News Report Headline: Texas Wildfires: What We Know About the Smokehouse Creek Fire
Narrative Story Logline: Melanie Lee McQuiddy, Texas homeowner, lost her home and community members.
This is a news story from the NYT, gathering information on the wildfires happening in Texas. There is a lot of information in this article that could easily be turned into a more specific and focused narrative story.
I think the focus of this story should be about how the fires started and who they have affected. Several Texans, including McQuiddy, have lost their homes/ been displaced. McQuiddy sued Xcel Energy, because she believed they were responsible for the start of the wildfires, though there was no evidence in the article to show this as true. I think looking into this more and talking to McQuiddy about why she feels they should be held responsible would make for a more narrative story. The article said she was also a homeowner in the area of Texas where many cattle were dying as a result of these fires, which is another important factor to this story.
Many cattle died and farmland was destroyed during the wildfires. There were also two women who died due to the fires, one in her own home and one at the hospital after she was burned. Showing more on these specific people and areas will obviously make for a much more personal and narrative story.
Three Act Structure: I think the first act would be introducing the wildfires emerging in Texas and taking over, causing some of the largest fires to ever take place in the U.S. The second act would revolve more around figuring out if anyone is at fault for this/ who is going to take responsibility? Lastly, I think following the people closely affected in these areas, such as McQuiddy or the families of those whose loved ones were killed. This would be an incredibly sad story, but important. With any of these huge natural disaster stories, the best way to make your audience feel something is to capture those affected and really showing what they're going through.
I don't think this news-based story fully covered Peter Clark's Five W's, but it definitely could with the narrative changes. In order to do this, I think there needs to be a much more specific character and storyline, rather than an overview of the issue. Like I said, following McQuiddy and others who were deeply affected would give the story more importance, those individuals would be the who. The what would be the wildfires and their destruction, the where will obviously be set in the Texas communities that are currently being affected by this. The when is right now because it is a current even, but following the families and the aftermath could go on for quite some time. The why would be more on the issue of the wildfires and why they started, circling back to the who's responsible.
Overall, I thought the NYT did a good job on this article, and it could definitely be turned into a more narrative driven story with more in depth conversations and research on the sources mentioned throughout this article.
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