COMM 337: How to find a story idea - for Tuesday, Oct. 25

For Tuesday, read Chapters 1 and 2 of the "Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing" and be ready to tell me what your feature story will be about and who you will interview for it. (These are obviously very closely related.) The following is lifted from my old SCI faculty page, where I used it for students in my journalism and freshman English courses. I haven't tried to update it, but it's still full of good basic advice to help you get started:

In basic newswriting (Communications 209), you will be writing stories all the time. freshman English, you will be asked to write at least one descriptive essay. For 10 years, students at SCI labored through the fourth chapter of the St. Martin's Guide to Writing, which was about how to write something the authors of the text called a "profile" (some of us suspected it was just a fancy name for a human interest story or newspaper Sunday story). Now we have gone to another text for English 111, but I still assign students to use the techniques of profile writing. Don't get hung up on what to call it. Descriptive essay, profile, feature story, whatever -- good writing is good writing, and it's full of vivid detail. Even if you have no intention of going into journalism, you can profit from it.

"Whatever their subjects or whatever information may be available to them, profile writers strive first and foremost to present a person, a place, or an activity vividly to their readers," said the St. Martin's Guide. "They succeed only by presenting many concrete details that will enable readers to imagine the scene and the people. Most important, writers orchestrate the details carefully to convey an attitude toward their subjects and to offer an interpretation of them" (109). That attitude or interpretation is often known as a dominant impression. It serves the same purpose as a thesis statement, because it ties the essay together around a central idea. It makes one main point.

So how do you do a profile? You observe the thing -- or person, place or event -- you're writing about. Rise Axenrod and Charles Cooper, authors of the St. Martin's Guide, put it like this: "In writing a profile, you practice the field research methods of observing, interviewing, and notetaking commonly used by investigative reporters, social scientists, and naturalists. You also learn to analyze and synthesize the information you have collected."

Finding a lively topic (story idea)

What makes a good topic? Anything that interests you will probably interest your readers. Here are a few suggestions culled from the St. Martin's Guide (133-36). It's available only in a dead-tree (paper) format, but you can find it in SCI's Becker Library if you want to see more suggestions. The call number is 808 042 A969 1997:

• People. Anyone with an unusual or intriguing or interesting job or hobby -- a private detective, beekeeper, classic-car owner, dog trainer ... campus personality -- ombudsman, coach, distinguished teacher ... [s]omeone whose predicament symbolizes that of other people ... [s]omeone who has made or is currently making an important contribution to a community ... [s]omeone in a community who is generally not liked or respected but tolerated, such as a homeless person, gruff store owner, or unorthodox church member, or someone who has been or is in danger of being shunned or exiled from a community ... college senior or graduate student in a major you are considering ... [s]omeone working in the career you are thinking of pursuing [or] ... trains people to do the kind of work you would like to do.
  
  
• Places. A weight reduction clinic, tanning salon, body-building gym, health spa, nail salon ... used-car lot, old movie house, used-book store, antique shop, historic site, hospital emergency room, hospice, birthing center, psychiatric unit ... local diner; the oldest, biggest, or quickest restaurant in town; a coffeehouse ... florist shop, nursery, or greenhouse; pawnshop; boatyard ... facility that provides a needed service in its community, such as a legal advice bureau, child care center, medical clinic, mission or shelter that offers free meals ... [a]n Internet site, such as a chat room, game parlor, or bulletin board where people form a virtual community.
  
  
• Activities. A citizens' volunteer program -- voter registration, public television auction, meals-on-wheels project, tutoring program ... unconventional sports event -- marathon, Frisbee tournament, chess match ... [f]olk dancing, rollerblading, rock climbing, poetry reading ... [a] team practicing ... community improvement project, such as graffiti cleaning, tree planting, house repairing, church painting, highway litter pickup ... [r]esearchers working together on a project ... [the] actual [and usually very unglamorous] activities performed by someone doing a kind of work represented on television, like that of a police detective, judge, attorney, newspaper reporter, taxi driver, novelist, or emergency room doctor ... [a]ctivities to prepare for a particular kind of work, for example, a boxer preparing for a fight, an attorney preparing for a trial, a teacher or professor preparing a course, an actor rehearsing a role, a musician practicing for a concert.