Reporters are asked to “get the story,” which we might translate to mean “find out what happened.” If that’s all the assignment involves, we’ll get to read boring news.
The story is in the struggle.
Stuff happens all the time, so readers won’t be captivated by your telling more things that just happened. In the classic TV series Dragnet, Sergeant Joe Friday is known for asking, “Just the facts, ma’m.”
You can look good as a writer by learning more than that. Ask about the people and how they survived.
Inspire readers by becoming inspired.
Excitement is contagious, and that means you must have it before you can give it. Just ask yourself, What’s exciting about this story?
Then get excited, and let your words show it.
Our audience is “teaser immune.”
Sometimes newscasts spend more seconds with the tease than in telling what happened. Since we’re constantly hearing phrases like “You don’t want to miss what’s coming next” or “You won’t believe what so-and-so said,” we expect more of the kinds of things we’ve seen hundreds of times.
We might change channels.
Leave out the cliché teasers and set up a situation that suggests a story behind the story.
The reward is the lesson learned.
For fifty years, Paul Harvey captivated audiences by telling “the rest of the story.” You can do that too by asking, What did this event teach? How were people changed?
