Bravest Woman in Seattle

• The Bravest Woman in Seattle (The Stranger)
• Teresa Butz is named in this story, but the other victim isn't named. Anyone could have gone to the courtroom and seen her face and learned her name. Would you name her?
• In fact, she later revealed her identity in a column for Seattle Weekly. Why?

• You can hear Sanders' rage in this writing. Does that strengthen or weaken the story? Every sentence is true and factual, but it bursts with raw anger and emotion. He is upfront with readers about that: The family and friends in the courtroom cried (though, truth be told, they had been crying throughout). The Seattle Times reporter seated next to me cried. I cried.

• This story goes into remarkable and often unnerving details about this case. Is it too much?

• In this paragraph, Sanders explains his decision to include those details. Do you agree with his reasoning? Here's how he describes Teresa's mother: She is a small woman, just like her daughter. If this woman can absorb, at the level of detail required for proof before a jury, the particulars of what happened to her daughter – can view the bloody crime scene photographs, can listen to the 911 call from a neighbor leaning over her blood-soaked daughter and screaming, “Ma’am, please wake up! Please wake up!” (while, to the 911 operator pleading, “Please hurry, please hurry”), can hear the testimony about DNA evidence and what orifices it was recovered from – then no one else in this courtroom can dare turn away.

• Later, he writes from the victim's perspective. Should he?: This happened to me. You must listen. This happened to us. You must hear who was lost. You must hear what he did. You must hear how Teresa fought him. You must hear what I loved about her. You must know what he took from us. This happened. 
• What are the two narratives in this story?

What does it add to hear from the victim? When does Sanders quote her and when does he paraphrase her?

Let's look at the opening to Eli Sanders' incredible story, "The Bravest Woman in Seattle."

“The prosecutor wanted to know about window coverings. He asked: Which windows in the house on South Rose Street, the house where you woke up to him standing over you with a knife that night – which windows had curtains that blocked out the rest of the world and which did not?”


Why does Sanders lead this way? What are the strengths of his lead? Do you like it or dislike it?


Sanders establishes two narratives that drive the reader through this story. What are they?



What does this approach provide the reader? How do the mood and tension shift between these two narratives?

At times, Narrative I is an almost clinical analysis of the courtroom drama. Narrative II is a tense, nerve-wracking account of the night's tragedy.

In the courtroom, we hear the voice of the witness. She can be funny, smart, and heart-breaking.

When asked about the window coverings, she replies, “I didn’t spend a lot of time staring in my own windows.”

When asked about her first recollection of the assailant, she is blunt, "“I woke up to a start,” she told the court. “There was a man that I could see was naked, standing over the bed with a knife in his right hand... And the knife immediately went to my throat.”

As we move through the sections of these stories, notice that each one has a compelling intro and an ending. When the witness begins to recount the night's events, the section starts almost like a new story:

Butz’s partner doesn’t know how long they slept.

That section walks the reader through some of the most tragic paragraphs in modern journalism, describing the violent sexual assault of the two women, a narrative that makes you wonder how the two victims survived.

The prosecuting attorney asked: How many rounds were there altogether?
“Three.” 

Why does this section end this way?

Let's look at the beginning and ending to final section, which opens with the flight into the Seattle night.

Indifferent silence. Unanswered screams. A murderer and rapist running away through the night. Cruelty unchecked.
And then civilization, which did not stop this from happening, which did not even know this was happening, slowly returned, slowly wrapped itself back around the women, layer by insufficient layer. 

What is Sanders saying here?

It ends this way:

And then she—the bravest woman in Seattle—would testify at this trial, relive and recount it all, bear witness and bare her pain for the hope of justice.
Before all of this, though, the firemen would try to get Butz’s partner to sit down on South Rose Street, to stop her screaming. But she would not sit down and stop her screaming. Not after what happened. Not after all that silence. Not anymore.
A part of her knew Butz’s fate. Still, she shouted into the night. Even if Butz couldn’t hear her anymore, maybe someone would hear: “I love you, Teresa! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” 

Reporting drives great writing. There are no shortcuts. You cannot imagine the details of this story. You cannot write the victim's final quote; you simply have to listen and report. The truth of this story is too powerful to embellish. Sanders is a great writer, but he's also a great reporter.

He weaves reporting into his feature writing with such subtlety that you can miss it. But it's there, in sentence after sentence, as critical to his work as his understanding of language and narrative.

Here's an example of other reporting that Sanders had done on this case.