Writing Tools No. 1 and 2.
Where are the subjects and verbs of the sentences? Are the strong words at the beginning and ends of the paragraphs?
Let’s look at this story from the Sunday New York Times:
The subjects and verbs are in yellow. The blue indicates I have a comment about the word order. And if we are lucky, I will remember what it is.
By Dan Barry
New York Times
ELYRIA, OHIO — Another day begins with a sound softer than a finger-snap, in an Ohio place called Elyria. In the central square of this small city, the gushing water fountain applauds the early-morning chorus of sparrows. A car clears its throat. A door slams. And then: click.
(Note the lengths of the sentences in the opening graf, becoming shorter as you go until it draws down to that one last word.
Subjects and verbs are right next to each other. No search needed to find the verb that goes with the subject. It’s more immediate that way, more impact, especially with the active verbs he uses: begins, applauds, clears and slams. Note the personification of the fountain and the car.
Last of all, that wonderful word order on “an Ohio place called Elyria.” It gets the name of the place to the end of the sentence, but there’s also something about turning the noun Ohio into an adjective. Maia said it made it more like a fairy-tale place, which I thought was a good way of describing the effect. Whatever it is, it’s much more interesting than just saying, “in Elyria, Ohio.”)
The faint sound comes as 7:00 flashes on the clock of the Lorain National Bank building, looming over the square. The pull of a string — click — has sent life pulsing through a neon sign, announcing to all of Elyria that, once more, against the odds, Donna’s Diner is open.
(What is the effect of all that passes before? Open, that’s what. The last word in the graf.)
Its proprietor, Donna Dove, 57, ignites the grill that she seems to have just turned off, so seamlessly do her workdays blend into one endless shift. She wears her blond hair in a ponytail and frames her hazel eyes with black-rimmed glasses that tend to get smudged with grill grease. She sees the world through the blur of her work.
A dozen years ago, Donna found a scrap of serendipity on the sidewalk: a notice that a local mom-and-pop restaurant was for sale. After cooking for her broken family as a child, after cooking for county inmates at one of her many jobs, she had come to see food as life’s binding agent, and a diner as her calling. She maxed out her credit cards, cashed in her 401(k) and opened a business to call her own. Donna’s Diner. Donna’s.
You know this place: It is Elyria’s equivalent to that diner, that coffee shop, that McDonald’s. From the vantage point of these booths and Formica countertops, the past improves with distance, the present keeps piling on, and a promising future ispractically willed by the resilient patrons.
(What is unsaid in the sentence ending with ”McDonald’s? He never defines the place that you all know except by throwing out some nouns. But we do know that place, that neightborhood gathering spot without him having to go into detail.)
It is where the recession and other issues of the day are lived as much as discussed. Where expectationsfor a certain lifestyle have been lowered and hopesfor salvation through education and technology have been raised. Where the presidential nomineesBarack Obama and Mitt Romney each hope that his plan for a way back will resonatewith the Donna Doves, who try to get by in places like Elyria — where the American dream they talk about can sometimes seem like a tease.
But for now, at least, the door to Donna’s is open. So take a seat. Have a cup of coffee. Maybe some eggs.
(What are the subjects of the last two verbs here. What is the author doing and why is he doing it? Switching to the imperative and talking directly to the reader. Another way of engaging them.)
This morning, as usual, Pete Aldrich is helping Donna through the new-dawn isolation, turning on the coffee and being compensated by food and tips from the occasional delivery. In his early 50s, well-educated and from regional royalty, he has hitsome hard times, and may or may not have slept in his car last night, cocooned by his bundled possessions.
(“This morning” starts the graf and keeps the reader with the writer. Now we are talking about this morning, he is saying, just so you will know and stay with me. The reader should never become lost in time or space or person between grafs, sentences or even words. Guide them.)
Pete tries, though, he tries. Heoften leavesstraight from Donna’s for a job interview, hustling out with purpose, no matter that his thick-lensed eyeglasses are missing one arm. Something will turn up.
(Verb repetition. Works here. Don’t overuse it.)
That is the communal hope. Donna, for example, is dogged by the day’s anxieties. Why are her receipts going down? What lunch special can she offer to clean out the refrigerator? Should she buy less perch for her Friday fish fry? Can she slide a month on her electric bill? Since she already doesn’t have health insurance, what else can she cut?
“I’m just going in circles and circles and circles,” Donna says one day, gazing through smudged glasses. “And not getting anyplace.”
(Note the attribution in the middle of the sentence and not at the end or beginning. What she says is more important than the attribution and deserves to be at the start and end. Exception: When switching in quoted material from one speaker to another. Then move the attribution to the start of the second person’s quote to alert the reader that another person is talking.)
The fresh aroma of coffee face-slaps the air. Soon the Breakfast Club regulars, that gaggle of Elyrian past and present, will be here to renew their continuing discussion of what was, is and isn’t in this city of 55,000. The presidential election sometimes serves as a conversation starter, like a curio placed between the salt and pepper shakers.
(Love the imagery of the curio placed between the salt and peper shakers.)
The multi-media presentation of this series is fairly amazing. It might make you think that writing text is not going to be enough to be a published author any more:
There’s one other exercise that we could do with this story: Go through it and speculate on how the reporter got each piece of information in it. It looks to me that he used every method of research we discussed last week: personal observation, interviews, public documents, maybe a camera to get the detail in Donna’s Diner, etc.
We won’t be spending this much time on these exercises in the future, but all of them introduce another way to analyze your own writing. Look for the phrasing you overuse. Is your writing flabby with too many words? Are your verbs active? Do you rely on forms of “to be” and “to have” too much?
Now let’s talk about getting started on a piece of writing:
Find your focus. A topic is not a story. An issue is not a story. Find the piece you can focus on and go for it. (more below)
Find your audience (in some cases you may need to reverse those two actions). More importantly, identify the audience of the media where you hope to see your article published.
n Are you aiming at an audience that is well-versed in the subject you are writing about? Or are you introducing them to it?
n What is the proper tone and style for this audience? Will humor be appropriate?
n What about length? Will there be any other elements to support your article (photos, graphics, etc.)?
Take a look at the handout I gave you on “Focus.” Turn to the third page on the “Five Stages of a Story.”
We are at the idea stage. But before we hear your ideas, two things to keep in sight: A topic is not a story idea. A subject is not a story idea. Try to write about a topic and you will never bring your story in for a landing. Now to mix metaphors: You need to bite off a digestible piece of the topic/subject, chew it well and make it palatable to the reader.
Story forms: Second page of the handout.
Here’s the link to the video on the inverted pyramid:
I’ll try to figure out how to get the sound working in the class room. Sorry about the glitch last week.
More story forms:
Block: Helps in technical stories. Sometimes in stories where the chronology is important (think Benghazi attack on consulate and Egyptian riot)
Layer Cake: Good for when you are casting back and forth among different time elements. You will need strong transistions.
Wineglass: My favorite. Combines the inverted pyramid but still allows for story telling.
Note the parts of the handout on organizing your story. My fav is the jot outline. That can be the outline you turn into me for your final project.
See Boswell comment on thread (first page of handout)
I keep tyring to get to this info in class, but have run out of time twice. So here it is for you to look at on your own. It’s entertaining, it’s advice worth reading on writing:
Want something different to get your writing juice flowing? Check this out (but do your assignment first):
The URL home for the above:
Not so entertaining, but good on editing and revision:
Next week: Eli Sanders on this article, which won him the Pulitzer:
I also like his explanation of how he started writing non-fiction. From the NYT story on his new book, "Spillover," about the threat of animal diseases jumping over to humans:
