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1) Everything has a document attached to it, from which one can assemble a story. "Document mentality" is often key to a successful investigation. Example: As an exercise, dig through your wallet. What do you find? A driver's license, with your picture, date of birth, address, physical description, and in some cases social security number and signature; credit cards, from which one can theoretically derive a credit rating; business cards, indicating associates and frequented establishments; various membership cards, indicating personal habits; photographs; the list goes on and on. In addition, each iota of information may in theory open up a vista of additional information -- using one's social security number, one can derive criminal records, voting registration, and so on. Example: From the time of your birth to your death, try and figure out all the documents that build up around you. A birth certificate, indicating parentage and place of birth; various immunization shots, as your medical record accumulates; dental records; school records, indicating aptitudes and any relocations; voting registration; military record; professional certifications; brushes with the law; tax records; bills for utilities and purchases; political donations; land records; marriage; divorce; credit reports; incorporation records; newspaper clippings; last will and testament; and obituary. Also, learn to document every entity that a person comes into contact with, be it business or person or what have you. 2) Follow the money. It often takes money to do anything. And remember, the absence of a money trail may prove as telling as the presence of one. 3) Cui bono? Latin for "Who benefits?" Consider all the sundry motivations various parties might have in a story. A good way of creating a list of sources to call up and talk to. 4) Develop flowcharts for organizations you study, delineating hierarchies, duties, enmities, phone numbers, etc. 1) Zig left when everyone else zigs right. For example, consider the JFK assassination. Rather than crowding around JFK's family like everyone else did, Jimmy Breslin interviewed the gravedigger instead. 2) Read good writing and discuss it with the authors or other good reporters. 3) Subject, verb, object. This is usually the best advice in any writing. The obvious corollary is avoidance of passive voice. 4) The five W's always hold true: Who, what, where, when, why and their bastard progeny, how. 5) Remember the five senses as well: Sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. 6) No quotes in leads. This is one of the most obnoxious mistakes of the amateur journalist. 7) Remember to get down hard numbers, percentages, dates, times, etc. This is not to say you should let facts and figures rule your stories, however. 8) Remember to get down the proper spelling of everyone's name, as well as title, age and gender. You may laugh about gender, but one time some poor sap in my investigative journalism class didn't and found himself in a hell of a mess. 9) You get more flies with honey than with vinegar. The image of a hard-bitten reporter is a rarity in real life. Attempts to intimidate sources usually only cows inexperienced sources into silence or pisses off experienced sources. Treat sources the way you would want to be treated. Note: this trick sometimes works on editors as well. 10) Always keep people talking. Silence or moderation is often called for, but as best seen in Michael Moore's Roger & Me, sometimes never taking "no" for an answer results in juicy stuff. Question everything and take advantage of their hospitality and urge to prove helpful. 11) Volunteer for work to look good in front of editors. This does not mean you should become a gofer running around for coffee, mind you. But go the extra mile for stories, and volunteer to partner with other reporters or help others do their research. This gives you the opportunity to practice and refine your craft on nonessential items. 12) Go the extra mile for stories. I've began reporting several stories at 5 a.m., didn't stop reporting on some stories until 2 a.m., and drove 600 miles round trip for one story. I have never regretted it -- those experiences enriched each story enormously. You will hear the same thing time and again from experienced reporters. 13) Write out a story before interviewing people, if only to give yourself a good idea of what questions need to be asked. Be sure not to carry assumptions from this practice story into an interview, however -- be ready to change the focus of your story. 14) If space permits, include as much context as possible for stories. 15) While there is such a thing as a "stupid question" depending on your source, be sure to get every nagging question answered regardless. 16) "The one indispensible thing a writer needs is an automatic bullshit detector." -- Ernest Hemingway. This is especially true with lawyers, "flacks" (public relations officers), politicians, lobbyists and advertising executives. 17) When the top brass is proving uncooperative, go through the middle ranks or go straight for experts. 18) To get around press flacks, ask them questions so complex they have to refer you to experts. 19) Act like a human being. Never lose your integrity. The only thing you have in the end is your reputation. 20) Everybody lies. If someone tells you the sun will rise tomorrow, check the next day. Triple check all information. 21) Ask the hard questions, and never hesitate doing so. Most sources will respect you afterwards. 22) Always control the interview. Don't be domineering about it, but never let yourself be steered or distracted or intimidated. Just be sure to get what information you want in the end. If your source is trying to control the interview, toss your source a question that throws that person off, makes them lose control or their temper. Of course, remember to re-establish rapport by the end so your source is willing to talk to you again. But you are not their friend -- you are there to get your information. 23) Time equals story. The more time you slave over a story, the more the journalism gods will feel fit to reward you with something -- usually. Never give up. 24) Stories with national and international scope fundamentally only require reporting techniques used for local news. (This holds surprisingly true.) 25) When in international territory, hire interpreters
from colleges -- they're young, fast, fearless and good translators. Get
in contact with local newspapers. Learn as much about the culture. Ask
interpreters for language lessons on key words if you plan to spend a
lot of time there. 26) There is such a thing as a stupid question. I didn't used to think that was true, until I had one asked of me. A stupid question, as I think of it, is one that rests on one or more factual errors or false assumptions. Try not to ask any stupid questions by doing as much homework as you can before an interview. 27) My number one rule in journalism is that it is meant to show readers things they could never see by themselves — the halls of power, war zones, intimate moments, a person's thoughts, and in the case of science journalism, the distant past, the far future, remote galaxies, the insides of atoms, and places that might have been but never were. 1) Write like a craftsman -- focus as much on technique
as inspiration. Craft allows art, and structure and outlines are the root
of craft. This is Jon Franklin's mantra. 2) Write like an architect. Structures allow a writer
to hang details. A weak structure is like a poorly constructed house.
Create lists of details (observations, statistics, quotes, thoughts) to
hang on structures. Arrange these details in order to create scenes. 3) Write like a playwright. Stories are made with scenes,
and scenes are miniature stories, each with beginnings, middles and endings
of their own. Every scene should serve a different purpose than every
other scene. This advice is particularly helpful when it comes to structuring
a story -- to create a story outline, write out the basic purpose of each
scene as a short, active sentence (subject, verb, object). These sentences
will serve as the themes. 4) Reconstruct scenes with all the senses in mind. Often
smell, taste, and touch are ignored in interviews. Also, remember to ask
people about sensations such as exhaustion and elation. 5) Write as if you painting a scene in words for a blind
person. Often, even sight is ignored as a sense when it comes to lush
detail. 6) Reconstruct scenes with memories in mind. Ask sources
what they were thinking every step of a scene. This is the only sure way
to generate internal monologue. You can usually attain this level of detail
only after a high level of familiarity with a subject. 7) Think like a choreographer. One of the best ways to
infuse liveliness into a story is to make everything active, and to do
that everything should be doing something. This takes more than applying
an action to every object -- you must help an audience understand the
setting, so people can imagine where something or someone is moving to,
and how they're doing it (twisting, falling, etc.). 8) Read stories aloud. This remains one of the best ways
to catch errors and make stories more conversational, i.e. improve word
flow. It is also one of the easiest ways to learn how to use one's personal
voice in a story. 9) Write with specific people in the audience in mind.
This not only helps with your voice, but also is a good way to strip away
what is ultimately unnecessary and to organize the importance of thoughts.
10) Think like a police officer. Detectives use what is
known as the cognitive interview technique. As reprinted from Criminal
Investigation (Charles Swanson, Neil Chamelin and Leonard Territo, authors;
Sixth Edition; USA: McGraw-Hill, 1996), pages 162 to 163. Basically, this technique helps witnesses relive events.
"Eyewitness reports of crime are known to be incomplete, often unreliable,
and at least partially incorrect," the authors wrote. "The cognitive
interview technique was developed in the hope of improving the completeness
and accuracy of eyewitness accounts... "The first step is to ask the witness to reconstruct
the general circumstances surrounding the incident. The witness is asked
to think about and recall what the surrounding environment looked like
at the scene: rooms, arrangement of furniture, lighting, the presence
of vehicles, weather conditions, smells, nearby objects or people, and
any other details. In addition, the witness is asked how he or she was
feeling at the time and what his or her reaction was to the incident.
The purpose of this line of inquiry is to return the witness deeply into
the scene. "Second, the investigator asks the witness to report
everything remembered about the incident and all surrounding circumstances.
The investigator explains that some people hold back information they
don't think is relevant or important. The witness is asked not to edit
any information or make any determination as to the importance of that
material. In addition to the possibility that a tidbit of information
may be of extreme importance, the mere act of relaying all information
may cause the witness to remember something that had been forgotten...
"Step three is to have the witness recall the events
in a different order. For example, the witness may be asked to begin with
the thing that most impressed him or her and work backward and forward
from that point. Too often a witness asked to begin at the beginning will
fill in gaps and tell a 'complete' and logical story that makes sense
but may not be entirely accurate. Starting at a different point forces
the witness to recall events that actually occurred. "The fourth technique is to have the witness change
perspectives. The witness is asked to look at the incident from a different
point of view or to put himself or herself in the position of some other
person who was present and describe the incident from that other person's
point of view. "Several other specific techniques may be used by
an investigator to help strengthen the ability of the witness to retrieve
stored memory. For example, in an attempt to obtain a physical description,
the investigator may ask if the suspect reminded the witness of anyone.
If so, who, or why? Did anything about the person's appearance or clothing
bring back memories? How about names? Go through the alphabet to try to
recall the first letter of a name. Did the person's voice remind the witness
of anyone else's voice? Were any unusual words used? Any accent?"
As an aside, the criminology handbook mentions that the
second technique helped federal drug agents find a drug smuggler's remote
airstrip through an informant's description of mangoes and mango trees
around the airstrip. 13) When writing stories, always be sure to remember you
are working with two timelines -- an objective timeline and a subjective
timeline. The objective timeline is the chronology of events as they happened.
The subjective timeline arranges events as readers experience them in
a story, and can involve flashbacks, flash forwards, interweaving "zipper"
timelines that take simultaneously, and even reversed time, among other
more experimental structures. 14) "Kill your babies." I've heard this quote
attributed to Virginia Woolf, but that remains apocryphal. In short, this
means that sometimes you have to cut what you feel are your finest pieces
of prose if they don't serve the overall objective of your story. In short,
make your copy as clean as possible. A story should flow like a car, and
cars don't need five wheels. This is not to say that all vestiges of art
must be removed from a story, but they should at best be few and far between.
15) It is best to know what the rules are before you start
breaking them or finding loopholes. For instance, while 'subject, verb,
object' works in most cases, Hamlet's "To be or not to be" is
clearly an exception. Then again, not everyone is Shakespeare... (While
we're at it, the Hamlet monologue is excellently structured, which explains
its power...) 16) Always take chances when writing. The only person
you'll offend is your editor -- big deal. The worst that can happen is
you'll get your bold experiments edited out. If you don't take those chances,
you'll only end up kicking yourself later. (By the way, by taking chances,
I don't mean plagiarism.) 17) Think like a cinematographer. It's amazing how far
this metaphor can go... zooming in and zooming out, panning from one area
to another, focusing tightly or with blur, considerations of light and
shadow, using fades or cuts, etc. 18) Write as if you are trying to sound cool either to
someone else or to yourself. Incidentally, this is one of the best ways
to develop voice. (This is a bit of advice gleaned from the Cameron Crowe
movie Almost Famous. Try reading some of Crowe's Rolling Stone articles
sometimes... very good.) 19) Try using lush metaphors. Lush use of metaphor is
often considered one of Raymond Chandler's key attributes. This hard-boiled
detective novelist is often a favorite of journalists. As novelist Ross
Macdonald once wrote about Chandler, "Chandler wrote like a slumming
angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic
presence." 20) Play around with narration. Often journalists use
a disembodied voice (third person) with an air of omniscience, but it's
good to play around sometimes. The use of 'I' (first person) is often
handled amateurishly, however, and it gets old fast. Second person (speaking
as someone else) can be rewarding, but requires a great deal of familiarity
with a subject -- what is known as immersion journalism. It is of course
possible to shift narration perspectives over the course of a story, although
it should be carefully handled. 21) Try writing stories as if they were poems such as
sonnets or roundels. This will help teach you the utility of repetition
and alternation to create rhythm and tension. 22) Create your own unique voice. There's no surefire
way to do it, although I've proposed several tips already. My thought
is this -- voice is who you are when you're writing to nobody but yourself,
for nobody but yourself. 23) Always write a story as if you're aiming for page A1, above the fold. 24) Ask yourself what the story is missing. 25) If you are feeling burnt out, consider trying novel story structures. 26) Remember the six rules for simple writing formulated by George Orwell in his essay, "Politics and the English Language":
27) Also consider five amendments to Orwell's rules, as suggested in Katherine J. Mayberry's "For Argument's Sake: A Guide to Writing Effective Arguments":
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