Each
story should have one main idea. That's the focus, which connects everything
in the story.
How can
you tell whether a story has an appropriate focus? The Editorial
Eye offers some suggestions for editors:
* Prepare
a list of the main idea in each paragraph, then look for
relationships among the items on your list.
They
all should hang together somehow. |
* Think
of the story as a tree.
The
main idea, or focus of the story, is the trunk.
The
other ideas are branches, either large
(with a direct connection to the main idea) or small
(relying on
a branch to connect back to the trunk).
A
good visual representation of such a tree is on page 201
of the book, with an explanation
on the preceding two pages. |
* Look
for a nut
graf, and help the writer come up with
one if you can't find it.
A
nut graf is a paragraph that tells readers what this story
is really about. It should
come high in the story.
A
nut graf is especially useful in feature stories or others
that use a delayed lead. Hard
news stories
typically use direct leads, which themselves generally
serve as the nut graf. |
|
Two
common types of unfocused stories are:
* List
stories, ones that simply pile up ideas without adequately
connecting them.
Inexperienced
writers commonly come up with these as they string together
facts from their notes
and try to call the story done. |
* "The
Thing Exists" stories,
which are generated when the writer discovers something
he or she didn't
know about before (but is not really news).
To
help the writer turn such a story into something worth
taking
up precious space to tell, look for a "hook" that
will give it news value. Contrast, conflict or novelty are likely candidates. (Can't find any of those? Maybe
you don't have a story ... yet.) |
|
How
can you help your writer find a focus? The Editorial Eye offers
a few suggestions:
* Have
the reporter put away his or her notebook and write
the story from memory.
What
the writer remembers most readily probably will be (or
can be turned into) the
focus of the story.
Of
course, for the final version, the writer will need to
incorporate details from those
notes. But that part
is easy once the story has a focus and a flow. |
* Ask
the writer to come up with a headline or a one-sentence
summary of the story.
As
you know, this
process will help you and the writer clearly articulate
what the
story is about. That's the story's focus, and you can
go from there. |
* Listen
to a story -- get inside it and really think about
what it's trying to say.
As
the editor, you not only represent the reader but you also
represent the story itself. Help the writer do justice to
each
story. |
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|
You
no doubt spent lots of time agonizing over leads in
the Journalistic Reporting and Writing course. Come up with a good
lead, and people read on. Write a bad one, and they don't.
You have,
roughly, three seconds to convince them to stay -- to sell the story
...
* But
not to "oversell" it.
The
lead shouldn't promise more than the story delivers -- and delivers
near the
top of the story. |
* Nor
to "undersell" it.
The
lead should do justice to the information the writer has. Writers
sometimes "bury
the lead" by starting out
with something less interesting. Editors help writers identify
what's good and craft a lead that highlights it. |
* Nor
to "mis-sell" it.
The
lead shouldn't mislead readers or try to trick them into reading
further.
It should match the story that follows in
tone and substance. |
A
lead, says nonfiction writer John McPhee, is a flashlight that
shines into the story. It points out a trail, illuminating
a path that readers will want to follow. Among the
functions of a lead are to:
* Grab
attention.
|
* Start
a flow of energy that propels the story forward.
|
* Tell
something about the subject of a story.
|
* Show
the significance of a story, answering the "so what" question.
("Why should I give a rat's ass?")
|
* Show
what kind of story it is, such as a hard news story, a feature
or an analysis.
|
* Establish
the pace and tone of the story.
|
| * Establish
the writer's voice and authority. |
Notice that these functions do not include telling everything there
is to know about a story.
Leads
should be short -- fewer than 20 words is a
good goal -- and clear.
Writers
may try to pack the who, what, when, where, why and how into
their lead. Editors help them lighten
the load. (Usually, who and what are most important, at least
in hard news leads.) |
Different
kinds of stories take different kinds of leads.
Breaking
news stories (a form of hard news) are relatively straightforward.
Writers are more
likely to need their editor's help with one of two kinds of other
stories:
* Routine stories.
You
can help the writer think about fresh ways to cover the
same old thing (meetings, staged events, minor crime
stories and the
like).
Give
it a try? |
* Feature stories.
You
can help the writer avoid cliches and other over-used leads by
working together to identify and build a lead
around something -- anything! -- that was unique or even just
unusual about this particular story.
|
A few of
the more common pitfalls, in no particular order:
* Generalizations. Press
the writer for specifics to incorporate in the lead.
Passive
constructions ("there were," "it is")
are especially undesirable in leads for a variety of reasons, including
the fact that what follows often is a generalization. |
* "Topic"
leads (see
p. 307, WWW). These
appear too often in stories about speeches or meetings, in particular.
A
topic lead says something such as "David Skorton
spoke Monday night with student government leaders." Instead,
the lead should tell us what was said (or what action was taken,
etc.): "Students are the university's greatest asset, UI
President David Skorton told student leaders Monday night."
Watch
out for leads that tell us someone discussed something or spoke
about something. That phrasing usually signals a topic
lead.
Urge
writers to stick with "so-and-so said," and you'll
be likely to have a stronger lead. |
* Complicated
leads. Help the writer boil leads down to their essence.
Details,
names, figures and other non-essentials can come in subsequent
paragraphs.
Leads should be 15 to 20 words, never more than 30. |
* Quote
leads. Writers sometimes love a good quote so much
that they want to make it the lead. The problem is that unlike
the writer, the
reader has no idea of the context for that quote -- who is talking
and what he or she is talking about.
In
general, avoid starting a story with a direct quote of a sentence
or more. Work with
the writer to develop a lead that contains
a strong set-up, then put the dynamite quote in the second
(at best) paragraph. |
* Cliches. There
are oh, so many of these. They just shout: "I'm bored
with my own story, and you will be, too!"
Both
your books provide lengthy lists of cliche leads to avoid. Here
are a few:
* Question
leads.
These just dare the reader to drop the story. Don't risk
it.
Besides,
the question is a sort of con -- the writer
intends to answer the question in the story, so it's just a rhetorical
device. Find an alternative. |
* One-word
leads.
These signal that the writer has no clue how to get into
the story.
The
funny thing is that often, the second paragraph
would make a pretty decent lead. So sell the writer on using
it. |
* Dictionary
leads. "Webster's
defines freedom as ... But to Joe Source, freedom means
..."
Do
I care? I do not. I'm outta here. |
| * Truism
leads. Everyone loves a good story ... but truism leads
don't signal that one will be forthcoming. |
|
|
The
focus question for writers (and editors) is, "What am I trying
to say?" The organization question is, "How
do I want to say it?"
Good organization
flows when the writer has a clear focus. When the focus isn't clear,
jumbled organization
often reflects the writer's confusion.
The
Editorial Eye offers
suggestions for editors trying to help writers with the organization
of a story:
* Label
each paragraph according to what kind of information it contains
(for instance, "problem" or "reason for
problem" or "solution").
Similar
labels generally should go together in a story. |
* Multiple-element
stories can be especially difficult to organize well. When
a story contains more than one equally important point, all of
them should be mentioned high up. (The nut graf comes in handy
here.)
Items
can then be tackled within the body of the story in the order
in which they were cited in the nut
graf.
Background
information should be kept to the minimum needed for understanding
the story (except on the Web, where background components can be linked
up as full-fledged stories unto themselves). Try to incorporate
the background
info
at the point in the story where a question would be likely to arise in
the reader's mind. |
Editors
should be able to imagine alternatives to the story the writer gives
them. This takes practice -- it's a lot easier to just fix
the commas and be done with it -- but you want to learn to think
about how else a story might be organized, structured and conveyed.
Options
for story structure include:
* Inverted
pyramid. You know all about this one, which typically
works best for hard-news stories.
Many
online stories, which take advantage of the medium's opportunity
to deliver breaking
news quickly, use this standard news format.
In converged operations, print or TV reporters commonly are
asked to provide a few paragraphs, in inverted-pyramid structure,
for the Web site before writing the story for the newspaper
or newscast. |
* Hourglass.
This structure starts like an inverted pyramid, with the most
important information up top, then switches to chronological
order somewhere in the middle.
An
hourglass structure often works well with crime or disaster stories. |
* Diamond.
The Wall Street Journal perfected this style in its feature stories,
and almost everyone else has copied it.
The
idea is to start with a concrete example of whatever the story
is about (usually
focusing on a person who exemplifies the topic in some way),
then broaden out to a more general discussion before returning
to
the individual at the end. |
* Parallel
narratives, in which different perspectives are juxtaposed
to tell a story.
This
one is difficult to do well (and tends to work better in longer-format
media, such
as magazines, than in ones where space is tight, such as newspapers).
But it can be very powerful with dramatic or personal stories,
especially if you have good photos to go with it.
A
related structure involves a series of vignettes, which the book
calls "stories
in scenes." These are little slices of
life, often as seen from the perspective of different sources,
with no
attempt to explicitly connect them for the reader. This structure
can be effective if used appropriately and sparingly -- but watch
out for writers who are just trying to avoid the hard work of
connecting ideas. |
Speaking of transitions, or the connections among ideas,
editors often need to help writers with ways to move the story along
logically.
What's intuitively
obvious to a writer familiar with a story may be much more obscure
to the reader, who of course is coming to the
story for the first time.
The
Editorial Eye again offers a good suggestion: Help the
writer picture the story as a chain of islands.
Each
paragraph is its own little island. Your reader is standing
on the first island, the lead, and wants to go to the second.
Writers
need to provide a bridge so the reader doesn't
drown. The bridge is logic -- the logical
relationship between each paragraph Once
you've identified that relationship, you've
identified the bridge between your islands.
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