RADIO * TELEVISION * FILM * RECORDING * NEWSPAPER * INTERNET

 
Citation Poster Journalism Poster
 

7 HINTS TO IMPROVE ANY NEWSPAPER STORY

By Donald M. Murray
The Poynter Institute
 
Professional writers never learn to write’ they continue to learn writing all their professional lives.

The good writer is forever a student of writing, extending the writer’s voice, learning techniques of craft, attempting experiments in meaning.

It is a lonely business, but not a solitary one. Writers need colleagues, test readers, editors and sometimes a writing coach who, like the opera star’s coach, does less teaching than reminding.

The old definitions of hard news---the story that has to be printed today---and the feature---the story that can wait until tomorrow---do not cover the diversity of stories printed in today’s daily newspapers. But whatever the form or the subject, any good story has at least seven elements.
 
Information
Information, not language, is the raw material from which effective writing is built. The writer must collect specific, accurate pieces of information to be able to write effective prose. Too many columns and stories are written instead of reported; they are created by tricks or by rhetoric when they should be constructed from a pattern of concrete detail. The revealing details that mark an exceptional story rarely come from competitors’ stories, the telephone or by the writer staring thoughtfully across the city room. Information that reveals is collected with the legs.
 
Significance
Good stories affect the reader. They affect the reader’s life, health, wealth or sense of values. They give information the reader needs to know. They tell what has happened, what is happening and what may happen. We should not, however, confuse significance with notoriety, doing stories on the rich, the famous, the powerful and no one else. It is our duty to show the significance in material that at first appears insignificant.
 
Focus
The stories that newspaper writers usually take most pride in are long and often come in a series. The news writer is a territorial animal with a primitive instinct to use up as much newsprint as possible. But the stories that survive are usually short, precisely limited and clearly focused. Most good stories say one thing. They tell not of a battle, but of a soldier; they talk not about governance, but a deal; they discuss not a socioeconomic group, but reveal a person and a life.
 
Content
The effective story is put into perspective so the reader knows where the story has come from or where it is going, how widespread or how typical it is. Sometimes the writer who is not skillful delivers the context in a big, hard-to-swallow capsule in about, say, the third paragraph. The more skillful writer weaves the context through the story.
 
Form
An effective story has a shape that both contains and expresses the story. A narrative will work if it has all the information the reader needs and if the story can be revealed in a chronological pattern of action and reaction.

The writer must find a form that gives the reader a satisfying sense of completion, a feeling that everything in the story flows toward an inevitable conclusion.
 
Voice
Memorable news stories create the illusion of an individual writer speaking aloud to an individual listener. A good newspaper is filled with fascinating conversations. But the writer must remember to keep the voice appropriate to the story. We all know writers who use the same voice every time they write. There is always an Uncle Elmer who bellows in the same way at a football game, wake, Thanksgiving dinner and hospital room. The good writer seeks a voice that is consistent throughout the story, but varies its volume and rhythm to the meaning. And we should never forget that even in an age of mass communication the act of reading is private, one writer speaking to one reader.
 
Principles
Collect - Effective writing is built from specific, accurate information. To write well, the writer must find the details that reveal meaning, which the poet, Maxine Kumin, calls the “informing material”. Words are symbols for information. Before writing, the writer must collect an abundant inventory of fact, impressions, quotations, details, much more than the reporter will use during the writing. The reporter must be open to surprising information, details not yet understood.

Order - It is the responsibility of the artist---and the news writer---to bring order to chaos. The writer must discover the patterns of information that will inform the reader. The news is put into context so the present rises from the past and points toward the future. The writer satisfies the reader’s hunger for specifics arranged in a revealing pattern, a temporary order in the daily confusion.

Clarity - The effective writer works to become invisible. The best prose seems not to be written at all. To achieve this clarity, the writer cuts, adds and reorders; seeks active verbs, proper nouns, and the subject-verb-object sentence. The writer should remember the flight of the seagull; economy of motion, simplicity and grace. Most of the time less is more.
 
The tricks

• Figure out the questions that the reader will ask. Ask them. Imagine how the story will affect your readers. Dig for the information to reveal it.

• Listen to what is being said---and how it is being said.

• You are not an expert. You are a reporter. Don’t be afraid to double-check your information. Intelligent ignorance can be a good quality in a reporter.

• Use all your senses. Capture the sound, smell, taste, feel, as well as the sight of the story.

• Remember that people want to read about people. Get names, ages, titles, addresses and more. Record the details that reveal people acting and reacting with each other.

• Be skeptical, not cynical. Remember Hemingway’s advice: “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit-detector”.

• Know why the reader should read the story. Make sure you know the one most important meaning of the story.

• The lead is the key to organization. It orders the material for the writer. Rehearse leads on your way back to the city room. Draft several leads, a half-dozen, a dozen---at three minutes a lead---to make sure you find the lead that works best.

• Once you have the lead, write the story fast. Then go back and check each fact, each name, each detail, each detail, each statistic, each quote.

• Order the story so that you won’t have to use transitions. Anticipate and answer the reader’s questions as they are being asked.

• Document every major point with information and let the reader know the source of that information.

• Give the readers the information that makes them turn to someone and say, “Listen to this…” The good story makes the reader an authority.

• Write in the active, not the passive voice.

• Vary the length of paragraphs and sentences. The more vital or complicated the point, the shorter the sentence or paragraph.

• Remember that brevity results from selection more than compression.

• Use a variety of quotations and paraphrase. Use quotations to allow sources to make large, judgmental or controversial points. Make sure quotes sound like the speaker, not the writer.

• Watch out for too many ings, lys, that’s, shoulds, woulds, quites and variations of the verb to be.

• Put significant information at the end and the beginning of the paragraph.

• To test the writing, read aloud.

 

FINDING YOUR LEAD

By Dick Thien, Editor-in-Residence
The Freedom Forum
 
1. Question Approach:
Answer in less than 25 words. What's the story about?

2. Focus:
This is the so what of the story, the reason for the story. It is also the nut graph. Write the focus graph first. Then determine if the lead you are considering will lead to the focus. If not, find a lead that will.

3. Tell it to Mom approach:
This is the conversational approach, popularized by Roy Peter Clark, dean of the Poynter Institute. If you were telling your mother or friend about the story, what would you say? Then write the lead as you expressed it. You can clean up the language later.

4. Multiple approach:
Try many different leads. Just jot down an idea or several different sentences and plan to fix them later. Don't suffer until you get the perfect lead.

5. Focus on a person:
This is often a good way to get into a story. But don't plop a person in your lead unless that person is crucial to your story. Unless you have backup for this person to be in your story, you are plopping.

6. During the reporting:
When you are doing the reporting, listen for possibilities for a good lead and star your notes when you think you have something that will work.

7. Narrative approach:
Do you have a good story to tell? Try the storytelling method of placing the reader at the scene and recounting an event as it happened.

8. Anecdotal approach:
Did you gather any interesting anecdotes about your subject? If not, this approach may not work. The anecdote should reflect a theme about your subject.

9. Descriptive approach:
Do you want to set a scene or show the person in action? Is the description interesting enough to compel the reader to continue reading? If so, this approach may work. Beware of the weather report: It was a dark and story night. Unless the weather is crucial to your story, forget it.

10. Mystery leads:
Can you phrase your lead so that the reader is treated to a surprise? Does the lead foreshadow something that will be explained later in the story?

11. Other possibilities:
Problem/solution: Can you set up a problem so that the reader needs to read on to find the solution?
Summary: A basic hard-news approach. Try summarizing what happened in one sentence, preferably less than 25 words.
Question: An unpopular approach but still possible if the question is one that would make the reader want to discover the answer.
Build on a quote: Can you fashion the lead so that it is backed up by a good quote? If you use this approach, be careful not to word the lead so that it repeats the quote.
Quote leads: Use only if you have a great quote that is worth leading the story. A boring quote is a message to the reader that that the rest of the story may be boring, too.

Leads checklist:

Entice:
Does the lead entice the reader to continue reading?

Focus:
Does the lead draw the reader to focus (nut graph) of the story?

Foreshadow:
Does the lead give a hint about something that will come later in the story?

Grabber:
Is the lead a grabber, a lead that will make the reader spit up her coffee?

Mom:
Does the lead pass the "tell it to Mom" principle? Is it worded clearly enough in the way that you would tell it to your mother or a friend?

So what:
Does the lead pass the "who cares" test? Does it give the reader a reason to continue reading the story?

Backup:
Does the lead have backup in the story?
 
RETURN TO NEWSPAPER