Concrete details bring tedious topics to life When Ian Jones needed to craft a — yawn! — diversity story for employees at Columbia Gas of Virginia, his first instinct was to go with a fact pack. You can see Ian's natural creativity peeking through with the concrete details in the headline and — buried deep but still breathing — in the … [Read more...] about ‘From Tina Turner to Taylor Swift’
Story structure
Begin in the middle
Start your story in medias res You remember learning about in medias res (classical Latin for "into the middle things") in college. That's where you open your story the midst of the action. Here's a great example, from The New York Times Magazine: [Don't bother with background, scene setting or even introducing the subject. Just start at the most dramatic moment … [Read more...] about Begin in the middle
Break the news
The New York Times improves on the fact pack Writing a news story? You could do worse than study The New York Times for inspiration. We analyzed 87 stories in the Dec. 15, 2014, edition of the Times. (We skipped the sports pages and one-paragraph stories.) Reporters started 44 of those pieces with news leads. News leads put the bottom line up front so busy … [Read more...] about Break the news
I’ve got a little list
Eight thoughts about the length of your listicle Thank you, David Letterman. The Top 10 list rules the Web — or at least, Buzzfeed. The number of Buzzfeed listicles with the numeral 10 in the headline outranked the next most popular numeral (15) by 142%, according to research by Noah Veltman and Brian Abelson, two Knight-Mozilla fellows. Fiddle around with … [Read more...] about I’ve got a little list
Hit list
Lists top the list of blog posts that get shared If David Letterman taught us one thing during his tenure as host of Late Night, it's that people love lists. It's no wonder, then, that when Fractl and Buzzstream recently analyzed more than 200,000 articles from June to November 2014, lists topped the list of top 5 types of blog posts that get shared: Lists. … [Read more...] about Hit list