Maintaining Focus With Big Stories

For those expecting something about New Year's resolutions, what to do going into 2025, or some other thing about the changing of the calendar, you're in for a disappointment. (If you really need some writing advice for the New Year, I recommend my "Writing Resolutions for 2023" post, which should quench your thirst.) I am actually going to talk about what not to write about when you get a big story in mind.

For those who do not know, today marks the 121st anniversary of the Iroquois Theater fire, a disaster here in Chicago that took over 600 lives (including two of my great-aunts) and set into motion massive regulatory changes for public buildings. While this tragedy has been overlooked as the years have gone by (the location is now the Nederlander Theater, once also known as the Oriental Theater), it's still an incredible study into how buildings worked and failed back at the turn of the 20th century, the state of Chicago politics, the collision of errors that brought about such a horrible event, and why people are reluctant to refer to a new place as "absolutely fireproof."

Looking back, any one of these subjects could be fertile grounds for an entire story. Simply telling the story from the perspectives of my great-aunts, Edythe and Ella, and speculating as to their experience, could be an amazing piece of work. However, the big mistake writers often sweep themselves into is trying to include as much as possible in the story. At this point, such a dramatic event actually loses some of its drama and drifts toward becoming a news story. As tempting as it might be to do a full dive into researching everything about the fire then pouring it into a story, you aren't doing the readers any favors.

As I mentioned, the number of problems were legion. The fireproof safety curtain used to drop between the stage and the crowd was not actually fireproof, and it got stuck anyway when they tried to use it. The fire extinguishers meant to put out fires with stage lighting were useless in fighting fires on the curtains or up in the rigging, which allowed things to spread real fast. The fire escapes were problematic, many safety doors were locked and difficult to open, and the narrow exits became choke points when people tried to leave in large numbers. Oh - and there were over 2,000 people in a theater able to seat 1,600, so there was that as well. All these are important facts, but do they belong in the story?

Going back to my great-aunts, how much of that would be known by Edythe and Ella? Would they have known that the backstage exits (which actually worked) caused a fiery backdraft to feed the fire on the stage? Did they know how many fire codes had been overlooked or shrugged off when the "absolutely fireproof" theater opened to great fanfare just six weeks earlier? Or were they two young women (23 and 17, respectively) excited to see Eddie Foy onstage, only to be swept up in the horrors when the high curtains caught fire and flames swept across the upper gallery? If I was ever to write a story of their experiences, I would focus on what they felt, what they likely saw, and keep it as a witness to terror. And given how many of those victims were trampled, crushed, or asphyxiated, I would probably not speculate into how my great-aunts actually died. (Those details are deep in the archives and might be best to stay there.)

Big events demand big stories, but they also demand tight focus to do the story justice. If you take on such a task, tell a specific story, from a specific perspective, and keep the reader in that zone of intense focus. Other stories can look at other angles, but containing the experience will also intensify it.

Happy New Year...