THE POWER OF NARRATIVE

Last evening found me in the L.A. Superior Court Building to watch my son's prosecution team in their debut effort at trying to nail a suspect accused of murder in this year's Mock Trial competition -- GO LIONS!

Mock Trial provides the opportunity for high school and middle school legal teams to both prosecute and, separately, defend a fictional suspect accused of a fictional crime. Each team goes up against another school, citing evidence, grilling witnesses on the stand, voicing objections and delivering final arguments. Ever since 1980 the Constitutional Rights Foundation has sponsored these yearly competitions, wherein students of opposing schools portray prosecutors, defense attorneys, suspects, witnesses and even bailiffs in the proceedings. Thousands of judges and attorneys volunteer their time to give students a direct lesson in our legal system.

Students prepare for weeks with teachers and volunteer attorneys, but in the courtroom they're on their own. The case is decided by the real judge sitting before them and, separately, their performances are graded by a small team of lawyers who score the individual participants. The total scores of each team determines who wins that evening's trial.

My son's team did well and won a guilty verdict, and today we learned that they had also won the evening's competition by outscoring the other team. Next week, on to the quarter-finals.

An impressive performance by all, and what I remember particularly well is that, in his closing remarks, one of the scoring attorneys complimented both teams on their ability to create and convey compelling narratives, noting that the ability to tell a convincing story is what a trial is, in essence, all about.

That was another reminder that the narrative is one of the writer's most powerful tools, and that a good writer always looks for ways to use it.

Even in many forms of business writing, narrative is useful.

For example, when I first began researching and writing industry white papers I quickly developed what I call a straightforward "challenge/solution" narrative structure.

By that I mean simply describing the issue to be addressed in a narrative form, then proposing the solution as a possible "ending" to the story. The deficiencies of inadequate solutions, or failing to address the challenge in the first place, can also be spelled out as alternate--and less satisfying--conclusions. The "moral" is simply contrasting the benefits of a satisfactory solution with the price of not dealing with the challenge successfully.

Before I sign off, I'd like to draw your attention to a great Profile of legendary (and award-winning) storyteller Horton Foote, who passed away in March of this year. It's in the October 26th issue of THE NEW YORKER, and it's by John Lahr, who at one point describes Foote's writing style when he was starting out in the 1940s:

"In Foote's plays, the big dramatic events happen offstage. Foote examined the ripple, not the wave. He was a quiet voice in noisy times."

I also particularly enjoyed a quote that Foote gave in an interview just this past January: "If I ever teach writing again, I guess the first lesson is to listen."