Story-Based

Inquiry

We wrote foundation texts for the growing international investigative journalism movement.

The Story Tells the Facts

This manual addresses storytelling techniques for writers and filmmakers, showing how a research database can be transformed into a narrative structure.

Next, it delves into specific narrative devices, and shows how they add value for the audience and the producer. The Story Tells the Facts. Structuring and Composing Investigative Narratives shows you how to compose a story that hits hard and fast, and builds to a powerful end.

The core of this method is continuous composition and referencing - an approach that saves time and anguish, for you and your colleagues. The authors consider narrative structures and how to build them from a chronology or a sequence of scenes. Next they demonstrate specific narrative techniques, discuss ethical issues of investigative style, and move on to quality control and promotion.

If you can tell a story in words and capture information in a narrative, the odds of telling a good story in film or radio go up, too. Investigative hypotheses and scenarios are very handy tools in documentary work, as in print. Likewise, documentation remains a fundamental concern for investigative filmmakers, and that raises issues of organisation and quality control. Rhythm, or pacing, must be mastered whatever the media you work in. All of these issues, as well as tools for structuring and composing narratives, are treated in this book.
 
“Hunter and Sengers unpack the essential elements of writing like an anatomy lesson.” – Mark Schapiro, environmental journalist

“This is such a helpful and methodological approach, whether you write or film an investigative story. I am going to make all my students read and use it!” – Margo Smit, journalism lecturer and director of the Dutch-Flemish Association of Investigative Journalists (VVOJ)

Mark Lee Hunter and Luuk Sengers, The Story Tells the Facts. Structuring and Composing Investigative Narratives, The Centre for Investigative Journalism, London 2013

Pages: 68 | Format: PDF | Language: English | Price: € 5,00