How I Wrote The Story

Andy did his first three part series that ran earlier this week. If you've never taken on such a project, it's a process full of trials. I asked him for a how-to and this is his response:

The serial narrative that just finished running in the Press-Register began with an inner tube ride down a lazy river in rural Alabama.

As the owner of the tube rental place drove us a few miles up the Styx River, we jawed about the usual stuff: weather, growing up and family. He told me about his son, Jeremy. Jeremy had a child with a girlfriend, he said. They had since split up and Jeremy wanted access to the little girl.

At first it sounded like a typical custody case. Then he said, "Anyway, turns out he's not the biological father. But he doesn't care about DNA. He's that little girl's daddy. You know, most men use DNA tests to run away from responsibility. Most men would see they aren't the father and leave. It devastated my son."

There was something more to this.

I kept in touch with the owner, and talked to photographer Bill Starling about the prospects of meeting this family to see if there was a story there. We ended up seeing real possibilities. Bill came along on every interview with the Waldrop family. We got Daniel Murphy, a talented page designer, involved early, too. My boss, Regional News Editor John Hasselwander, helped push me along, always asking tough questions, including whether narrative was the right approach.

We spent months following the case, digging through court records, attempting to interview everyone involved. We looked into the background of each person in the story the best we could. Some spoke; some said no. The biological father decided to talk just weeks before we finished the series. In reconstructing the events, I looked for all holes and tried to fill them in by talking to everyone involved. Remaining fair to those we couldn't talk to was a big priority.

I struggled with weaving in enough background in each installment of the narrative to catch new readers up while not boring those who followed the story since day one. While some writers struggle with where to break the stories in the series, those stopping points seemed pretty natural to me.

Writing the ending was a big struggle. I didn't want to make readers feel cheated. We had no solid, this-is-what-happened conclusion — they rarely exist in custody cases. My editor and I thought about waiting until the court date, but it had been delayed so many times it may be months or years or longer before it happens. Our approach, I hope, worked.

In the end, we've had a lot of positive response from readers, from those who heard the audio on the local NPR affiliate, and those who saw the multimedia slide show on the Web page.