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.Imagine that you're telling the reader a story or giving the reader somePage 353BEST SOURCES FOR SERVICE ARTICLESThere are a number of individuals who will be your best sources for service articles.Here is a list of major categories:HowTo ArticlesCraftsmen and womenBuilders/contractorsMechanicsCarpenters/electriciansArtistsGardeners/horticulturistsTechniciansChefs and culinary expertsAuthors of booksConsumer advocatesInventorsScientistsLists and ListingsHistoriansStatisticiansReference librariansMuseum curatorsGovernment studiesCensus dataArt of Living ArticlesMinistersPhysiciansLawyersPsychologists/counselorsPsychiatristsFinancial advisorsChronological Case HistoriesSocial workersPhysiciansPsychologistsPsychiatristsTeachersPoliceSociologistsHistoriansnew information.This is especially true of serviceoriented and/or howto articles.Here, it's essential that you get the interest of the reader with the lead, then hold his interest by transmitting information in an easy, accessible style.For most of us, that means, again, writing the way you speak.Just about everyone can speak to another person and transmit a thought.That's really all nonfiction, feature writing is.There's nothing mysterious, nothing magical about it.It's just transmitPage 354ting a thought.Then another.And another.Until finally, you've written an article that transmits many thoughts in a logical sequence."Talking" to another person on paper should give your article a conversational tone.Unless you're writing a formal paper or treatise, you want that conversational tone in all your feature writing.That means speaking (on paper) clearly, using common language, and just being you.For instance, most of us speak in contractions.We say "You're going," not''You are going." So write that way.Your sentences will flow a lot better.Most of us speak in the vernacular.It's true that we all have several different vocabularies, and that our writing and speaking vocabularies are not the same.Still, good writers don't differ much in the way they write and the way they speak.An easy, conversational tone is always the end resultand with it, a well written article.It always amazes me when someone I know as a regular guy writes something in a pompous, affected style that is totally unlike his natural manner and normal speech pattern.Somehow, when some people sit down at the computer, they feel that they have to become more formal or stodgy or achieve a socalled higher tone than they usually operate in as a person.Wrong.Just the opposite is true.Good writers are who they are all the time.They don't take on a different personality when they sit down to write.Instead, they extend their own personality right into the words and sentences and paragraphs they're writing.They never step out of character.Good nonfiction writers also write to one person at a time, no matter what the circulation of their publication.Each month, Popular Mechanics staffers write for over 9 million readers—one at a time.Especially in nonfiction, service, howto and the like, you've got to talk to that one person out there reading your stuff.When you reach him, you've reached them all.Use the word "you" a lot.Not the word "I." You should do this.You shouldn't do that.You should buy this.But don't buy that.Sometimes the "you" is implied.But it should always be there.Be yourself.Be natural.Relax.Write the way you speak.Then you'll be a good writer.(Oldham, 1993, personal communication)Page 35513—Personal Experience ArticlesInsightful writing is one goal of personal experience feature writing.A personal experience article allows you to do much more than the usual feature article because you, as a writer, can become highly involved in the storytelling.Most beginning writers have been encouraged to take themselves out of the story—to depersonalize the article—as much as possible.However, personal experience feature writing offers something unique in journalismthe chance to become part of a personalized story.Readers got the personal view when GQ magazine food and wine critic Alan Richman (1998) went to dinner in New York with actress Sharon Stone.He not only wrote about the internationally known actress, but also wrote about his impressions of watching her dine, the food and wine, and the complete experience of the evening.The result was a mixture of food and wine criticism, celebrity profile, and personal experience feature rolled into one firstperson narrative—with a minimum of quotations or dialogue of recreated conversations.The British edition of Esquire magazine recently published a firstperson narrative by British Special Branch agent Martin McGartland (1998) as told to writer Simon Cooper that was excerpted from his new book, Fifty Dead Men Walking.The article tells readers about McGartland's experiences as an Irish Republican Army infiltrator.Few feature writers will have experiences like that to relate to readers, but you may have a chance to work with someone who has a truly unique story to tell, as did Cooper.Regardless whether you are telling a story from your own experiences or shaping someone else's personal experiences for publication, these are stories readers seem to love.Most nonfiction writers have experienced events in their lives that would make good foundations for personal experience feature articles.One enterprising college student writer jumped out of an airplane (with a parachute) toPage 356write a feature about skydiving for her biweekly campus newspaper.Without that frightening experience, she might not have had the right mood, the touch of drama and fear, and the right words for her firstperson feature article about skydiving.Atlanta writer and poet Rosemary Daniell wrote a remembrance piece for Atlanta magazine on the first anniversary of the 1997 death of poet and novelist James Dickey.Daniell, author of six books, recalled the influences that Dickey's work had on her life.She described in detail how she first heard him read his poetry and how it changed her as a writer.Using first person, Daniell established the significance of Dickey to her and to the nation as a poet and author.She wrote: Thirtyfive years ago I sat among a small audience at an art gallery on Atlanta's Peachtree Road, listening to a poet read from his first book.The poet was James Dickey; the book was Into the Stone and Other Poems, a volume that included the works of two younger poets.Dickey was the first live poet I had heard read from his works, and I was transported, caught up in a nearreligious thrall, hardly able to believe that language—words arranged on a page in a certain way, with a certain rhythm, then read aloud—could convey such beauty, such emotion.At the time, I was newly in love with modern poetry and, at the whitehot speed that had come to dominate my life, was writing poems everyday [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]