Lecture Two: Telling Factual Stories With Text (Rod Chester)

This week we had a guest speaker, Rod Chester, who gave us an insight into the experiences he's had throughout his journey as a journalist. His main tip as a news writer (or any type of writer really), was to make use of the 'inverted triangle' as your form of writing. Historians believe that this method dates back to the 19th century wartime, when reporters sent stories out via telegraph. They wanted to get the most important information out first, just in case the transmission was interrupted. 

 

So you say we don't write telegraphs anymore, so why still use this method? Because today, more than ever, we are sending out more and more messages that can be interrupted by our recipients own distractions, impatience, confusion or even boredom. In such a busy time, readers expect their writers to get to the meat as quickly as possible or they'll just go somewhere else for the story.


Chester spent the remainder of the lecture advising us on different ways to draw in our readers with popular, fresh and interesting starting paragraphs. Some of his ideas were:

• Start with "it's official!"
• The question intro
• Reverse psychology
• Rhythm, Rhyme and reason
• Set the scene
• Irony
• Mystery
• Story time