About the AuthorFrom 1994 to 1996, Roy Peter Clark spent hundreds of hours interviewing the characters in "Three Little Words", traveling from small town-Michigan to Rio de Janeiro. It was Clark's wife, Karen, who introduced him to Jane Morse in the fall of 1992. Karen Clark and Jane Morse are both soccer moms, and that is how they met.
Roy is senior scholar at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. He joined the Institute in 1979 to direct writing programs after teaching English literature, language, and writing at Auburn University from 1974-1977. He has a B.A. from Providence College and his Ph.D. in English from SUNY at Stony Brook. Roy was dean of the Institute faculty from 1988-1993. He worked at the St. Petersburg Times as a reporter, feature writer, and film critic. He is the author of Free to Write: A Journalist Teaches Young Writers, co-author of Coaching Writers: Editors and Reporters Working Together, and author of two serial narratives, "Three Little Words" and "Sadie's Ring." He is also editor of the Poynter Papers, former editor of Best Newspaper Writing, and director of the National Writers' Workshops.
He can be contacted at roypc@poynter.org.
Roy Peter Clark spent about 18 months reporting, researching, and writing "Three Little Words," a 29-part serial narrative that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times in February 1996. The story of a family struggling with AIDS drew much attention, not only among Florida readers, but among journalists across America. Not only did the story contain some content that pushed the newspaper envelope on matters of public health and sexual culture, but it also took an unusual form: 29 short, daily chapters, no longer than 1,000 words each day, a simple five-minute read.
Clark theorized that typical blockbuster series, which he admired, forced the reader into treating the newspaper like a magazine. If readers could not spend 20 or 30 minutes reading an installment in the morning, maybe they would put it aside for later reading. And maybe not. So Clark traded out length of chapters for number of installments.
"Since the creation of USA Today, we've been forced to choose between long and short writing, a debate that on some days seems more polarizing than pro-choice/pro-life." Clark thinks newspapers need good short writing and good long writing, and that these can be expressed in the same project.
The serial narrative has a long history in newspapers, but one mostly associated with the fiction of the 19th century. Clark has brought the tradition back to life--but as journalism. Since his series appeared, as many as 35 others have been attempted across America, in most cases with excellent journalistic results and wide reader interest.
In January 1998, Clark hosted a conference at Poynter on the serial narrative, and more than 50 journalists attended, most of whom had been involved in, or were planning to undertake, a serial narrative. The work of that conference will eventually be converted into a starter kit for journalists interested in the form.