EXERCISES FOR THE FIFTH CHAPTER

  1. Collect good fire stories appearing in the newspapers. Study the construction of the lead and the order in which the facts are presented in the body of each story.
  2. Write the leads of fire stories. The chances are that actual fires will seldom occur at the time when the student wishes to study the writing of fire stories, but the instructor may give his class, orally or in writing, the facts of a fire story. He may use imaginary facts or he may take the facts from a story clipped from a newspaper—the latter method is better because it enables the instructor to show the students, after they have written their stories, just how the original story was written in the newspaper office. The facts should be given in the order in which a reporter would probably secure them in actual reporting so that the student may learn to sort and arrange the facts that he wishes to use, and to select the feature. The instructor may even impersonate different persons connected with the story and have the class interview him for the facts. This method is to be followed throughout the whole study of news story writing. (In individual study, practice may be secured from writing up imaginary or real facts.)
  3. In these first fire stories, use fires that have no interest beyond the interest in the fire itself—that is, no feature. Begin the story with "Fire" and devote the lead to answering the reader's customary questions.
  4. Look for newspaper fire stories that are not correctly written and reconstruct the lead according to the logic of the fire lead. That is, strive for conciseness and cut out details that do not properly belong in the lead.
  5. Make a list of the reader's customary questions concerning any fire and write out the briefest possible answers. Then construct a lead to embody these answers. Determine which answer should come first and which last, according to importance.
  6. Write the bodies of some of these stories. First list the facts that are to be presented and determine the order of their importance.
  7. Emphasize the separateness and completeness of the two parts of the story—the lead and the body of the story. Test the leads to see if they would be clear in themselves without further explanation.
  8. Strive for brevity, conciseness and clearness; wage war on all attempts at fine writing.

EXERCISES FOR THE SIXTH CHAPTER

  1. Study fire stories which have features—an interest beyond the mere fire itself—and see how the newspapers write them.
  2. In a feature fire story of Class I., make a list of the reader's customary questions concerning the fire, as if it were a simple fire story, and a list of the answers. See if any answer is more interesting than the fire itself, or if its presence makes the story more interesting. Show that such an answer is the feature.
  3. Write fire stories with features in some one of the reader's customary answers. (Class I.)
  4. Study a simple fire story and try to imagine what things—properly answers to the reader's customary questions—might happen to give the fire greater news value. This will show the student how to look for the feature of a story.
  5. Write the lead of any fire story in as many different ways as possible, striving in each one to play up the same feature.
  6. Study a simple fire story and try to imagine what unexpected things might occur in connection with the fire which would be of greater interest than the fire itself. Show that these would be features and that they do not fall within the answers to the reader's customary questions—i. e., they are unexpected.
  7. Write fire stories with features in unexpected attendant circumstances.
  8. Make up lists of dead and injured; notice how the newspapers arrange and punctuate these lists.
  9. Study fire stories with more than one feature. Work out the possibilities in any given fire along these lines.
  10. Write fire stories in which there is more than one feature worth a place in the lead. Try various combinations in the lead to discover the happiest arrangement. Show how one of many striking features may be of so much importance as to drive the other features entirely out of the lead.

EXERCISES FOR THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

  1. Count the number of words in the sentences and paragraphs of representative newspaper stories.
  2. Practice writing fire leads that might be printed alone without the rest of the story.
  3. Take a fire lead and experiment with various beginnings to show the possibilities:
    1. a. Noun—experiment with and without articles.
    2. b. Infinitive—Distinguish infinitives in "to" and in "-ing."
    3. c. That clause.
    4. d. Prepositional phrase.
    5. e. Temporal clause.
    6. f. Causal clause.
    7. g. Others.
  4. Show that any of these beginnings may be used in the playing up of any one feature.
  5. Study how a name may overshadow an interesting story; determine when a name is worth first place in a lead. Study the practice of representative papers in this—do not hesitate to show how a paper has been illogical in beginning certain stories with an unknown name, for everything one sees in a newspaper is not ipso facto good usage in newspaper writing.
  6. In students' stories, notice what the principal verb says and point out any misplaced emphasis.
  7. Wage war on "was the unusual experience of" and "was the fate of" in leads.
  8. Try to avoid "broke out" in fire leads. Devote the space to more interesting action.
  9. Cut out all useless words in students' exercises; strive for brevity. Go through a student's story and weigh the value of each word, phrase, and sentence; cut out the useless ones or try to express them more briefly. Do the same to actual newspaper stories.
  10. Weigh the value of every detail introduced into a lead and cut out the unnecessary ones; relegate them to the rest of the story.
  11. Wage war on all meaningless generalities; demand exactness.
  12. Refer the class to the Style Book in this volume and require them to follow a uniform style. Point out the differences in style of various papers.
  13. See if the bodies of students' stories mean anything without the presence of the leads. Require the body of the story to be separate and complete in itself. This need not, of course, be carried to the point of repeating addresses given in the lead.
  14. Try writing a story by simply elaborating and explaining the details mentioned in the lead of the story. Determine what facts must be added.
  15. See if any story can stand the loss of its last paragraph. Determine how many paragraphs it can lose without sacrificing its interest.
  16. In writing the body of a fire story, list the facts that are to be told, in their logical order; thus: origin, discovery, spread, death of firemen, escapes, injuries, rescues, explosion, extinguishing of fire. Number them in the order of their importance. Try to build a story out of these by following the logical order and at the same time crowding the most interesting facts to the beginning.
  17. Practice getting the facts of a story by means of interviews. The instructor may have the students determine what persons they wish to interview for the facts and the instructor may impersonate these persons in turn. The class may then write the story from the facts gained in this way without reference to the interviews. This is for selecting and arranging facts in their logical order.
  18. Practice the use of dialogue in stories. Judge its effectiveness and show that in most cases it is well to avoid dialogue.
  19. Practice rewriting long stories into short press dispatches of 150 words or less, considering the different news value.

EXERCISES FOR THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

  1. Collect clippings of other kinds of news stories.
  2. In writing these other stories use the fire story as a model; the facts may be presented as they were in the fire story.
  3. Study the possible features in accident stories; write accident stories with various features; make lists of dead and injured.
  4. Study and write robbery stories with various features; distinguish between the various names applied to robbery and to the people who rob.
  5. Study and write murder and suicide stories with various features, striving in each case to give the facts without shocking the reader. Show how the featureless murder or suicide story is very much like a featureless fire story.
  6. Study and write riot, storm, flood, and other big stories.
  7. In the study of police court news have the class go to the local police courts and report actual cases.
  8. Send the students to report meetings. Report conferences, decisions, etc. Insist that the story begin with the gist of the report in each case and never with explanations.
  9. Write stories on bulletins, catalogues, city directories, etc. Study them with reference to their timeliness and try to discover what in them has the most news value. Require the student to begin with this element of news value and to give the source (the name and date of the bulletin, etc.) in the lead.
  10. Look over the daily papers and pick out news stories which bury the gist of their news and have the students rewrite the leads to play up the real news or to give greater emphasis to buried features.

EXERCISES FOR THE NINTH CHAPTER

  1. Collect good examples of the follow-up and the rewrite story; follow one important story through several days' editions to see how it is rewritten day by day. Examine an afternoon paper's version of a story covered in a morning paper.
  2. Take any news story and work out the follow-up possibilities; imagine what the next step in the story will be.
  3. On this basis, write follow-up stories and rewrite stories.
  4. Write a follow-up story which, while beginning with a new feature, retells the original story.
  5. Study and write follow-up stories involving fires, accidents, robberies, murders, suicides, storms (present condition), etc.