My great colleague Al Tompkins offers us
a useful analysis of the work
of Bob Dotson, one of the best storytellers in the history of broadcast
news. Consider this a mere footnote to Al's good essay. It
derives from a book that Dotson wrote in 2000: "Make It
Memorable: Writing and Packaging TV News with Style."
In it, Dotson reveals many of his tested techniques and illustrates
them with scripts of his stories. The first describes the
aftermath of a terrible crime: the shootings of four schoolchildren in
Jonesboro, Ark.
The script of the three-minute story contains visual cues and
transcriptions of soundbites. But I will quote only
Dotson's narration:
Sometimes the yearbook of life closes too soon.
We are left with grainy pictures and long-lens grief.
No way to measure a loss.
The four little girls who died in that Jonesboro schoolyard were more
than what happened to them. They were small-town kids ... a lot
like these.
Their friends thought you might like to see where ... Paige Herring
perfected her jump shot. And Natalie Brooks practiced her
cheers. Stephenie Johnson sang her first sweet song right
here. And Britthany Varner gave her a hug. She always had
hugs for her friends.
And then at the end:
Our children are like library books, with a due date unknown. These lives stopped at the start of their stories. But their
stories live on ... in friends who can tell them.
To describe such terrible grief, Dotson chooses language that goes
beyond spare -- to almost bare. Let's do the accounting: Of the 13 sentences quoted above, here is the word count: 8, 9, 6,
17, 8, 15, 6, 9, 7, 7, 11, 9, 11.
Add those numbers up and you get 123. And of those, 96 are words of one syllable.
Lots of lessons to learn here: Even when your sentences are
short, vary their length; even short sentences can include
literary flourishes, such as the simile that compares children to
library books; and even when the story is powerful and emotional, keep
the language spare.
I grew up believing I was descended from one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence: Abraham Clark of New Jersey. You can find his signature on the lower right-handed corner of the document. He was known as "the poor man's lawyer" for his willingness to offer up legal services for free. Now that's what I call an American revolution. Enjoy the holiday. We'll see you next week.
