Storytellers: Can we talk about this piece for a minute? As always, I do not hold up my own work as the epitome of excellence, but I want to show you a few things with this quick-turn narrative. 1/

houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t… First, the time crunch was awful. I was juggling multiple hurricane-related things. I was also interviewing the family just hours after Maria died. They were so kind. I could have talked to them for hours. I did not have hours. 2/

Sweating through Storytelling: A personal story of agony.

Yesterday, we wrote an investigative narrative about a Houston man profoundly injured by a car fleeing the police.

Story looks so pretty, right? Easy right?

OMG. No. 1/

houstonchronicle.com/news/investiga… The first thing you need to know about me is that I will absolutely do a narrative wrong at least twice before we get to the real story.

In this case, my initial plans blew up when news hit. So I had to rethink the whole thing. 2/

How storytelling made me a better investigative reporter: A tiny workshop. 🧵

There’s an annoying misconception out there that narrative is just pretty writing.

It’s not. I believe storytelling is the hardest kind of investigative reporting there is. 1/ Storytelling transports us into towns, people and things we know nothing about. You don’t transport people with pretty words.

You do it with details. Facts. History. Documents. Interviews.

You ask questions. Many, many questions of many people. 2/