Daniel Engber dissects the ubiquitous laboratory mouse

Posted by Siri Carpenter on January 11th, 2012

Daniel Engber

When Slate senior editor Daniel Engber took a month off from his usual duties to research a multi-part series on laboratory mice, he had a thesis — that although the ubiquity of mice as model organisms has clear advantages, it is in some ways damaging to biomedicine. What he needed was stories and characters to hang his argument on. Tracking down and sifting through numerous compelling narratives proved to be the most challenging – and also the most fun — aspect of reporting his series. Here, Engber discusses how he found his stories, how he overcame initial reservations about the topic, and how he put the pieces together. He also reveals his “invisible ink” method of battling writer’s block. [The three-part series "The Mouse Trap" (1 | 2 | 3) appeared in Slate on November 16-18, 2011.]

Here, Engber tells the story behind the story:

How did you get the idea for this story?

This one actually comes from the last one of these “Fresca” projects that Slate does [to encourage staffers to pursue long-form projects]. I did my first Fresca project in ’09, on animal welfare in the lab. One of the things I came across was the fact that rats and mice were exempted from the protections provided by the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which led to their becoming extremely popular animal models in biomedical research. I originally had a section of that 2009 Fresca project that was about what it means for the scientific community that we are using rats and mice so much. But the rest of that series was raising questions about animal welfare, and this big question about epistemology would have been kind of out of left field. So we cut that whole piece, which was maybe a 2,500-word section.

Then last year, I was thinking about a new Fresca project to do, and I thought maybe I could come back to this piece that seemed so fascinating to me, so I pitched it. Slate editor David Plotz agreed to do it so long as I was able to find some kind of narrative elements to include, because it was this abstract idea: that everyone’s using rats and mice, and particularly mice over the last 20 years, and that there are both advantages and disadvantages to having this monoculture of knowledge production in biomedicine. I didn’t have the skeleton of the story that I would then graft the idea onto — I just had the argument and no story. So I got a provisional “yes” on doing the project, contingent on my finding something to say. Read more »

Pitching errors: How not to pitch

Posted by Laura Helmuth on January 4th, 2012

Writing a good pitch is really tough. Writing a bad one is easy. Editors see the same mistakes over and over again, even from good writers. A few weeks ago, seven editors from a variety of publications participated in a round-table discussion, in a series of group emails, about how NOT to pitch. I started the conversation off with questions, and then we talked among ourselves about our horror stories, pet peeves, and practical advice. Think of The Open Notebook’s Pitch Database as a lesson in how to make editors say “yes.” Below, dear writers, is how to inadvertently make us say “no.” Read more »

Ask TON: Anonymous sources

Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on December 21st, 2011

Welcome back for another installment of Ask TON. (Wondering what Ask TON is? See here for background information and our introductory post. Click on “Ask TON” above to see previous installments.)

Today’s question:

Should anonymous (unattributed) quotes be used to develop stories which would not be possible without them — such as when individuals are unwilling to go on the record with negative comments?

We put this question to several of our colleagues. Here’s what they shared: Read more »

Lost and found: How great nonfiction writers discover great ideas

Posted by Brendan Borrell on December 13th, 2011

In June 2010, Michael Finkel needed a new idea. The Bozeman-based author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa and writer for GQ, National Geographic, and Men’s Journal wasn’t satisfied with the stack of print-outs in the two-inch deep brownie pan on his desk. And none of the hundreds of ideas in a Word document on his computer struck his fancy. So, he opened up his web browser and typed a query into Google: “Amazing human feats.” That nebulous search brought him to a YouTube video of a blind man careening down a trail on a mountain bike, and by the end of the day he had a killer one-paragraph pitch for Men’s Journal: The Incredible (Yet True) Way That (A Few) Blind People Can “See”: Echolocation. [editors' note: Find Finkel's pitch at The Open Notebook's pitch database.]

There are whole books on interviewing, and whole books on structure, but finding ideas remains one of the most mysterious and frustrating parts of journalism. “Nobody teaches you how to come up with ideas,” Finkel says. “It’s alchemy.” As a freelancer, I find that there are few things worse than running out of ideas and becoming paralyzed in front of the computer, wondering what I am supposed to write about next. It’s not writer’s block, exactly. If I had the idea, I could start the research, and if I could start the research, then I could start the writing. It’s that old catch-22: I don’t want to invest time researching a topic that may not turn into a sellable story, but if I’m not researching that topic, I’ll never find that story.

If ideas are essentially information without context then the skill of the feature writer is to recognize their significance, pluck them out of the data stream, and put them to good use. Sometimes the tidbit you stumble upon leads you down an investigative rabbit hole. Other times, you may already have an intriguing story topic, but you’ve never been able to crack it because you’re missing that nugget that turns an academic idea into a riveting narrative. I know how I fumble in the dark for inspiration, but I imagined that some writers out there might be a little more professional about things: What tricks do they have to keep the momentum up, and what do they do when the well runs dry? How do they recognize a good idea when they see it? Read more »

Taking good notes: Tricks and tools

Posted by Siri Carpenter and Jeanne Erdmann on December 6th, 2011

Whether you rely on a digital recorder or a laptop or a ragtag collection of mismatched notebooks, you need to take good notes. That doesn’t just mean that your handwriting needs to be legible — though that matters too. It means that your notes capture the essence of what you have observed, from the words your sources uttered to — in some situations — the direction the wind was blowing as you spoke. Every situation calls for different note-taking strategies, and every writer has his or her own preferences. Recently, Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm offered us a trove of advice on note-taking, which he assembled for students at Johns Hopkins University’s science writing master’s program, where he is on the faculty. Grimm polled colleagues about the best way to take notes during interviews. Here’s their advice: Read more »

Deborah Blum traces a poisonous history

Posted by Jyoti Madhusoodanan on November 30th, 2011

Deborah Blum

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum’s five books have immersed her in the worlds of animal rights, the psychology of affection, the neurology of sex, the search for paranormal phenomena, and the chemistry of poisons. Her best-selling book The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, published in 2010, traces the origins of modern forensic medicine through the lives of two scientists as they navigate crime and chemistry in early 20th century New York. Here, Blum talks with TON guest contributor Jyoti Madhusoodanan about the research that shaped the book and the importance of a writer’s perspective:

How did you come up with the idea for The Poisoner’s Handbook?

I was just looking for a way to write about chemistry! I love chemistry, it’s a beautiful science. We are a walking collection of chemicals. We drink and eat and swallow chemicals every day and most of them don’t harm or kill us; some are even useful. And also, I really like poisons. What was it about this small group of chemicals that were so uniquely destructive? But I was also thinking about how it would be fun to do this in a subversive way. What if I could tell a story about poisons like an early 20th century murder mystery?

How much of your research and structure was outlined in your proposal, before you started writing the book?

For my previous books I’d always written a firm proposal, in the 20 to 30 page range, defining the idea and structure of the book. With The Poisoner’s Handbook, I had just finished doing a narrative history — Ghost Hunters — and my agent suggested that I write a short proposal describing this poison idea I kept talking about. So I wrote a three-page proposal saying vaguely, “Poisons are really cool…can I write about them?” and it got accepted.

As always, I signed the contract and spent the advance. And then it really struck me: What in the world is this book about? For other more brilliant people than me this method might work really well, but I was panic-stricken. It would have been much better for me to have figured out the proposal before I was on the clock. But I have thought that I would never have found my two main characters, Alexander Gettler and Charles Norris, if I hadn’t been so desperate during my research later.

How did you come across these main characters?

I was reading everything I could find about poisons — journal articles, textbooks of the time, newspapers and magazines for murder cases. I was searching the archives of the newsletters of the American Society of Forensic Scientists when I first saw a reference to Alexander Gettler as “the father of American forensic toxicology.” And I was hoping to find a biography and couldn’t. He and Charles Norris were lost in footnotes, and no superficial or obvious search would’ve brought them up, because they just weren’t there. Read more »

How Rebecca Skloot built The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Posted by David Dobbs on November 22nd, 2011

Rebecca Skloot

Rebecca Skloot needs little introduction to most readers of The Open Notebook: Her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been a bestseller since its publication in February 2010, and she has toured the U.S. and Europe almost constantly since then talking about the book and the many issues of race, science, and privacy it raises. She’s also been interviewed many times as well. Here she talks with TON guest contributor David Dobbs about two particularly writerly issues the book raises: structure, and the use of the writer as character:

You’ve been interviewed to death about this book, so I’ll limit this to two areas readers of The Open Notebook might be interested in: one is structure and the other is your decision to put yourself in the book and how you handled that.

That’s good. I honestly think that structure is one of the most important tools in writing, yet it’s not something that people often pick apart and really get obsessed with.

Did you carry your concern about structure into this project, or was it something you developed as you wrestled with it?

No, I came to the book already fixated on structure. I did my MFA in nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh, and Lee Gutkind, who was one of my professors there, taught a readings class where he constantly harped on structure. Every class, the first exercise we had to do with every piece we read was map out the structure. The first day of class we read an essay in class and his first question when we were done was, “What’s the structure of this

piece?” We had no idea what he meant. And he wouldn’t tell us. He would just push us and push us, and people would randomly guess things … They’d say, “It’s a profile.” He’d say, “No, that’s not a structure.”

Eventually it clicked for me when he walked me line-by-line through a piece he’d written and said, See how the piece starts here, then goes back in time here, then forward in time here, but always comes back to that same story I started with, which is actually in chronological order? The story was about a veterinarian facing tough decisions about whether to euthanize various animals; it did jump around in time a lot, and included sections of exposition, or facts — like the history of the field, or whatever — that weren’t part of the narrative, but when you pulled the essay apart it became clear that the structure was just a day in the life of this vet going from one patient to the next. From that point on, I started obsessively mapping out the structures of everything I read. When I started teaching I made my students do the same thing.

Any student who has ever studied with me would think, “Ugh. Structure, structure, structure; that’s all she talked about.” My philosophy is, once you understand what structure is, then you can talk about characters and narrative arcs and how to fill in the story. But for me, structure can just completely make or break something.

Skloot's first visit to Turner Station and the Henrietta Lacks Museum. Skloot says, "Courtney Speed in Turner Station was hoping to turn this building into a museum in Henrietta's honor; I took this photograph to document the building, its location relative to the sign welcoming people to Turner Station, etc. I then took at least a roll of photos (if not more) documenting every inch of the building that I thought might be relevant someday in the future for describing it." Photo courtesy of Rebecca Skloot.

What are some key teaching pieces you used?

I always use John McPhee’s “Travels in Georgia” because it’s such a brilliant structure. Once you figure it out, it’s so basic. But it’s really hard to see it at first. When you say to people, “Read this thing and tell me how it’s structured,” they just can’t. But once you really pick it apart you see he starts in the middle of the story, then he goes forward for a while, then loops back around so by the middle of the piece you’re back at the point where you started, then you continue forward. He’s so subtle and graceful with the structure that few readers even realize they’ve looped back around to the point where the story started because he doesn’t hit you over the head with it. He calls it the lowercase e structure, and once you learn to recognize it you see it everywhere — in so many great stories, books, movies.

Are there other writers or books who have been particular models for you, structure-wise?

When I was working on my book, I knew very early on that I wanted it to be a disjointed structure that told multiple stories at once and jumped around in time between different characters. If you learn the story of the HeLa cells by itself, it’s a very different story than if you learn it alongside the story of what happened to Henrietta and her family as a result of those cells. Each story takes on a different weight when you learn them at the same time. Read more »

Lauren Gravitz relates Nobel laureate Steinman’s poignant story

Posted by Siri Carpenter on November 15th, 2011

Lauren Gravitz

For years, journalist Lauren Gravitz had planned to write an in-depth feature on Rockefeller University physician-scientist Ralph Steinman, highlighting the dendritic cells that had been his life’s work and his efforts to use those cells to treat his own cancer. Formerly a science writer at Rockefeller, Gravitz had spoken often with Steinman and knew his work well. She checked in with him regularly after she left the university, each time asking whether he might be ready to share his story, but every time he demurred. Last month, when it was announced that Steinman had died just three days before being awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, Gravitz was heartbroken. She also knew that the story she had nurtured in her mind was no longer hers alone. Soon, though, she saw that most news outlets had overlooked the part of the story she cared about most – the collision of Steinman’s pioneering work with his disease. [A Fight for Life that United a Field appeared in Nature on October 11, 2011.]

Here, Gravitz tells the story behind the story:

How did this story come about?

This was a story that had actually been knocking around in my mind for a while. I worked at Rockefeller for a couple of years, and I was there at the time when Ralph was diagnosed with cancer, in 2007. I had covered his lab for a couple of years and was really familiar with his work, and familiar with the fact that he had been putting a lot of attention into trying to use dendritic cells for therapies for HIV and cancer.

It was one of those stories that was so poignant, in the sense that it’s painful anytime a researcher studies a disease and then ends up being diagnosed with the disease that he studies. So when I heard that he was working with other immunologists to develop a therapy for the disease, I told him that I’d like to write about it and to highlight the work that he had done on dendritic cells.

I left Rockefeller in 2008, and told him again that I would be interested in it. He said, “Yes, yes, maybe sometime.” That was his response every time I would check in with him over the next couple of years. You could tell that he was putting a lot of pressure on himself to get as much done as he could in the time he had left, and a pesky reporter hanging around was not part of that plan. Anyway, he didn’t become available, and I also was not particularly pushy about asking regularly.

And then what?

On October 3, as soon as I woke up, I went to the Nobel website to see who they’d announced as the winner. I do this every October on the day that the physiology or medicine prizes are announced. When I was at Rockefeller, every year people were anticipating that Ralph might receive it — he was one of the people believed to be on the shortlist. So every year since my time there I’ve been pretty faithful about checking. And not even a week prior to the announcement this year, I had emailed Dr. Steinman, checking in, and hadn’t heard back. So when I saw his name, I was just elated and wrote to the folks at Rockefeller to say so. Within about 10 minutes, I received a reply from one of my former bosses, saying, “Yes, but the news is very bittersweet — we just got word that he passed away three days ago.” Read more »

Erik Vance scrutinizes a battle over dolphin rights

Posted by Jeanne Erdmann on November 10th, 2011

Erik Vance

Reporting from the trenches in the war over dolphin rights, freelance science writer Erik Vance relates the story of Lori Marino and Diana Reiss, dolphin researchers who have spent most of their careers as close colleagues and friends, but whose agendas diverged after Marino moved away from research on captive dolphins and immersed herself in a life of advocacy. Marino and Reiss’s public split occurred while Vance was reporting on their research, and on the thorny question of how close scientists should get to their research subjects. [Dolphin Desperados (published online as “It’s Complicated: The Lives of Dolphins and Scientists”) appeared in Discover in September 2011].

Here, Vance tells the story behind the story:

What sparked your interest in writing about dolphin research?

This story goes back 10 years, to before I was a writer. I did research as an undergraduate studying dolphin bubble-play behavior, where dolphins blow rings and then spin them around. For an undergraduate internship, I was working in this wildlife park facility in California, then called Marine World/Africa USA. A scientist working with me had been a protégé of Lori Marino. Though I never met [Marino], our names appeared on a paper together.

When did you first hear about the dolphin slaughters?

When I finally met Lori Marino at a conference in 2007, she said, “By the way, have you heard about these dolphin slaughters [in which Japanese fisherman, perceiving dolphins as their competition for scarce fish, were killing dolphins by the thousands]? Now that you’re a journalist, you need to write about the slaughters.” The dolphin slaughters had been reported in the daily news, and I definitely had the sense that this could be some huge feature. I felt like someone needed to open this up, but it was not going to be me.

Why not?

When I met Lori, she was in full advocacy mode about people slaughtering dolphins. It sounded like a terrible thing happening, on par with rhinos and African Elephants getting slaughtered. But it was the classic problem of how to frame it; how do you turn that into something that really catches editors, and then readers? Where is the narrative? I felt that I was too green, and that kind of story was too daunting. Read more »

Ask TON: Embedded with scientists

Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on November 9th, 2011

Today’s installment of Ask TON kicks off a series of posts, each of which in its own way addresses ethical issues that can arise when writers shadow scientists long enough to cross the line from journalist to buddy.

To get things started, here’s today’s Ask TON:

I will be embedded with a scientist whom I will follow around for a few days. I like this person already and could be friends in a normal world. Are there strategies I could follow while reporting to remain a human being and keep an appropriate journalistic distance?

We’ve actually heard a number of writers bring up this issue recently, so we decided to cast our net wide, asking five of your colleagues for their thoughts. Read more »

John McPhee on characters, structure, titles, and facing the ‘low dread’ of writing

Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on November 8th, 2011

Is there a science writer alive who has not been schooled by John McPhee? Both of us began our writing careers with a collection of McPhee’s books and articles on our shelves, and over the years, we’ve both returned to his works many times, for pleasure and for sustenance. Writing at the excellent blog Last Word on Nothing, science journalist Michelle Nijhuis nails McPhee’s singular influence on science journalists everywhere: Read more »

Ask TON: From idea to story

Posted by Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter on October 27th, 2011

Welcome to day four of our first-birthday palooza. Today, we greet you with another episode of Ask TON. (If you need to catch up on earlier episodes, see here, here, and here.)

Here’s the question for today:

What questions do you ask yourself about a story that you’re considering pursuing? How do you decide whether it’s a good idea?

This is a perennial question that dogs all of us. We asked four of our colleagues to share their thoughts. Read more »

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