Some human interest stories begin, and effectively, too, with a direct personal appeal to the reader; thus:
If you've never seen anybody laugh with his hands, you should have eased yourself up against a railing at the Barnum and Bailey circus in Madison Square Garden yesterday afternoon and watched a band of 250 deaf mute youngsters, all bedecked in their bestest, signalling all over the Garden. Etc.
If you've ever sat in the enemy's camp when the Blue eleven lunged its last yard for a touchdown and had your hair ruffled by the roar that swept across the gridiron, you can guess how 1,500 Yale men yelled at the Waldorf last night for Bill Taft of '78. Etc.
A question is often used at the beginning of a human interest story:
A near-suicide or an accident. Which? Keeper Bean is somewhat puzzled to say which, but it is quite certain it will not be tried again. At least, Keeper Bean does not think it will.
But, it was a sad, sad Sunday for the little white-faced monkey. For hours he lay as dead, etc.
Many of these stories, animal or otherwise, begin with a name:
Long Tom, a Brahma rooster that had been the "bad inmate" of Jacob Meister's farm at West Meyersville, N. J., for three years, paid the penalty of his crimes Christmas morning when he was beheaded after his owner had condemned him to death. Bad in life, he was good in a potpie that day, etc.
The beginning of a human interest story is always the most important part; just like a news story, it must attract attention with its first line. In the same way, a good beginning is something more than half done. But here the similarity between the two ends. The news story, after the lead is written, may slump in technique so that the end is almost devoid of interest; the human interest story, on the other hand, must keep up its standard of excellence to the very last sentence and the last line must have as much snap as the first. It is never in danger of losing its last paragraph and so it may be more rounded and complete; it must follow a definite plan to the very end and then stop. In this it is like the short story, although it seldom has a plot. There are no rules to help us in writing any part of the human interest story. Each attempt has a different purpose and must be done in a different way. Yet the reporter must know before he begins just exactly how he is going to work out the whole story. He must plan it as carefully as a short story. A few minutes of careful thought before he begins to write are better than much reworking and alteration after the thing is done. This applies to all newspaper writing.
Much of the effectiveness of the human interest story depends upon the reporter's style. When we try to write human interest stories we are no longer interested in facts, as much as in words. Our readers are not following us to be informed, but to be entertained. And we can please them only by our style and the fineness of our perception. Although we have been told to write news stories in the common every-day words of conversation, we are not so limited in the human interest story. The elegance of our style depends very largely upon the size of our vocabulary, and elegance is not out of place in this kind of story. Although we have been told to use dialogue sparingly in news stories, our human interest story may be composed entirely of dialogue. In fact, we are hampered by no restrictions except the restrictions of English grammar and literary composition. Although we have sought simplicity of expression before, we may now strive for subtlety and for effect; we may write suggestively and even obscurely. We are dealing with the only part of the newspaper that makes any effort toward literary excellence and only our originality and cleverness can guide us.