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Profile feedback. Start strong. Think short, snappy sentences. Get to the point quickly. Put extraneous info lower in story. Grab my attention with an angle. Example. First, she was a Hawkeye. Then she was a Longhorn. Now, Brittany McNeal is happy as a Husker. . Another good example.
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Start strong • Think short, snappy sentences. • Get to the point quickly. • Put extraneous info lower in story. • Grab my attention with an angle.
Example • First, she was a Hawkeye. Then she was a Longhorn. Now, Brittany McNeal is happy as a Husker.
Another good example • For RyneStefankiewicz, Husker football is everything. “Life stops on Saturdays,” he said. “I haven’t missed a game since I was six.”
Weave in the details • Don’t need this in the lede: Kelley is a senior broadcasting major with a coaching minor and will graduate in December.
Get to the point quickly • Where in the world is Teresa Lostroh? She may be physically in Lincoln, Neb. but she says her heart remains in Costa Rica.
Instead… • Teresa Lostroh may live in Lincoln, but her heart remains in Costa Rica. • That’s where Lostroh, a senior news-editorial and Spanish major, discovered her passions: Spanish and traveling.
Details, details • Be accurate. Check names of people, companies, places. • Follow AP Style. Use your stylebooks. (see basics on the blog). • Avoid redundancies: Don’t need “currently.”
Quotes • Stick the attribution in the middle so you end on the quote. Gives it more punch.
Example • “On my 21st birthday I discovered I am some sort of darts prodigy, of course I am over exaggerating, but I really like darts. It is on my bucket list to join a darts league... eventually,” Nelson said. • “On my 21st birthday I discovered I am some sort of darts prodigy, of course I am over exaggerating, but I really like darts,” Nelson said. It is on my bucket list to join a darts league...eventually.”
Endings • Start strong and end strong. • Like a gymnast sticks a landing, you need a strong ending. • Think of it as a reward for your reader sticking with you.
Advice from Roy Peter Clark • Close the circle: Echo the beginning. • Let the character speak the ending: Use a quote. • Project the reader into the future. • Ride off into the sunset.
Example • “I feel pretty unique for having red hair,” she said. But in the land of the Big Red, McNeal fits right in.
Portraits of Grief • The question, at last, is put to Andrew Caspersen: Did your girlfriend have any flaws? • Long pause. • Catherine Fairfax MacRae, granddaughter of a founding partner of the law firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, won the math prize at the Brearley School, was editor of its newspaper, and was a ferocious field hockey player. At Princeton she made varsity squash and graduated magna cum laude in economics, with concentrations in math and finance. She never pulled an all-nighter and usually finished her work a week ahead, said Channing Barnett, a friend. • Cat was never late and expected the same when you met her for dinner. She was inexhaustibly thoughtful, always checking in, sending small gifts, and fretting that she was not being a good enough friend, seemingly to hundreds. She was beautiful and funny and charmingly self-deprecating and talked on the phone to her mother at least three times a day.
People always wanted her at their parties. She was 23, and a stock analyst at Fred Alger Management on the 93rd floor of 1 World Trade Center. Mr. Caspersen? "She was not great with driving directions and we'd get lost quite often," conceded Mr. Caspersen, a Harvard law student. "But that was a bonus. It allowed us to spend more time together."
