write to the subject
(An added blog post on this week) This week I had spend a huge amount of time working on a Missourian piece about Box Elder, a locally-made independent film and its viral marketing campaigns. The story idea came to me from a convergence editor at the Missourian, and I was able to easily find all the sources relating to the story. The director of the film, Todd Sklar, was amazingly supportive throughout the interviews to promote the film before it is shown after the True/False film festival.
So all the facts becomes very handy to me. What I struggled with was the focus of the story: initially, I was under the impression that readers would be less interested in how the film is distributed and marketed than in what the film is about. But after discussion with my editors, I decided that distribution was what made the story special, and went for it. I wrote a fairly straight-up 12-inch story with an anecdotal lead, nut graph, background, development and wrap up. And that was it. Straight and factual.
But here I came across this Tribune piece about the same subject. A lot of my mistreatment of the story came to mind as I went through this "much more interesting" story. The difference: much longer, more direct quotes (with the film maker's characteristic way of speaking), more details showing the ambition of these film makers (something that I sensed but not put into the story), and complete side-bar description of what the film title (a kind of bug with a metephor) and a synopsis of the plot.
I would have done all these. This is a painful hindsight that came to me that I should have been able to take a step further and pushed for all the details of the story. What I would have done differently if I were able to do this story again? I would have been more relaxed, get to know more about what these people are doing, and LEARN TO WRITE TO THE SUBJECT. I should write in a voice that is fair to the subjet I'm writing about. In this case, more conversationally, more relaxed, and use the "young" language.
So all the facts becomes very handy to me. What I struggled with was the focus of the story: initially, I was under the impression that readers would be less interested in how the film is distributed and marketed than in what the film is about. But after discussion with my editors, I decided that distribution was what made the story special, and went for it. I wrote a fairly straight-up 12-inch story with an anecdotal lead, nut graph, background, development and wrap up. And that was it. Straight and factual.
But here I came across this Tribune piece about the same subject. A lot of my mistreatment of the story came to mind as I went through this "much more interesting" story. The difference: much longer, more direct quotes (with the film maker's characteristic way of speaking), more details showing the ambition of these film makers (something that I sensed but not put into the story), and complete side-bar description of what the film title (a kind of bug with a metephor) and a synopsis of the plot.
I would have done all these. This is a painful hindsight that came to me that I should have been able to take a step further and pushed for all the details of the story. What I would have done differently if I were able to do this story again? I would have been more relaxed, get to know more about what these people are doing, and LEARN TO WRITE TO THE SUBJECT. I should write in a voice that is fair to the subjet I'm writing about. In this case, more conversationally, more relaxed, and use the "young" language.
posted by Mu Li at
7:54 PM
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