stanley ma. + the importance of good writing + types of feature stories + news features + colour...

Stanley Ma

+ The importance of good writing+ Types of feature stories+ News features+ Colour stories and atmosphere pieces+ Featurized leads, topic leads+ Metaphors as leads+ Suspended interests leads

+ Literary devices+ Analogies+ Irony+ Snappers or kickers+ Clozure+ Humour+ understatement

+ News feature rides more on the writing than on events

+ Depends heavily on the quality of the writing+ C.f., Hard news

– The writing can be atrocious, but the events are newsworthy

– Readers will stay with the story just to get the facts

+ Focus on human nature (人性 )– Good side and dark side of human character– Virtues and evils (善與惡 )– Happiness and suffering– Pleasure and pain (快樂與痛苦 )

+ News feature+ Personality profiles+ Interviews+ Colour stories+ How-to stories+ Self-help pieces

+ Feature stories about contemporary news events

+ More timely + Follow-up to reported news events+ A sense of urgency

The uneasy Black-Hispanic Coexistence, p.108

+ HOUSTON – A black woman, Ross Hawkins, 62, a school cook, have lived among Hispanics for years, and all has been well. But she ticks off the homes where new Hispanics now reside – one next door, another across the street, two down the block, side by side.– The writer places the reader in the middle of the

interview

+ Paras. 2, 4, 6, 9, 11– Full and direct quotes– Make the readers feel close to the people in the

story

+ Has the sole purpose of creating atmosphere for the reader

+ Rely heavily on sensory details such as sights, sounds, smells

+ Also known as atmosphere pieces+ See the example at p.110

+ Stories explain to readers how to do something how-to stories

+ Stories explain to readers where to do something where-to stories– Where to shop

+ Featurized leads– No more 5W’s as opener– A summary lead is inappropriate– Start the story by looking for an angle – Look for the “peg”

+ Most basic kind of feature lead+ Identifies the issue that the news story is about+ Example from a story that reviews an American

congressional investigation into organized crime with roots in China and Hong Kong– Explosive new evidence about Chinese organized crime reveals

how the United States authorities are fighting an uphill battle against the triad invasion from Hong Kong.

+ A metaphor (暗喻 ) is a statement about a likeness between two things that are ordinarily dissimilar

+ Example– The Parliament’s debate turned into a shooting

match between politicians on opposite sides of the aisle.

– The prime minister has come under fire for not meeting Dilai Lama at Downing Street.

+ SAN FRANCISCO – Imagine a thirsty man bending down at the edge of a vast lake to take a drink of water. Unfortunately he can take his drink only in the most agonizing fashion, through the thinnest of straws.

This is the problem facing personal computer users who attempt to connect to the profusion of networks, on-line data bases, bulletin boards and electronic mail systems that have sprung up in recent years.

+ Arouses the interest of the reader and abruptly suspends it, forcing the reader to continue reading the story in order to resolve his heightened interest.

+ LONDON – WHEN Mrs. Janet Wynn opened her diary Monday morning, she found the following entry in another person’s hand:

“House burgled, 5 a.m.”

+ The lead implies that while Mrs. Wynn slept, someone broke into her residence, stole some items and wrote an entry in her diary as a joke.

+ A direct quotation or a question in a lead

+ CHICAGO – “Want to make a small fortune trading commodities? Start with a big one.”That old joke frequently makes the rounds at Chicago’s commodity exchanges, but many people still haven’t heard it, or at least haven’t heeded it.

+ Anecdotes are little stories that illustrate a point, and jokes are a type of anecdote.

+ The lead looks like a question, but it really is not

+ The lead is a joke, and the joke has a question in it

+ The quotes are included to make the joke stand out

+ But leads with questions are extremely weak and they are uncommon

+ Whenever a question or a direct quotation is the best way to lead a story, it will be perfectly obvious to you

+ Without this kind of certainty, you should avoid them as leads

+ A story or an account of events+ A narrative provides the setting of a story + It opens a news story in the same way that

most novels or short stories open

+ TAIPEI – It rained here Monday night – great gushes of warm rain carried inland by a mild northeasterly monsoon. Tuesday dawned humid and hazy.

+ Mr. Law Man Fun kicked over his motorscooter and headed into the dense morning commuter traffic. He was only one of tens of thousands of commuters who rely on scooters even though they can afford cars.