But, obviously, that is not the logical way to tell the story. The finished account should be written in the order in which it happened: i.e., first the robbery, then the pursuit, and lastly the arrest. This would be the ideal way to tell the story—according to the rules of English composition—if we could be sure that the entire story would be printed. But if it were written in this way and the editor decided to slash off the last paragraph, what would go? Obviously the arrest would not be printed; and the arrest was quite interesting. We must find some way to bring the arrest nearer to the beginning. This may be done by selecting the most interesting parts of the story—by picking out the high spots, as it were. In this story the high spots are the attempted robbery, the pursuit, and the arrest. The details that fill in between are interesting, but not so interesting as these high spots. Hence these high spots of interest must be pushed forward toward the beginning. After the lead the story would begin at the beginning and tell the affair briefly by high spots in their proper order. It might be something like this:
As Charles Young was closing his grocery last evening a young man came in and asked for a pound of butter. Young turned to get it and his customer struck him over the head with a chair. The grocer grappled with his assailant and they fell through the front door. In the scramble, the robber broke away and ran down Sixth street. A young woman who was passing screamed and ran after him until he disappeared into a saloon.
The young woman called Policeman Smith, who was standing nearby on Grand avenue, and the latter found the would-be robber on the roof of the saloon. After a struggle, Smith arrested the man, with the aid of another policeman.
The above account tells us briefly the most interesting parts of the story. A copyreader might not find it perfect, for the assault is allotted too much space and the pursuit too little, but it tells the story in its baldest aspect. This, with the lead, could be run alone. However, perhaps the story is worth more space; at any rate, many interesting details have been omitted. If so, go back to the most interesting part of the story—the assault, perhaps, or the pursuit—and tell it with more details. Then retell some other part with more details. If your readers are interested enough to read beyond the first three paragraphs they want details and will not be so particular about the order—for they already know how the story is going to end.
This is one way of meeting the requirements of logical order and dwindling interest. This is a particularly hard story to arrange in the conventional way since we must have the whole story to be interested in any single part—it has too many striking incidents in it. On the other hand, a story which contains only one striking incident is much easier to handle. Suppose that we are reporting a fire which is interesting only for its cause or for a daring rescue in it. Our lead would suggest this interesting element and the first part of our story would be devoted entirely to the cause or to the rescue, as the case might be. But it is better to sketch briefly, immediately after or very close to the lead, the entire story, for our readers want to know how it ends before they can be interested in any particular part. If we sketch the whole story and show them that there is only one important thing in the story, they will be satisfied to read about the one striking incident without wondering if there is not something more interesting further on. If we leave the conclusion of the story to the end of our copy the editor may cut it off and leave our story dangling in midair. Every story must be treated in its own way, according to its own incidents and difficulties; no two stories are alike in substance or treatment. In every one our aim must be to keep to the logical order and at the same time to put the most interesting parts of the story near the beginning.
The construction of the body of a story may be illustrated more clearly by a fatal fire story—since fire stories are more uniform, and hence easier to write than other news stories. Let us suppose that the story is as follows: At four o'clock in the afternoon a fire started from some unknown cause in the basement of a four-story brick building at 383-385 Sixth Street, occupied by the Incandescent Light Company. Before the fire company arrived the flames had spread up through the building and into an adjoining three-story brick building at 381 Sixth Street, occupied by Isaac Schmidt's second-hand store and home on the first and second floors and by Mrs. Sarah Jones's boarding house on the third. The Schmidts were away and Mrs. Jones's lodgers escaped via the fire escapes. Her cook, Hilda Schultz, was overcome by smoke and had to be carried out by Jack Sweeney, a lodger. Mrs. Jones fell from the fire escape and was badly bruised. Meanwhile the firemen were at work on the roof of the burning four-story building. Blinded by the smoke, one of them, John MacBane, stepped through a skylight and fell to the fourth floor. His comrades tried to rescue him by lowering Fireman Henry Bond into the smoke by the heels; they were unsuccessful and Bond broke his arm in the attempt. The fire was confined to the lower floors of the two buildings and extinguished. In searching for MacBane, the firemen found him suffocated on the fourth floor where he had fallen.
The feature of the story is evidently the one death and the three injuries. Our lead might be written as follows:
One fireman was suffocated and three other persons were injured in a fire in the Incandescent Light Company's plant, 383-385 Sixth street, and an adjoining three-story building, late yesterday afternoon.
This lead would suggest to the reader many interesting details to come in the body of the story, and evidently the details are not all of equal importance. The story could be told in its logical order, but, since the death is more interesting than the origin of the fire and the injuries are more significant than how the fire spread, it is obvious that it would not be best to tell the story in the order in which it is told above.
Disregarding the lead, we must cover the following details in the body of our story: