Vlad Jecan

At the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference at Harvard University in 2002, Bob Giles moderated a discussion between eight writers on the best approach to creative non-fiction. Giles opened the discussion by asking a relatively simple and direct question: “What does it take to do fine narrative writing?”[1] Each practitioner answered differently, some have emphasized technique and theory while others have simply shared their experiences. However, I found a few answers that might be appropriate to describe and maybe help to define narrative journalism.

Chip Scanlan, an associate professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism who has won numerous awards for writing and who was an active reporter, feature writer and national correspondent for various print publications, answered the following:

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