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Guest post: Up close and personal, writing first-person profiles

Michelle V. Rafter — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:00:55 +0000

Today’s post is written by Pat Olsen, a long-time New Jersey freelance writer who specializes in business and health.

When I interviewed professional skateboarder Tony Hawk for The New York Times, he said he loved skateboarding so much he’d do it even if he wasn’t getting paid.

That’s almost the way I feel about writing first-person profiles.

First-person profiles are stories or columns I report as usual but write in first person rather than in third person, as if I’m the person I’m writing about. I write first-person columns for two magazines and am a lead contributor for two in the Times.

It’s challenging trying to capture someone else’s voice, to find a flow in what they’ve said, and perhaps uncover a theme.

Doing first-person profiles isn’t a matter of simply recording what someone says and transcribing it. If that were the case, I might write, “Well, um, let’s see, when I was 10 − no, make that 12 — I delivered newspapers up and down the street. They were pretty heavy.”

You might want to write exactly the way someone speaks if you’re writing a novel, but not if you’re writing a profile. People often speak too casually for these types of pieces. For a profile, I take that stream of consciousness and make it coherent and interesting. It’s not easy, but this type of writing just feels right to me and usually once I’m happy with a piece, others are, too.

If you’re interested in writing first-person profiles, the first thing to do is unlock the stories inside the person you’re writing about. Everyone has stories. The key to finding them is getting the person to talk about the anecdotes, trips, jobs or other events that bring their life into focus.

When I wrote about Peter Wilson’s career change from public relations to teaching, the key to getting him to open up was asking what he missed about his former job. When I wrote about Ray Harris, vice chairman of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, I used his recollection about getting started in the securities industry to tell his story.

Here are a few other tips I’ve picked up after years of practice:

It may take more than one interview to get someone to dig deeper. One of my first editors made me re-interview someone not once but twice to get enough details to be satisfied with what I’d written. Initially I considered it a failure not to “get it right the first time.” Since then, I’ve realized that it takes until the second or third interview for some people to open up. Most top executives are media-savvy: once they read a sample of the type of article they’re being interviewed for they know what to do. But many people who don’t give interviews all the time may not be reflective enough the first time. Drawing their thoughts out of them could take several conversations.

Ask the same question different ways. This technique is old hat to journalists, but still works. If you try it and still aren’t getting what you need, give the person an example of what you’re looking for. If someone’s having trouble coming up with good details of a trip they took, I might say, “In another profile I wrote, the person talked about almost missing his plane because a herd of cows crossing in front of his taxi took forever to reach the other side of the road.” That kind of prompting usually helps.

I always let profiles sit, even if it’s just overnight. I need to read them with a fresh eye to be able to improve them.

First-person profiles are my favorite things to write so on one hand, they’re easy. But that doesn’t mean they’re not hard work.

Going for the gold: how to train like an Olympian

Michelle V. Rafter — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:35:05 +0000

If you’re like me, you’ve probably spent at least part of the last five days watching the 2010 Winter Olympics and wondering how it’s possible for the human body to spin, flip, fly or move so fast.

Olympic athletes aren’t born doing those things. With the rare exception, it takes years, maybe even decades, to reach that level of achievement – something spectators like you and me understand almost intuitively.

Yet when it comes to our work as writers, we expect to come out of the gate a Nicholas Kristoff or Seymour Hersh.

But writing, like sports, doesn’t work that way. To attain a certain level of mastery takes time and effort. While it might not take the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says it does in Outliers, it’s not something you can start out at and be perfect right away (unless you’re a J.D. Salinger, and face it, we’re not).

Good writing takes hard work. To be an Olympic caliber writer takes Olympic caliber training.

So how do you train like a gold-medal champion?

Specialize. You don’t see Apollo Anton Ohno competing in short-track speed skating and figure skating. Ohno’s a champion because he’s devoted umpteen years of his life to one thing and one thing only, and that devotion’s made him the most decorated American Winter Olympian ever. To get good at something specialize. If you want to be a business reporter, pitch and take assignments to write business stories. If you want to be a copywriter, actively seek out copywriting opportunities. Ditto for any other niche writing market.

Find a coach. Watch the Olympic figure skaters before and after they enter the rink. There’s always a coach there to encourage them before they’re on and critique them once they’re done. Writers need coaches too. You could hire a coach, but you don’t have to. Coaching could come from attending a writer’s workshop, reading books on the craft, or putting some really good writing blogs on your RSS reader (including this one, hopefully).

Practice. Olympic athletes are in the spotlight once every four years, but they practice constantly. Practice is what allows U.S. snowboard superpipe champ Shaun White to do tricks like the Double McTwist 1260, which he invented and so far has been the only rider to have landed successfully. Thankfully, practicing writing is a little easier than doing double flipping, triple twisting maneuvers on a snowboard – although getting a reluctant interviewee to open up sometimes feels like it. The best practice for writers is writing. If assignments aren’t pouring in, aim your writing energies at query letters, keeping a journal, blogging or taking a writing class – anything that helps sharpen your skills.

Use the right equipment. Bode Miller didn’t win a bronze medal in the downhill on any old pair of skis. He used the right equipment and tuned it to the conditions on the mountain that day. To get the most out of their work, writers need equipment that’s tuned to their special needs too: a laptop that has enough umph to be a main workstation yet is light enough to take on the road, a telephone headset and Skype, a smartphone with a built-in camera, software for making podcasts.

Surround yourself with like-minded professionals. Skiers on the World Cup circuit travel, train and live together – U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn’s chief nemesis on the World Cup circuit is also her best friend, Germany’s Maria Riesch. This is a hard one for me, because it’s against my naturally competitive nature to want to share too much with writers who could potentially take work away from me. But the reality is, there’s no way I could write all the stories there are to write about topics I cover. So why not accept that and spread the wealth? And good karma has a way of finding its way back to you.

Visualize greatness. Olympic athletes train mentally as well as physically, picturing themselves performing at their peak. When I was 15 my parents sent me to a weekend seminar led by a local high-school football coach whose specialty was teaching athletes how to visual success. Over two days we learned what affirmations were and how to use positive mental imagery to picture ourselves doing whatever it was we wanted to do. Sounds hokey but it works, especially the visualization. I’ve continued to use some of the techniques up to this day. If you think of yourself as a successfully employed freelance writer, you will be. That doesn’t mean that all you have to do is think about it. You have to do the things that will make you successful – the querying, the interviews, the writing, the rewriting. But by picturing yourself as successful you won’t be mentally sabotaging everything else you’re doing to get there. And when you’ve got that big interview or have a call with an editor at your dream magazine you’ll be calm, cool and collected because you’ve been there before, in your head.

* * *

If the Olympics inspire you, you might want to check out the Pen Olympics now going on at Edittorent, another blog for writers. There’s a new competition every day – Monday’s was Doggerel Sled Racing.

Back to basics: the nut graph

Michelle V. Rafter — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:48:18 +0000

This post marks the debut of an occasional series I’m introducing on WordCount called Back to Basics, short explainers of various nuts and bolts of writing.

Speaking of nuts, we’ll kick things off looking at a little nut with a big impact.

I’m of course talking about the nut graph.

The nut graph is so important, you’d think writers would lavish as much attention on it as they do a story’s lead, opening quote or conclusion.

And yet, nut graphs remain tough nuts to crack, pun definitely intended.

A story without a nut graph is like a walk in the woods without a path: you know you’re going someplace, you’re just not sure where.

The nut graph supplies that direction. It tells readers, ‘This is what this story is about, this is why you should care, this is why you should keep reading.’

Writers’ overall deficiency in this area hit home recently as I’ve been doing more editing work and reading first drafts of stories that lack anything approximating a nut graph.

It’s not just me. A few weeks ago, an editor friend said she’d spent an entire day imagining herself the nut-graph queen – tiara and all – dispensing nut graphs with a tap of the wand and a click of the keyboard to every story that had entered her email inbox.

The nut graph – a term near and dear to the hearts of cranky old newspaper editors worldwide, and a lot of young ones too – is actually a misnomer. It could be an entire paragraph. Or it could be a simple sentence. Especially in short pieces – like blog posts – a nut graph could be a simple declarative sentence spelling out what the writer intends to do in the next 300 or 400 words.

Here’s an example. The big buzz this week is about new smartphones introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show, so here’s the 23-word lead of a 266-word Mashable story on a new Motorola phone. In this case, the lead also serves as the story’s nut graph:

Motorola has a new Android smartphone out, and judging by the looks of it, it’s going to be one of those love-it-or-hate-it devices.

After the lead, the story goes on to describe what the phone looks like and what features potential users might like or dislike.

Sometimes, lack of a nut graph signifies a bigger problem. If a writer has trouble figuring out what to say in a nut graph it could be because they haven’t figured out what the story they’re writing is about. A nice trick for solving that an editor once taught me: find someone unfamiliar with the piece you’re working on. Then explain to them, as concisely as you can, what the story is about and why they – or any other potential reader – should care. If you can summarize the piece in a sentence or two, you (a) have a good grasp of the idea and (b) should be able to turn what you just verbalized into a nut graph.

Writers also have trouble deciding where to put a nut graph in a story. In short stories, the lede and the nut graph could be one in the same. In a good old-fashioned inverted-pyramid news piece, the nut graph should follow the opening who, what, where, when and how information and serve as the story’s “why.”

In longer news, news features or feature stories, the nut graph could follow the lede by some distance, but not be buried so deep the reader gives up before figuring out what the heck he or she is reading about. The exact placement depends on the length of the story. In a feature of 1,000 or 1,500 words, the nut graph could follow the lead by five or six paragraphs or even less. But a 10,000-word New Yorker epic might lead with a 1,000-word introduction before the getting around explaining what the story is really about.

It’s fashionable to poo-poo the need to even have a nut graph in a story. Call me old-school, but I don’t buy it. With so much other information competing for a reader’s attention, it’s up to a writer to make it as easy as possible to figure out what’s happening and why they should care. In this way, it’s different from fiction, where the author can have fun confusing the hell out of the reader before slowly revealing what the story’s about.

Nut graph essentials: weave a reasonably concise explanation of why the story matters into the fabric of a piece up high enough to hook the reader into hanging in there through the rest of the piece.

What writing basics would you like to know more about? Share your request so I can include it in the Back to Basics series.

Lessons learned from a year on Twitter

Michelle V. Rafter — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:04:06 +0000

Happy Twitter anniversary to me. I joined Twitter exactly one year ago today. It took a little convincing, but once I figured out how to incorporate it into my freelance business I never looked back.

Earlier today, I tweeted the following lessons learned from my first year on the microblogging service, 17 in honor of joining on Dec. 17, 2008. Every one of them is 140 characters or less.

What I’ve learned:

1 – Be real. People can see through a fake, even online. Therefore, don’t use auto–DMs.

2 – One note may work for a samba, but not online. Don’t tweet on same topic 24/7, even if you’re here for work.

3 – Don’t drink and tweet. But if you do, the next day, delete the tweets. (I got that tip from a Twitterati.)

4 – You don’t have to DM every new follower, esp. once you hit 2,000+. But do DM those you want to know better.

5 – Lists are great organizational tools, but if you follow a lot of people, building them’s a bear.

6 – While good in theory, #FF is hard to keep up, especially if like me, all deadlines seem to fall on Fridays.

7 – Twitter is just a tool. It will not find you customers or make you rich. You do that. All it does is help.

8 – As a writer, Twitter forces me to be concise and use colorful words and phrases. It’s my robo-copydesk.

9 – Twitter is not texting. Some people may be OK with abbreviating everything; for me, that’s too hard to read.

10 – Hashtags and conferences go together. There’s no better way to promote one or report from one. However…

11 – …As recent events have shown, Twitter at meetings can lead to mean-spirited back-channel snark.

12 – Saved Search is handy for tracking subjects you’ll be writing about. I use it like Google News alerts.

13 – Trending Topics is worthless, unless you use it as an obituary tracker. Otherwise, it’s too easy to game.

14 – Spam, porn, phishing, malware, scams: as Twitter’s user base has grown, so has its smarmy underbelly.

15 – Twitter is a conversation, which means you can’t do all the talking. Stop, look, listen, and retweet.

16 – Twitter collapses the space between you and that famous publisher or CEO, but you still gotta make your case.

17 – Blogging and Twitter go together like cheese and crackers: you can have one without the other but it’s not as good.

That’s it. If you’ve used Twitter a year or longer, what wisdom can you share?

By the way, I wrote the first draft of this on Twitter in real time. It was easier than I thought.

Are you a freelancer writer or journalist entrepreneur?

Michelle V. Rafter — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:00:29 +0000

Shakespeare said a rose by any other any other name would smell as sweet.

But did Shakespeare call himself a freelance writer or a poet? A hired pen, or a playwright?

Not offense Shakespeare, but words matter. Today what writers call themselves matters more than ever because it sets the tone for how we perceive the value of what we do, and how others perceive us.

This hit home after two professional groups recently scrubbed the term “freelancer” in favor of the more business-like “entrepreneur” to describe their members who work independently.

Earlier this year, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers changed the name of its Freelance Committee to Entrepreneurial Committee, apparently to better reflect the times.

At the Online News Association annual conference earlier this month, officials of that professional group started preliminary work to offer webinars and other training for reporters who work independently, either by choice or because they’ve been laid off and are contemplating some kind of start up. The ONA’s term of choice for describing these individuals: journalist entrepreneur, or entrepreneurial journalist.

I got the chance to briefly meet ONA Executive Director Jane McDonnell at the conference. When I identified myself as a freelance writer, I told her I was confused about the right thing to call myself these days, especially in light of all the freelancers who now do work for content aggregator sites such as Demand Studios and Helium.com. My blog even carries the tagline: “Freelancing in the Digital Age”. Was it becoming detrimental to my career and my blog, I asked her, to be associated with those other freelancers, even if just by name? McDonnell agreed that today there’s a certain negative connotation attached to the term “freelancer” compared with the more positive sounding “entrepreneur.”

Today, many more people are working freelance in all types of industries. But as McDonnell’s comments show, at least in media circles the word is getting a bad rap, and a bad rep. It would be easy to blame it entirely on those freelancers writing for content aggregators, doing work that doesn’t take the same kind of journalistic background or skill set that other types of writing require.

But there’s more to it than that. The traditional way of running a freelance business – querying print publications and waiting for them to respond – is falling by the wayside, forcing writers like me to take a more business-like approach to our jobs. We’re also exhorted to push our personal brand as a way to separate ourselves from the pack.

For 14 years, I’ve called myself a freelance writer and never had a problem with it. But given all that, maybe the time has come to throw out old terms and adopt new ones.

What do you think? Should a professional, ex-newspaper or magazine reporter or long-time independent writer adopt a different name for what they do?

Have you purposely avoided using the word “freelance” to describe yourself?

Do you believe what do you call yourself changes the way you look at what you do?

As I sort this out for myself, I’d love to hear what other writers have decided: are you a freelancer or journalist entrepreneur?

William Zinsser and On Writing Well

Michelle V. Rafter — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:37:27 +0000

It had been a while since I read William Zinsser’s classic guide to writing, On Writing Well.

I grabbed it off my bookshelf to share at a writing class I taught at the recent Digital Journalism Camp in Portland – then took it with me on vacation.

I own the book’s fifth edition, which came out in 1994. The only things about it that’s dated is a discussion of the advantage of writing on a computer v. in longhand and a few references to long-dead writers you may or may not have ever read (E.B. White yes, S.J. Perelman, no). The latest 30th anniversary edition, the seventh overall, came out in 2006.

Despite its age, On Writing Well is still relevant as a reference for what to do and what to avoid in many forms of nonfiction: newspaper and magazine articles, travel, sports and humor writing, criticism, memoir – even memos, newsletters and emails you may need to produce for work.

Zinsser’s advice to write tight and bright is especially relevant in a world of shrinking word counts and Internet readers who can’t be bothered to scroll past a story’s opening screen.

If you don’t already have this on your bookshelf, get a copy. Until then, here’s some of my favorite Zinsser advice:

On words – Read your articles out loud to see how they flow. Don’t use words you wouldn’t use in the course of normal conversation. Avoid jargon and cliches. Less is more. Active v. passive.

On the writing process. Writing is hard, even for the pros, the more you do it, the (slightly) easier it gets. Writing is rewriting. Being a writer isn’t about being a certain type of person, it’s about doing the work.

On style – Style is sounding like you on the page, not like anyone else. Zinsser writes:

Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it by willpower. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.

On interviews – Write questions out beforehand. Use some form of shorthand to take notes even if you’re recording. Get more material than you think you’ll need. Pay attention to detail. I didn’t realize how much of this I’d absorbed until I read his chapter on interviews then looked at the notes I’d made for that Digital Journalism Camp class on conducting interviews – his influence is obvious.

On leads and endings – If the first line of your story doesn’t grab readers, they’ll never read the second. Hook them with the lead and keep the good stuff coming. Even when you’re writing nonfiction, writing has to be entertaining for people to stick around. Pay attention to how you finish things. Don’t just re-state the lead – circle back to an opening anecdote, close with a bang-up quote, or simply finish telling the story.

On tackling science, technology and other complex subjects – Make sure you understand how what you’re writing about works or you’ll never be able to explain it to readers. Avoid jargon. Include people to keep things real.

On editors – Good ones can make decent stories better, and decent writers better too. Bad ones drive writers crazy, by changing style, voice, content, organization, and generally treating them “like hired help.”

Some of his closing words are a freelance writer’s anthem:

…The purposes that writers serve must be their own. What you write is yours and nobody else’s. Take your talent as far as you can and guard it with your life. Only you know how far that is: no editor knows. Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel. You will write only as well as you make yourself write.

WordCountLanguage

Recommended reading for March 12, 2010 – National Magazine Awards finalists

Guest post: Up close and personal, writing first-person profiles

Recommended reading for March 5, 2010

Recommended reading for Feb. 27, 2010

Recommended reading for Feb. 19, 2010

Going for the gold: how to train like an Olympian

Back to basics: the nut graph

Lessons learned from a year on Twitter

Are you a freelancer writer or journalist entrepreneur?

William Zinsser and On Writing Well