By ROY PETER CLARK

      Clark said that the original story was divided into 35 short pieces along with an introduction that had a Frank Capra approach. It began, as some of Capra's movies start, by looking down at the world and then zeroing in on Youngstown, Ohio, where Tommy Carden was born, in the 1920s. Clark said that he uses short takes because he believes in a concept called ART, which stands for Approximate Reading Time. By writing short, said Clark, you are reminded of "how much [readers] will read and what you can do to help them."
      Clark wanted the story to run in the St. Petersburg Times, which Poynter owns. But when he handed the story over to the editors, they had some concerns.
      "The problem had to do with the tension in that voice and the story of Tommy Carden," explained Clark. "The division of the story of the individual soldier versus God's eye. And they thought in terms of the language and the structure there was some discord. They also felt that Tommy's story was more interesting, ultimately, than another rendition of what happened in World War II."
      Then they said something that startled Clark: they suggested he write the entire 15,000-word story in the voice of Tommy Carden. Clark was not crazy about rewriting the story, but he agreed to redraft 1,000 words as an experiment.
      Though there are many examples of this type of writing in books, it is much more rare in daily newspapers, said Clark.
      "I tried the 1,000 words, and I gave it to Jim Naughton, my boss and a former great editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a very good friend of the person I am writing about. I asked him a very simple question: Does this sound like Tommy? He gave me some quick feedback -- that it did. He gave me some other feedback, which was very helpful: he said, it sounds too much like Tommy. By that, he meant that I was exaggerating the characteristics, and they seemed to call attention to his catch phrases, the elements of his grammar, and all of the characteristics that go into his voice. Ultimately, they had to be toned down a little bit. So, actually, what I did was, I turned Tommy Carden into an overwriter in the first version of the story."
      It was a strange experience at times, writing in Tommy's voice, but it helped that he had gotten to know Tommy over the years. The first interviews with Tommy were informal conversations. They later became more pointed conversations with no note taking, and then - sit down, formal interviews.
      He also talked to other people who knew Tommy, and he had a memorable conversation with Tommy's favorite elementary-school teacher, Sister Mary Jane, who is 97 years old.
      "I spoke to her on the telephone about a month ago. And she has four great students in her mind that she had in Youngstown, and all of them were named Tommy. She goes `my Tommys, my Tommys.' I said, `Sister, I'm a friend of Tommy Carden's. Do you remember Tommy?' And she blurted out, `Did the boy turn out great?' "
      About 10 minutes into the interview, she lost her concentration and lost track of who Clark was. She started to think that he was Tommy. Clark tried to get her back on track, but he couldn't do it.
      "So out of courtesy, for about 10 minutes, I talked to her as if I was Tommy," said Clark. "Because I knew everything about the school. I did not intend to make believe, but it happened that way. She seemed happy that I -- Tommy -- was fine and I had a nice job and someone was writing a story about me. When I hung up, I thought how ironic it was during that limited amount of time that I not only imitated the voice of Tommy but, to this woman, that's who I was."
      But when Clark began interviewing other people who knew Tommy he began to encounter some interesting writing and ethical issues.

The second part of the lecture will appear next week.