Story Structure

1. Story Structure First the idea. Then the words.

2. Think the story through before you write. • Look through your notes and ask yourself: “What do I want to say? Where do I put it?” • That is the key to putting your notes into some kind of structured shape.

3. The news story form or structure is simple: • The lead. • The material that explains and amplifies the lead. • The necessary background. • The secondary or less important material.

4. The first step: “What am I trying to say?” • Next step: “Find the appropriate form or structure for what you want to say, and say it.

5. Eight Steps to the Organized Story • Identify the focus or main idea from notes. • Locate the material that supports, explains, amplifies the main idea. • Organize the secondary material in order of importance. • As you write, make sure the separate elements are linked with transitions. • Read the completed copy to make sure you have buttressed, documented, explained the lead high in the story. • Read the completed copy for accuracy, brevity, clarity. • Read the completed copy for grammar, style, word usage. • If steps 5 through 7 indicate problems—and they usually do turn up—rewrite.

6. Try not to wander… • The inability to fix on the point causes writers to go on and on and on. • See Lewis Carroll’s Alice in her conversation with the Cheshire Cat: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.” • No editor will permit a writer to wander aimlessly through a story on the way to somewhere.

7. Another basic guideline for structuring a story? • Put related material together: “Like things together.” • Put everything about the same subject in the same place.

8. The Inverted Pyramid • Important elements at the beginning, less important at the end. • Sometimes the pleasure may come from suspense, a holding of the breath until the climax is revealed deep in the story. When the reporter senses that this kind of structure is appropriate for the event, a delayed lead will be used.

9. Is the news story a work of art? • Perhaps at least a minor work of art. • The news story meets the demands of art: It reveals a harmony of design.

10. Storytelling • Everyone loves a good story. If the event makes storytelling appropriate, use it. • Storytelling versus Inverted Pyramid: • Both forms require the writer to select the major theme, and both demand that the writer be scrupulous in writing the lead. • We know that the major theme goes in the lead of the straight news story. In narrative form, the incident or example selected to begin the piece must fit neatly into the theme. And woe to the writer who decides to put a delayed lead on a straight news story.

11. A point about Online Writing • Studies show that readers spend two minutes on one online article. • MSNBC.com uses a story form it calls the Model T. The top of the T is a summary lead that gives the reader the point of the story at once. The vertical part of the T, the body of the story, can be told in any fashion the writer finds appropriate—straight news story, feature or narrative.

12. The General, Then the Specific • When a council member says that next year’s budget will set a record high, the reporter asks how high that will be, what the amount will be.

13. DAD: Dialogue, Action, Description • The writer must be conscious of the need to organize the story around dialogue, action and description.

14. Story Necessities • No amount of classy and clever writing can disguise a poorly reported story. As the saying goes, a story cannot be any better than the reporting behind it. • Let’s look at some basics about reporting: • Take any event and play the reporter’s game. What are the necessary facts for an automobile accident story, a fire story, an obituary?

15. It will have to contain the child’s name, age and address; the driver’s name, age, address and occupation; the circumstances and location of the accident; the extent of the child’s injuries; the action, if any, taken against the motorist.

16. Summing Up Reporters try to visualize and structure their stories at these stages: • Immediately on receiving the assignment. • While gathering material at the event. • Before writing. • During writing.