Consequently there were about forty women in Chicago who verged on total collapse yesterday if they chanced to read of the terrible experience of Mrs. Mercedes Fullenwider of 5432 Kimbark Avenue.
Probable Motive
ELSIE THOMAS NOT A SUICIDE
If a finger print can tell a story, the police may be able to prove by to-morrow night that pretty Elsie Thomas, whose lifeless body was found in her room at 1916 Pennsylvania Street last night, was not a suicide. In the opinion of her brother, Wallace Thomas, who was on his way from Lindale to see her, Hans Roehm, who had promised to marry her, may have been responsible for her death from cyanide of potassium.
274. Condensation in Rewrites.—It may be added in conclusion that though rewrites are made to seem fresh and new, they are nevertheless old news after all, and hence are not worth so much space as the original story. Consequently, one will find that they usually run from half to a fourth the length of the original; so that in rewriting one need not hesitate—as the copy-readers tell the reporters—to "cut every story to the bone." One must be careful in rewriting, however, not merely to omit paragraphs in cutting down stories. Excision is not rewriting.
XIX. FEATURE STORIES
275. What the Feature Story Is.—The feature, or human interest, story is the newspaper man's invention for making stories of little news value interesting. The prime difference between the feature story and the normal information story we have been studying is that its news is a little less excellent and must be made good by the writer's ingenuity. The exciting informational story on the first page claims the reader's attention by reason of the very dynamic power of its tidings, but the news of the feature story must have a touch of literary rouge on its face to make it attractive. This rouge generally is an adroit appeal to the emotions, and just as some maidens otherwise plain of feature may be made attractive, even beautiful, by a cosmetic touch accentuating a pleasing feature or concealing a defect, so the human interest story may be made fascinating by centering the interest in a single emotion and drawing the attention away from the staleness, the sameness, the lack of piquancy in the details. The emotion may be love, fear, hate, regret, curiosity, humor,—no matter what, provided it is unified about, is given the tone of, that feature.
276. Difficulty.—But just as it takes artists among women to dare successfully the lure of the rouge-dish, and just as so many, having ventured, make of their faces mere caricatures of the beauty they have sought, so only artists can handle the feature story. The difficulty lies chiefly in the temptation to overemphasize. In striving to make the story humorous, one goes too far, oversteps the limits of dignity, and like the ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville actor, produces an effect of disgust. Or in attempting to be pathetic, to excite a sympathetic tear, one is liable to induce mere derisive laughter. And a single misplaced word or a discordant phrase, like a mouse in a Sunday-school class, will destroy the entire effect of what one would say. In no other kind of writing is restraint more needed.
277. Two Types.—Probably entire accuracy demands the statement that these remarks about the difficulty of the feature story apply more specifically to the human interest type, the type the purpose of which is largely to entertain. Certainly it is more difficult than the second, whose purpose is to instruct or inform. The one derives its interest from its appeal to the reader's curiosity, the other from its appeal to the emotions. The emotional type attracts the reader through its appeal to elemental instincts and feelings in men, as desire for food and life, vain grief for one lost, struggle for position in society, undeserved prosperity or misfortune, abnormal fear of death, stoicism in the face of danger, etc. The following is by Frank Ward O'Malley, of the New York Sun, a classic of this type of human interest story:
DEATH OF HAPPY GENE SHEEHAN