I remember being blown away by Wolfe’s “Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby” (see http://www.tomwolfe.com/KandyKolored.html for a link to an excerpt from the intro…you might even consider Wolfe’s comments about totem newspapers and totem stories a bit prophetic about the current state of news and newspapers…but I digress). Anyway, that story inspired me to loosen up and write a feature on car collectors and their cars. I wasn’t even a car buff, but it sure was fun.

Another good book on narrative journalism is Jon Franklin’s “Telling the Story.” I heard him speak at UT-Knoxville when I started grad school there a decade or so ago. He also advocates using the story-telling techniques honed over the decades by fiction writers to create more compelling non-fiction (a.k.a. narrative journalism). That made sense to me. Still does.

The problem is finding a venue for it. Most newspapers don’t print that kind of thing any more, and neither do many magazines. I don’t see much like this online either. More’s the pity.