LEARNING THE METIER
Said Robert Louis Stevenson to a painter friend: "You painter chaps make lots of studies, don't you? And you don't frame them all and send them to the Salon, do you? You just stick them up on the studio wall for a bit, and presently you tear them up and make more. And you copy Velasquez and Rembrandt and Vandyke and Corot; and from each you learn some little trick of the brush, some obscure little point of technic. And you know damn well that it is the knowledge thus acquired that will enable you later on to deliver your own message with a fine and confident bravado. You are simply learning your metier; and believe me, mon cher, an artist in any line without the metier is just a blind man with a stick. Now, in the literary line I am simply doing what you painter men are doing in the pictorial line—learning the metier."
PREPARING COPY
Use the typewriter. See that the keys are clean. Use triple space. Write on one side of the paper. Do not paste sheets together. Leave wide margins on both sides and at the top. Write your name and a brief description of the story in two or three words at top of first sheet. Number sheets. Never write perpendicularly in the margin. Never divide a word from one page to another, and if possible do not divide a word from one line to the next. Try to make each page end with a completed paragraph to aid the composing room in setting the story in "takes." When necessary to write in long hand, underscore u and overscore n, and print proper names and unusual words. Ring periods or write x to stand for them. When there is a chance that a word intentionally misspelled will be changed by the printer, write Follow Copy in the margin. Indent deeply for paragraphs. Use an end-mark to indicate your story is completed. Avoid interlining by crossing out the sentence you desire to correct and writing it again.
Save time for your office by care in writing and editing. A little thought before setting down a sentence will save you the trouble of rewriting and the copy reader the annoyance of reading untidy copy.
LEADS
There is generally a better way to begin a story than with A, An, The, It is, There is, There are.
Avoid beginning a story with figures, but when this must be done, then spell out, as: Ten thousand men marched away today.
The comprehensive A. P. lead is generally preferable, but in writing some stories, particularly feature stories, a reporter may find a more effective lead than the sentence or sentences that summarize the story.
Remember that your reader's time may be limited and that if your story begins with a striking sentence, arresting either because of what it says or the manner in which it says it, your story will be read.