Write Stuff

It’s important to be selective about the quotes you use in stories. Too many stories get larded with quotes that don’t advance the story, quotes that provide information rather than insight into a character, a cause or a theme. Our advice: Paraphrase the informational quotes with attribution; tell the story in your own words. Use only quotes that help move the story.

We were encouraged to see a strong ear for storytelling quotes in recent clips. Kerri Macdonald for the Queens Courier went to a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Astoria with Tony Bennett and made his quotes sing:

“The fact that in Life magazine he called me his favorite singer – I’ve never gotten over that,” said Bennett, who was born Anthony Benedetto 83 years ago. “So that’s where it’s at. That’s why this school is called the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts,” added Bennett, whose quip got a laugh out of Sinatra’s daughter, Nancy.

Kerri also captured another musical hall-of-famer, Quincy Jones, at his pithy best: Jones offered the students some words of wisdom that Frank Sinatra once gave him, “Live every day like it’s your last, and one day you’ll be right.”

Kerri wasn’t the only CUNY reporter to dance with the stars. Megan Finnegan for Irish Central interviewed actress Julia Stiles, who’s starring on Broadway in David Mamet’s play, “Oleanna,” in which her character confronts a professor with whom she had a sexual encounter. But the play’s about more than that, Stiles insists, and Megan lets her quote end the story: “It goes beyond sexuality,” says Stiles. “There is no right and wrong in this play.”

Using a quote to end your story isn’t always the best way. But when it neatly summarizes your story, it’s a good strategy. Jessica Dailey in the Brooklyn Eagle used a quote to end her story of how a new school playground/park worked for both students and residents in Crown Heights. She quoted 76-year-old Florencio Cruz, a longtime resident, to suggest how the new park has revitalized the neighborhood.

Cruz, who remembers playing baseball on the lot when it was just dirt, said the new park gives the community a safe place to spend time. “The neighborhood has a bad reputation. I used to be afraid to walk around,” he said. “But now we have this. My wife and I can walk here and feel safe.”

Kristen Joy Watts did a delightful post for the New York Times Lens blog on a former newspaper photographer, Dave Yoder, who made the transition to fashion photographer. She made us smile at Yoder’s memory of his first day on the new job:

Mr. Yoder’s initiation to his new subject was unceremonious. He showed up with a few cameras, and, standing in the middle of the fray backstage at his first show, suddenly realized he was in a room full of mostly naked women. He panicked, thinking that he was in a lot of trouble. “I thought somebody was going to spot me,” he said. But he quickly learned that there is a code of honor backstage. Photographers avert their lenses while the models are changing, and if they don’t, the other photographers present will make sure that they do.

Instead of quoting Yoder at length on his first day, Kristen tells his story. That’s far more effective writing than a long quote. The quote she uses acts as a springboard into the rest of what the photographer learned that day. But when she hears a storytelling quote from the fashion photographer, she lets him speak in his own words: “When I was working on newspapers, we called publication the daily miracle. Fashion week is the hourly miracle.”

Now that’s storytelling.

William Safire, the Nixon speechwriter turned Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, cared deeply about words and the way we use them. It’s fitting, then, that his obituary today paid homage to his longtime column on language as well as his famously alliterative phrase about the press, “the nattering nabobs of negativism.” The Times’ Robert D. McFadden also showed us how the use of small but specific details add up to a masterful description:

He was hardly the image of a buttoned-down Times man: The shoes needed a shine, the gray hair a trim. Back in the days of suits, his jacket was rumpled, the shirt collar open, the tie askew. He was tall but bent — a man walking into the wind. He slouched and banged a keyboard, talked as fast as any newyawka and looked a bit gloomy, like a man with a toothache coming on.

The obit also included, for both our edification and amusement, Safire’s “rules for writers”: Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid cliches like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

Safire lived by words.  And he left us words to live by.

Rejoice, it’s National Punctuation Day! The brainchild of a former newspaperman turned newsletter writer, Jeff Rubin, the day is dedicated to the correct use of punctuation. Naturally, newspaper columnists and editors hungry for any idea they can turn around quickly have pounced on punctuation as a worthy cause. Here’s an amusing but pointed reaction from the Washington Post’s John Kelly, who characterized Rubin’s quest as “one man looking for comma ground in a world where most people don’t know their apostrophe from a hole in the ground.”

Punctuation can make a mighty difference in your writing. Here at The Write Stuff, we’ve long maintained that one of the strongest weapons in a writer’s arsenal is the period. Caught in a long, meandering sentence, long separated from its subject and verb, a writer always should ask whether it wouldn’t be better to end the sentence or break it in half. All that’s needed is a period. OK, sometimes a semicolon will work, too, although many people don’t how to use the semicolon (the most prominent use is to separate independent thoughts, both of which could stand alone as independent sentences, e.g. This is a sentence; this could be another.). A couple of Craft professors highlighted some other punctuation issues: The lack of punctuation in quotes (treat them the same as your writing and apply proper punctuation) and the overuse of punctuation, especially the comma, which allows too many writers to keep alive those meandering sentences. Which brings us back to the period.

Finally, to punctuate the day, here’s a quiz for your enjoyment.

By Tim Harper and Heath Meriwether

It’s great to see the clips being generated by so many CUNY students. They’re a fresh reminder about how important it is, when you’re “selling” an article, to understand the audience you’re trying to reach.

Two quick examples from this week’s clips.  Hannah Rappleye scored with the kind of short, punchy, informative writing a reader expects in the Daily News. Jenni Avins took a lighthearted, chatty approach in her Fashion Week post for Dossier, an arts-and-culture journal that adopts an insiderish tone with its readers. We thought both pieces worked for their respective audiences and we asked both reporters how their stories came together.

Hannah sent the News a well-reported article with a newsy top. An editor there reshaped the tone with a jauntier first sentence. {”Bye, bye, biscotti.”} Said Hannah: “He was definitely responsible for shaping the tone to fit the Daily News audience–and it was very, very Daily News, wasn’t it? If I knew I was writing for the Daily News, I would adjust my writing accordingly–make it punchier and shorter.”

For the record, we liked what Hannah sent the News the first time. But it isn’t unusual that an editor there shaped it to fit the audience, particularly the “biscotti” opener. Jere Hester, who fashioned many such a lead during his 15 years at the News, made an astute point about this kind of approach: “I think they can be a great way into a story, as long as appropriate and not overused — and amusing, of course.”

Hannah made another fascinating point about writing for different audiences: “I’ve developed the ability to write in voices that are completely opposite than my own; it’s sort of like when the writer has to become the actor…Or perhaps all writers are actors, all the time. I haven’t figured that one out yet.”

Jenni Avins became an actor in her first-person approach in the Dossier file. The online journal, Jenni says, gives her the freedom “to use my own voice.” She had “loads of notes from the show about the fabrics, the makeup, the setting, the models, the music, etc., but in the end I tried to take a little moment that I thought encapsulated what it felt like to be there, as well as the mood of the collection…and write in that mood as well: pretty, but practical (as opposed to snarky, aggressive, or funny–all of which might have their place elsewhere on Dossier). Does that make any sense?”

Actually, we thought it made quite good sense. We don’t often advise a first-person approach but it works here because it establishes an intimacy and immediacy with readers, which writing online often demands. Yet it still has all the classic elements of a newspaper or magazine story, with a nut graf that tells you, without intruding, what was going on and what the writer thought.

We thought the approach paid off for her audience.

The lead’s the thing. Editing sessions with new students last week suggested many of you struggle to come up with leads that hook readers.  A common flaw:  Too much information crammed into the first paragraph.  When you stuff most of your notebook into that first graf, you drown your readers, and yourselves. Consider some leads Jere Hester highlighted for us from this summer’s internships. You’ll see how a writer can use imagery (Lindsay Lazarski on, arrgh, the smells and sights of rat infestation),  contrasts (Damiano Beltrami, on a Spanish speaker at an Arabic-speaking university) and contradictions (Carla Murphy, on how African-American jazz greats were treated at home and abroad) to entice readers to stay with your story.  Some, like Joe Walker, even violate the usual strictures against quote leads.  The true test is what works.

How do you know when something works?  Bounce your leads off professors, editors, colleagues.  Talk about what works, and what doesn’t.  Analyze good leads in newspapers and magazines.  Think about some ideas we shared last year.  From that list, my favorite advice is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Don’t worry, you’ll get lots of practice trying to write the best possible lead.