Here are two.
The first is the beginning of an article in the Bangkok newspaper, The Nation. The San Francisco Chronicle's six-month tsunami anniversary piece is similar albeit a tad more compelling read.
The second is my take at a narrative story-telling start with a human face. (Making my apologies: This is a very raw, first-draft partly fictional example without benefit of research into details; for instance, to verify daily Thai Buddhist rituals.)
Call me crazy, but after being blown away by searing fresh writing from amateurs and professionals alike last week at a writer's conference, I'm left to wonder why we settle for just-the-facts-mam bland journalistic writing. Why can't narrative story-telling be used to illustrate and embed the statistics and five W's and have us feel the impact of the dissected facts?
Journalistic writing:
POST-TSUNAMI TOURISM: Phuket struggles to reverse slump
Published on June 27, 2005
Visitors to resort island and surrounding areas still a fraction of normal number
Phuket has already lost at least Bt60 billion in tourism revenue in the six months since the tsunami ravaged the island together with other provinces in the South.
The tsunami’s impact on the tourism industry on the island has led to the closure of over 400 hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops, leaving over 5,000 people unemployed...
Versus story-telling:
Mon offered a papaya-red flower on the altar and bowed three times. Desire is the root of suffering, the Buddha repeats. Maybe desire is like sticky rice with its grains glued together. Yet rather than the sweetness lasting in your mouth, perhaps there is a bitter aftertaste, she wondered. Still, all that did not wipe her yearning for a little boy - a miniature of her impish husband or a girl with long black hair to brush gingerly while they folded laundry together. Yes, her hair would be black. Black as the island's headland rocks before they were pelted and nearly obliterated by the five-meter high ocean-bullet-train.
She should feel lucky. She did feel lucky to be spared, but now they awaited word whether the bungalows would be repaired in time for tourist season after the monsoon ended this October.
She recalled the first day she boarded the long-tail boat towards the small emerald isle inlaid in the Andaman Sea. It was far from her village to be sure. But her husband had also secured work there as well.
Now there was barely enough money to buy fresh longans or mangoes or farung for the altar. And so much less to feed a squawking child.
Mon's heart ached for the sway of the island breeze, for the mirth of its people, the laughter erupting like a volcano on the restaurant floor where she took orders and served ginger chicken and tom yum soup. Yes, she felt, she would need a love-child now even more than before... -- Evelyn Rodriguez
Great entry Evelyn. It's got me really thinking about my writing in a number of areas. Hmmm.
Posted by: Mark Sicignano | Jul 22, 2005 at 10:07 PM
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