I was wrong in another journal entry when I said she never
did a 911 article while she worked at our office.
In fact, it was among one of the last stories she wrote, and
something I just stumbled over this week while looking back at her archive of
stories.
Devoid of any recent poems, I’ve taken to listening to her
music again and reading her old copy.
The 911 piece was pretty perfunctory, but had all the
earmarks of good writing that I had admired in her work from the start.
She said she doesn’t like hard news and prefers features,
yet she holds her own with news pieces (probably with the help of our former
temporary boss).
While her features aren’t as complicated as her poetry is,
they often show significant skill.
Most reporters actually dislike features since they require
a level of creativity that hard news doesn’t.
A hard news story largely writes itself, using predictable
structures.
How to structure a feature is a great challenge.
Since before we got involved, I admired her work as a
writer, but only in looking back to I realize why her stores stood out from
most of what other writers for our office do.
One particular story of interest was one she wrote about a film
production company in one of the town’s she covers.
I use a number of
formulas – which I won’t go into here.
In this piece, she uses a modified summary lead, although
instead of summing up the story in one of two lines, she uses it to raise
reader expectations and the details become the structure she follows to fill in
the pieces later
She opens with the two filmmakers and how their company was “born
of serendipity,” through a “random series of events involving a salt shaker, a
retro record player, Vespas and dogs, and the story goes on to show how each of
these things played a part in helping give birth to the company, while she also
gives their history as individuals, where everything started pointing out that
on a holiday weekend, one of the people was stuck and traffic and a green Vespa
up ahead, his talk to the driver eventually led to his meeting of the other
half of this dynamic duo, and a collaboration for a New York City film vestibule,
in which a salt shake prop played a prominent role.
The two men also had a mutual love of dogs and horror films.
They eventually went on to produce a music video, although this did not
transpire until one of them found a vintage record player which inspired the
image they used.
There is much more to the story, including life lessons
learned, a philosophic vision, and such. But because of the use of those images
and her ability to tie the pieces together, the story becomes something
special.
Needless to say, I’ve started to “steal” ideas from these
stories, since I’m still stuck in the trenches, and must continue to produce
stories on deadline each week.
But reading her stories and being inspired by them makes me
realize just what a loss her leaving was – much the way I felt about Andy Newman,
the only other writer from our office on her level.
Anyway, such research distracts me from the sad woes she
seems to face these days.
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