Week Three: Writing a Story (remember to KISS)

‘There’s nothing to writing,’ US sports reporter Red Smith says, ‘All you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein’ (Fedler, 1993, ix).

Clarity is one of the core criteria of news writing. When you are pitching your story at a 12-year-old, it is very clear that it is not academic writing. It must be direct, concise and economical. This means you have to write short: short sentences, short paragraphs, short stories. Newspaper readers are pressed for time. You have to give them the news quickly, concisely and without a lot of extra words or information they don’t need. Your tone needs to be detached and objective. Use simple language. Think hard about every word you use. Is it necessary? Is there a more clear, concise way to say this?

(Did you find my short sentences just delicious?)

For example:

No: Biological sciences professor Karl Johnson passed away Tuesday at the age of 55, following a long, courageous battle with cancer. Yes: Biology professor Karl Johnson died of cancer Tuesday. He was 55.

Below are a list of questions that Shawn believed would help focus our stories:

• What is the story really about?

• What’s the news?

• What’s the story?

• What’s the image?

• How can I tell the story in 6 words?

• So what?

Here are some things I learnt from ‘Students in a jam’ – my university based story addressing the critical shortage of car parks at the start of session:

• When writing figures remember anything under ten is written as a word, and any figure over ten is a number. For example: “I can either drive for 45 minutes and then queue for 30 minutes for parking on campus, which doesn’t exist, or travel on a train for two hours and wait for a bus for 20 minutes.”
• Tight writing is good writing

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