century could be told through artifacts: a squeegee used to escape from an elevator; a cup of water offered on the street from one stranger to another; a family photograph found in the rubble.

At a recent Poynter seminar, Dwyer told us how he had once written the obituary of a man named Ron Williamson, a professional baseball player wrongly convicted of murder in a small town. Author John Grisham read the obit in The New York Times and writes of it:  "The headline -- 'Ronald Williamson, Freed from Death Row, Dies at 51' -- was compelling enough, but the lengthy obituary, written by Jim Dwyer, had the clear makings of a much longer story. ... I read it a second time ... As I would soon learn, the obituary barely scratched the surface. Within a few hours ... I had a book on my hands."

Grisham was thoughtful enough to send a note of thanks to Dwyer. Even as Dwyer microscoped 9/11, Grisham telescoped Dwyer, discovering a much larger nonfiction narrative that he has now rendered in the book, "The Innocent Man."

So there's the tool: When the conventional story looks too big to manage, use the microscope. When it looks suspiciously small, look at it through the telescope. When the crowd goes big, you go small. When it goes small, you go big.