FOLLOW THE STORY is a joy to read. Any experienced nonfiction writer of features or narrative books will appreciate Stewart's personal stories because we are reassured that our ups-and-downs have been shared by a Pulitzer Prize recipient and Wall Street Journal editor.

I re-read FOLLOW THE STORY while I was writing NIGHTMARE IN WICHITA: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler. Stewart's book helped keep me going in the right direction.

In addition to James B. Stewart's FOLLOW THE STORY, I recommend Jon Franklin's WRITING FOR STORY and Tom Wolfe's THE NEW JOURNALISM. For top examples of the advice given in these books read Stewart's DEN OF THIEVES, Franklin's SHOCK-TRAUMA, and Wolfe's THE RIGHT STUFF.

Thank you, James B. Stewart. Well done.

Robert Beattie
Wichita, Kansas

This book offers engaging insight into the mind of a true journalistic instructor. It contains helpful chapters on properly formatting dialogue and laying out plot and developing structure. I read this book twice and plan to read it again and also introduce this book to my writing club.

When a moderately talented writer convinces himself he's a virtuoso, it's bad enough. But what happens when he takes it on himself to bestow the "secrets of his craft" on aspirants? "Follow the Story," it seems. Its author, James B. Stewart, is hardly a nobody in American journalism. The book jacket reels off all his impressive credentials: a winner of the Pulitzer prize, a former feature editor at the Wall Street Journal, a best-selling author of nonfiction, and a journalism writing coach at Columbia University. So what did his "indispensable guide" (to refer to the book jacket again) teach me? That it's hard labor getting through the 370 pages of a self-serving monologue by a navel-gazing nonfiction writer.

In "Follow the Story," you the reader do exactly that -- follow the story of how Stewart's various nonfiction articles and two books "Den of Thieves" (about insider trading) and "Blood Sport" (the Clinton scandals) came about. He spares us no details, for example, about how his interviews went and how he felt about his interviewees -- everything just short of what he had for breakfast but nothing about how to actually conduct an interview. Then his advice on writing: In the chapter on "Structure" (26 pages), he tells us that chronology can help along the narrative (don't put yesterday after tomorrow, that is). Thank you Mr. Stewart! If you want to learn tricks about structure other than chronology, he leaves you at liberty to think them up for yourself. In the section on "leads" (story beginnings), he reprints the prologue to his book "Blood Sport" in its entirety, all eight and a half pages of it. And I thought I was blessedly lucky if I had that much space to play with in a whole feature article.

Then there's his grammar: like his incorrect use of "like" for "as if" as in "...it looked like she hadn't even been to the hairdresser..." In "Description" (Chapter 8), he "describes" a major character in a story as "handsome." Yes, but what did he LOOK like? Or here's a descriptive segment of Mr. Stewart's, one that he offers as an example of good writing (lamentably, he never uses other writers' work as examples): "A pink Rolls-Royce turned into the driveway. It pulled quietly into the parking area, and a smiling Boesky emerged carrying a tennis racket, Siegel noticed with some curiosity..." Other than providing a pedestrian description of an interesting scene (it tells us more about the pink Rolls-Royce's route -- driveway, parking area -- than its striking appearance), the segment also defies logic. How can a powered-up Rolls-Royce pull "quietly" into parking? Did it not have its engines running, or were the observer's ears waxed up? And why did Siegel notice it "with SOME curiosity," not plain "curiously"? And all the rest of it...

The saving grace of the book, if there's one, is Stewart's encouraging words to novices and his insistence that when all is said and done, "the only reader who matters is you" -- meaning writers themselves. On second thoughts, though, this is just what Stewart does in "Follow the Story": write for himself. But then why publish the book at all?

James B. Stewart appears to be in love with himself. But weed out the self-glorifying comments. Harvest the tips, ideas and fruit and you'll find a helpful a step-by-step plan for writing an interesting feature story.

The six page introduction has between 90 and 100 references to himself. He explains why he is qualified to write this book and walks the reader through the events in his life that led him to become a writer. He was the editor of the Wall Street front page.

Nearly every illustration in the book is from his work. The 60 page appendix is three stories that he wrote. His most frequent statement thoughout the book is, "In my opinion" or a variation of that. I can see my high school English teacher cringing and shouting, "Who else's opinion would it be?"

But skim the book with a highlighter. Marking the sections that are instructional, the step-by-step writing processes. Of the 300 actual book pages (excluding the appendix), you'll be left with about half the book. Read them carefully. If you're looking for a good instructional feature writing book, what's left is worth the effort.

Stewart begins the writing process with curiosity. He then shows how to turn that curiosity into idea hunting. He teaches how to gather information, form a lead, and decide on and follow a structure. According to Stewart, the type of question the story is answering tells the author what lead, structure and ending to use. Possible types of questions: What's going on? What are others are doing? What is a certain person really like? How could that have happened? How should I feel? What should my reaction be? What caused such-and-such? What happened? Each of those questions suggests a different story type and requires a different kind of structure and response. Once an author knows the question, the story writing process is basically determined and the author knows how to proceed. This practical guide for feature writing is a very practical guide for the author asking "How?".

I would have rather read a book already edited into just the practical information and a variety of examples (skipping the self glorification). But I haven't found one yet.