Roy Peter Clark in Writing Tools: Reports convey information. Stories create experience. Reports transfer knowledge. Stories transport the reader, crossing boundaries of time, space, and imagination. The report points us there. The story puts us there. …
The tool sets to create reports and stories also differ. The famous “Five Ws and H” have helped writers gather and convey information with the reader’s interests in mind. Who, what, where and when appear as the most common elements of information. The why and the how are harder to achieve. Used in reports, these pieces of information are frozen in time, fixed so readers can scan and understand.
Watch what happens when we unfreeze them, when information is transformed into narrative. In this process of conversion:
WHO becomes CHARACTER.
WHAT becomes ACTION. (What happened.)
WHERE becomes SETTING.
WHEN becomes CHRONOLOGY.
WHY becomes CAUSE or MOTIVE.
HOW becomes PROCESS. (How it happened.)
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