The Art and Craft of Feature Writing
Metadata
- Author: William E. Blundell
- ASIN: B079WNX59L
- Reference: https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B079WNX59L
- Kindle link
Highlights
How can we make the truth as interesting to others as it is to us? That’s the nut of it. — location: 123
Besides those few people who see story possibilities everywhere, anyone who hopes to maintain a steady flow of ideas has to be an omnivorous, gluttonous reader, including in his diet publications few others read. It’s not enough to scan mass-circulation papers and magazines; they keep a reporter abreast of events and the competition, but their coverage of a story often kills or limits his chances of doing anything similar. — location: 179
Interesting
Into this go ideas hinging on events that will happen at specific times in the future, or ideas that just look hot—meaning that if they cannot be done quickly, the opportunity will disappear or very likely be skimmed off by competitors. — location: 194
Conversely, middlemen often are better able to provide specifics that bring stories to life or to guide reporters to them. They are less apt to be suspicious; indeed, many are complimented when interest is shown in their work, and respond well to reporters. Finally, some middlemen get to be top men, and they remember old contacts. — location: 206
He gnaws a tuna on rye at his desk, congratulating himself for his frugality and long hours, when he could be sharing a sole Veronique and an interesting chardonnay with someone better informed than he. — location: 214
The chemistry changes when the reporter explores general ideas with a source who knows he is not being dragooned into a story just yet. The reporter now is a student, the source a guru; — location: 218
EXTRAPOLATION — location: 225
What is the probable principal cause of this single development? — location: 233
Is it logical to think that this cause is a common driving force likely to create similar effects in other places on other people and organizations? — location: 235
the reporter who trains himself in extrapolative thinking adds a sharp tool to his kit. Using it, he can begin to shape major stories out of seemingly innocuous, isolated events. — location: 241
The reporter adept at synthesis sees and exploits the thread unifying several developments that to others appear unrelated. He assembles promising story ideas from what looks like a junkpile of spare parts. He does this by staying alert to possibilities of commonality in the material he reads — location: 244
Sometimes the events will differ and the locations will differ, but there will be a common cause behind all. Spotting it, the reporter gathers the disparate story elements under this umbrella. Are there alarming rises in juvenile epilepsy, truancy and petty theft? Maybe growing teenage addiction to video games has something to do with that. Are steel companies trimming inventories of sheet while glass companies are slowing production of safety glass? Maybe the auto industry is planning production cutbacks. — location: 271
Actors are those people who make things happen or who are directly affected by what happens. — location: 514
He should prize above all those ideas with action in them. Something is happening, it is having specific effects, and perhaps a counter-action is under way. — location: 548
Solution: Subject the story’s concept to cause-and-effect reasoning. — location: 573
In drawing and analyzing his cause-and-effect map, the reporter must consider time, distance and constituencies. The farther an element is from the central development at the core of the story, the greater the chance that this element hasn’t occurred. — location: 587
But give him one of each of those elements mixed together and you’ve got him. He’s convinced, and his full attention is still engaged, because you have provided a variety of internal proofs, a quality important to both the persuasiveness and conciseness of your story. Knowing this in advance, you plan to report points from various angles, seeking out quantitative evidence, quotes, and examples instead of piling up one class of material like this: — location: 1059
He’s convinced, and his full attention is still engaged, because you have provided a variety of internal proofs, a quality important to both the persuasiveness and conciseness of your story. — location: 1060
Readers love action, any kind of action, and the story that does not move, that just sits there stalled while people declaim, explain, elaborate and suck their thumbs is justly labeled by some editors as a MEGO—My Eyes Glaze Over. — location: 1083
That’s because he sees himself as a fact funnel. He writes flat prose; colorful expression might let the reader sense his presence in the story, something he regards as uncomfortably close to editorializing. He shies away from making firm conclusions dictated by plain sets of facts. Instead he gives us timid, weaselly ones or, more often, drags into the story a source who will state the obvious for him. After all, if he jumped in, that too might be seen as a cheeky intrusion. He fails to highlight intrinsic drama because it makes him queasy; someone might accuse him of hyping or sensationalizing the story. Bullfeathers. As storytellers, we are in the drama business. And we can’t be totally objective, at least as I understand the word. By the act of selecting what material to use and what to omit, by deciding what to stress and what to downplay, we forfeit any claim to ultimate objectivity. The best we can be is fair, going on the evidence and not on our prejudices, and fair we must always be. It is a commandment. — location: 1270
Look closely for emotional motives and personality factors when some action does not, on analysis, make convincing sense. Company A, say, is trying to take over company B. It swears up and down that the two will make sweeter music together than they ever could separately, and that all shareholders will benefit. But Wall Streeters are scratching their heads; A is already overextended and the other company’s businesses don’t seem to fit into A’s operations that well. This mystery is solved in part when we can show that the chairman of A has a Napoleonic complex and detests the chairman of B to boot. Hard material to get? You bet—but necessary in a story like this. — location: 1408
Countermoves is the last action element and one present only in a mature story. In gauging the likely importance of this section in his own piece, a reporter should give more weight to what is being done than to what is being said. Talk is cheap, action precious. — location: 1440