Category: Research & Writing

That’s a Good Idea!

Lightning Strike in the high desert

What makes great story ideas? Where do we find them, and once we do, what on Earth do we do with them?

Continue reading “That’s a Good Idea!”

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Intro to features and longer stories

Photo: zetson/flickr, some rights reserved

Classwork for this week:

Take a look at a few examples of non-fiction writing or extended audio or video features (please see the resources below, or of course you may choose your own). Draw up lists which will show how each story differs in respect to the following elements:

  • story purpose
  • audience types and requirements
  • style
  • any links between word length or duration, style, audience, publication, and purpose
  • note especially how each story opens, and how it ends (very different from the inverted pyramid story)
  • other elements, such as photographs, illustrations, captions, supers, subtitles, headlines, and standfirsts (a ‘standfirst’ is a short paragraph that outlines the story to come)

RESOURCES:

Trent Dalton, The Australian – Islanders’ Deadly Inheritance

Chris Solomon, outsideonline.com – Feet Lost and Found in the Pacific Northwest

Ruth Pollard, The Sydney Morning Herald – Grief grips Gaza

N.R. Kleinfeld, The New York Times – The Lonely Death of George Bell

Jon Ronson, The Guardian – Justin Bieber: One day with the most Googled name on the planet

The Electric Typewriter – 10 great articles by Tom Junod (read especially ‘Falling Man’)

Another one by Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine – Have you met The Lips?

Sarah Dingle, ABC Radio National – The Salvos: A matter of trust (.mp3 download link is above the image)

ABC Radio National – Researchers fear our sense of silence is changing as our daily noise builds

BBC News Magazine – The girl who gets gifts from birds

upstart magazine – 100 articles that every journalist should read

 

COMPLETE FOR NEXT CLASS:

Start to develop ideas for your own extended feature story and write an outline of each idea. The story you decide upon will be the one you complete for your assessment in this subject.

Your story outline should include:

  • the publication you’re aiming for, and a description of its audience
  • the purpose of your story
  • the voice, tone, and style you plan to use
  • the type of story, e.g. profile, background story (political, science, health, education)
  • the names or occupations of people you will interview
  • where you will conduct research for the story
  • how you plan to organise your information (i.e. how you will organise files and research, and how you’ll back up work as you go)

Opinion pieces will not be accepted for this assessment. You will need to interview at least three people for your story, and show evidence of research in places other than the Internet.

 

The three act structure

Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

BY PHIL MOORE

Most stories follow a 3-Act structure. Certainly most movies. This was first defined by Syd Field in the mid-’70s in his book Screenplay. It has been repeated, refined, and built upon in hundreds of books since. But the basic idea goes back as far as Aristotle, who in his Poetics defined stories as having a Beginning, Middle and End that are causally related.

Continue reading “The three act structure”