10  Creating the best order

Prose = words in their best order. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk)

You’ve pitched an idea and had it accepted. It’s a fairly complex project, 1000 words or above, and if you’re new (and even if you’re not) you may have had some advice on approach or some kind of briefing, and you have a fair idea of what you want to say. It will help if you have a provisional title that reflects your proposal and any briefing. You’ve collected a pile of notes and materials. It won’t be easy to go straight to drafts without first:

•  checking for the right ingredients

•  putting your file in order

•  discovering what to say

•  matching order to content.

At some stage in all this you may want to get back to the editor and make sure any modification of the original idea is acceptable.

CHECKING FOR THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS

You will want to consider which of the following ingredients are needed and are available:

1  A premise or point of view.

2  A thesis or theme.

3  The descriptions, story, points, facts, explanations, arguments that are largely confined to the body, the core of the feature.

4  Supporting material: anecdotes, case studies, quotes, mainly for the body.

5  Illustrations: photographic/other, with captions.

The intro and conclusion will need much more attention than what was required for those simple features of Chapter 3. The intro for a complex feature needs to provide not only a hook but some briefing or orientation to make the reader’s journey hassle-free, and the conclusion will need to bring all the preceding teamwork of (provisional) title, intro and body to a satisfying fulfilment. The intro may have as many as three parts to it, as in the example below.

The full armoury would then be:

•  title

•  standfirst or subtitle

•  intro: hook (or teaser, or beginning)

•  intro: bridge (or context), which gives any necessary background, or raises the questions to be answered, leading the reader in

•  intro: text (or nub or pivot), which indicates what the feature is all about and gets readers into it

•  body

•  conclusion (or ending).

Let’s get an idea of how those ingredients fit into the structure of a published feature. There’s no rigid formula of course. No two features are exactly the same in structure, and in any three sections of intro, for example, there’s some overlapping of the roles mentioned and their order can sometimes be changed for different effects. With that reservation in mind, here’s an example of this sort of teamwork from an 1150-word feature by John Kampfner in New Statesman of 5 August 2002:

Title

‘No longer just the bank’

When you’ve got a fair amount of introductory matter the title can be as mysterious as you like.

Standfirst

Europe may have been subsidizing the Palestinian Authority, but it has played an insignificant role in the Middle East. Now that will change.

It was useful to explain that mysterious title straight away, clearly and concisely. Now there’s room for a bit more mystery.

Hook

At least on one point the Israelis and Palestinians agree – we in Europe have lost our nerve. From the Palestinians’ envoy to London: ‘Europe is still an actor in search of a role and we in the Middle East, we have a role in search of an actor. Europe has become too resigned to its marginal role.’ And this, from Israel’s ambassador to the EU: ‘It is our expectation to see our European democratic friends expressing solidarity and responsibility. It is not working and I am distressed by that.’

The same feeling about Europe on both sides but we’re intrigued by the different ways that feeling is expressed. We want to know why Europe …

Bridge

Why do the European Union and its member states appear so powerless to act? Is it because the other players won’t let them? Is it because they can’t agree a common foreign policy? Is it our dark history? Is it American muscle? Or is it a lack of will?

Interesting questions and we want to read on and get some answers.

Text

The situation is demeaning. Our diplomats shuttle between Brussels and Washington, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, but their efforts are neither noticed nor acted upon. Miguel Moratinos has been the European Union’s special representative in the region for the past six years, although you have probably never heard of him. I spoke to him for BBC Radio 4’s Analysis programme late last month, in a break between his several meetings.

Body summary

It lists and contrasts the points of view that emerge in considering those questions. It incorporates quotes from the EU’s special representative in the region, the head of the Middle East programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Israel’s ambassador in Brussels, the UK’s Foreign Office minister with responsibility for the Middle East, the Palestinian envoy to London and the EU’s high representative on foreign affairs. The quotes are interspersed with the effects of one or two events in the period, and some explanations and commentary. A crucial aspect is the way Europe has kept paying for Palestinian areas damaged by Israeli attacks but doesn’t use its economic clout.

Conclusion

We end on a glimmer of hope and a question. Israel’s ambassador in Brussels says Europe will have to become not just a payer but a player. But is it up to the task?

A good structure. But Kampfner was first faced with that pile of notes and had to sort his body out first. So let’s return to bodies and get back to the shape of the whole in Chapter 11.

PUTTING YOUR FILE IN ORDER

Take more notes than you need but don’t take too many is the best practice. You don’t want to get bogged down. Here is a typical procedure when the research is done. Read through what you’ve got several times until you’re familiar with it. Go for a walk and sleep on it and see if a clear theme falls into place, with beginning, middle and end coming into focus. Select what you want from your notes and source materials and put the rest aside, just in case there’s a change of plan later.

Try dividing your notes into sections with headings: 1, 2, 3, 4, …. Your source materials can be labelled A, B, C, D, … and put to the side.

Research materials for a feature on what treatments are available for alcoholics might amount to research reports and other literature from:

A  The NHS

B  Alcoholics Anonymous

C  Institute of Psychiatry

D  Ruttgers University, New York

E  Drink Watchers organization

F  Edinburgh research unit

G  National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

H  Directory of Psychology and Psychiatry Encyclopaedia.

The notes might come from books, journalism (consult the indexes), literature of the above organizations and from legwork/interviews involved in visits. The notes might provide the following headings, with the sources indicated:

1  Definitions of alcoholism (C, H)

2  The main causes (C, G, H)

3  Recent developments, e.g. among women (journalism, G)

4  Two kinds of cure: controlled drinking and abstinence (B, F)

5  Most successful treatments (D, F)

6  Least successful treatments (D, F)

7  Lack of funding for research/medical facilities/voluntary organizations (A, G)

8  What needs to be done (journalism, D, G).

One way of working with this outline is to allocate half a page to each heading and slot underneath it the most significant or most striking acts, quotes, anecdotes, whatever from the notes and literature. In the margins of the pages you can indicate any links that occur to you.

You may want then to write a first draft from memory, using the second draft to fill in the gaps and polish. A detailed outline of this kind can become the framework for a book.

Some commissioning editors, especially in the USA, like to see your pitch in the form of an outline with research sources indicated, as above, plus a proposed intro. A paragraph summarizing what will come after that might also be welcome. This is especially likely when your feature is to be long, fairly complex and based on a fair amount of research. See, for example, the booklet Writing for Reader’s Digest, obtainable from the publishers.

DISCOVERING WHAT TO SAY

If you find the theme slow to emerge clearly, you may want to try brain-storming. Get some feedback on your thoughts by discussing them with friends and colleagues. Put the headings on cards and shuffle them as suggested on page 30, to see what new patterns emerge.

Try a mind map

You may want to try a mind map to get you thinking about your material. Have another look at the mind map on page 55. Suppose your idea is ‘Do surgeons make too many mistakes? Suppose you have put that in the middle of your page. East and south of the surgery map is your area of interest. You may want to add to these aspects various specialisms – eye surgery, ear, nose and throat, heart, etc., writing them round the centred title.

You will spread out in bubbles such aspects as:

•  accusations from patients – false and genuine

•  whistleblowers – prejudiced and unprejudiced

•  secrecies

•  compensation policies

•  causes – lack of funding, lack of training, shortage of nursing staff, overwork

and link them up where relevant to the specialisms. You will then spread out your thoughts, questions and points extracted from your research (facts, quotes, anecdotes, examples, etc.) under the relevant bubbles. You will do your lateral thinking, to see unexpected associations and resonances, comparisons and contrasts to get your imagination working towards a compelling theme, and with luck your intro and ending would suggest themselves as well.

MATCHING ORDER TO CONTENT

You may have sensational material but if you depend on its quality rather than how you put it across you can end up with a turkey. ‘True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance,’ as Alexander Pope said.

Here we are concerned with the various skills that produce different kinds of order, rather than the whys and wherefores and the armoury mentioned above, which will reappear in the next chapter. How do you find the right order for an effective body of description, narration, exposition (analysis/explanation/demonstration), argument?

Each of these skills demands its own patterns, and a feature will normally require two or more different patterns. Narration usually needs some description and much narration (history, for example) is expository in purpose. Argument of any substance needs exposition to support it as well as straight facts as evidence. For the sake of clarity and convenience we’ll deal with each order separately.

Readers’ interest order

But first, because we’re talking about journalism, any order must take account of where your readers’ interest will lie, so let’s start with that. Readers’ interest prevents any order becoming too predictable or too rigid. The order required for a how-to feature on cookery or gardening is likely to be firmly dictated by the subject but there are features whose structure is not going to be at all obvious.

Features that require different kinds of material may need all or most of the patterns mentioned above. Then the main criterion determining structure is often readers’ interest. Profiles often depend on it.

A profile by Val Hennessy (no relation) in The Mail on Sunday told of a 4 ft 5 in., 76-year-old veteran pickpocket called Rose caught again (she’d spent 20 years in prison) at Harvey Nichols. She was given a conditional discharge. Rose mainly tells her own story, which is skilfully linked up with facts and commentary. Here are the bare bones after the intro gives those main facts:

•  she lives in a slum: crime doesn’t pay

•  life in Holloway as it used to be

•  anecdotes about Myra Hindley (Moors murderer) and Ruth Ellis (the last woman hanged in Britain) in Holloway

•  childhood (during First World War) with prostitute stepmother who neglected her; at 11 sexually abused servant in large houses

•  Borstal at 17 and learned skills of the trade

•  marriage at 34; defrauded by husband who died while she was in prison

•  daughter without reproaches

The feature ends with lunch at a restaurant and Rose saying she’s turned over a new leaf (‘my fingers are not so nimble’).

Attempts to deal with a long life, however much interest there is in certain aspects and events, is difficult to do in a feature. Notice that we needed to know about the subject now before we were taken on the more or less chronological story. Notice how vivid incidents in the subject’s life are slotted in to represent a period.

We don’t know the questions; what we get in abundance is the answers in Rose’s inimitable style. There’s some linking and summarizing, but no moral judgements, no explanations. Readers can react in any way they like, but the hidden message, the humanitarian one, is hard to ignore. The questions are easily guessed at, and they are obviously the ones any reader would have asked.

When the first facts you get are that a 76-year-old has spent 20 years in prison you want to know about her prison experiences first before the childhood. Then you probably want to know what sort of childhood produced this sort of character. And then boyfriends, husband, children?

Exposition

Exposition is all about being clear, concise and in logical order. Showing something clearly is what all your ordering and outlining aims to achieve. In its simplest form, explaining how to do or achieve something (wiring your house or tiling your roof, for example), getting the order wrong could do your readers severe damage.

How-to

Straightforward how-to features are legion and in popular magazines and newspaper lifestyle sections, often produced in-house, you will find all kinds of subjects: how to cook, garden, complain, furnish, keep fit, keep healthy, beat back pain, do the plumbing. You have to study the prospects for any freelance contributions carefully to work out which have scope for freelance features and then what sort of treatments they want. How do they use photographic and other illustrations, boxes, charts, and so on?

Readers’ interest/exposition

The decline in the world population of dolphins prompted a feature in Glasgow’s Sunday Post that gave the straightforward facts about dolphins. They were organized under question headings. The questions were put to an expert on dolphins and the order had to be both logical and keep the reader interested:

•  How common are dolphins around Britain?

•  How intelligent are they?

•  How did you become interested?

•  How do they sleep?

•  Are they naturally friendly?

•  Do they adapt well to humans?

•  Are they ever dangerous?

•  What’s the largest species of dolphin?

•  Why are they easy to train?

•  How do they communicate?

•  How endangered are they?

•  How are dolphins used in medicine?

•  What might surprise us about them?

Description

When you describe in a feature, which means to give a detailed account of a person, an object, a place, a situation, you have to be careful not to write the kind of school essay where you had to evoke something for its own sake, where you tended to show off your store of adjectives and adverbs. You have also to avoid giving a lengthy account of the make-up of something or the process of some activity, as an essay in biology does. Your description must be concise, and must serve the purpose of the feature in an interesting way.

You might want to note the essential details in a good order. For example, a feature about buying tulip bulbs in the Sunday Herald Magazine goes like this:

you’ll be tempted by the brilliantly coloured photos on the packets

but don’t buy the dried-up bulbs you get from the shops and supermarkets

get them fresher from a specialist grower

from a small bulb grower in the UK

look at their colour photos online

last year I bought some excellent bulbs in this way

they came in paper bags, stamped with their names, wrapped in newspaper

the tall tulips

Queen of the Night, dark purple–black

Shirley, white with fine purple edges

the small species tulips which were followed by interesting seedpods

Camassia ‘Blue Spires’, a beautiful, tall delphinium-like plant

flowers in May and is perfect for damp soil

the elegant snakeshead fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris …

The feature ends with planting hints.

Exposition/description/narration

More ambitious kinds of description that a feature might need are the creative ability to transport the reader and fill the mind with imagery, and may be combined with exposition and narration. A landscape can be easy enough if it’s: to the north … to the south …, etc. But you may need to describe a landscape as seen from an aeroplane or a moving train, or a riot in a marketplace where you would employ all the senses, and you might need to describe the effects of time passing. Your best guides to acquiring these skills are good fiction writers.

Here are a few evocative bits, however, from part of a feature by Paul Evans in Geographical magazine of April 2003, with some quoting to indicate the more creative skills. The feature tells how the author joined a team of volunteers helping to monitor wolves in Poland, in danger of being hunted into local extinction:

It’s a sound to chill the blood. In the preternatural stillness that descends with the falling snow, a wolf howls. A reply comes almost instantly … it’s a sound that is becoming increasingly rare …

One of these wolves recently walked along the ridge … the fore print is about ten centimetres in diameter, four large clawed toes and a large heel make an almost circular shape …

The forests in which this wolf lives form part of Poland’s 270-square-kilometre Bieszczady (pronounced Bish-cardy) National Park whose wildlife includes]roe deer, wild boar, elk, European bison, beaver, brown bear and lynx …

We learn the history of the National Park, the ravages of the hunting, and the more recent conservation efforts of Dr Wojciech Smetana of the Institute of Nature Conservation at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has trapped a number of wolves and fitted them with radio-collars to track them.

Dr Smetana has also revived the tradition of using Tatra sheepdogs to guard flocks:

This large, tough hound is raised with sheep in order to form a powerful social bond with the flock. Wolves are very reluctant to risk injury by tackling Tatra dogs and two per flock provide a sufficient deterrent. Smetana uses the dogs to corral flocks at night into enclosures surrounded by three strands of electrified wire. The top strand is ‘fladry’ – a line of coloured flags that wolves dislike and are reluctant to cross.

The feature ends:

These tracks belong to an inspiring language, and it is one we should learn. The living creature at the end of its trail may never care, but if we’re going to save it from persecution – and possible extinction – we must (Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, April 2003).

Let’s see how the main points of a descriptive/expository/narrative piece about mazes and labyrinths in Active Life magazine are arranged:

•  mazes and labyrinths depicted throughout history

•  the difference: each path of the labyrinth leads to the centre

•  the Cretan labyrinth myth: Theseus kills the Minotaur at the centre

•  the Roman version, square or rectangular, depicted in mosaic

•  thirteenth century – a central cross with Christian significance

•  turf mazes symbolic mazes, multilevel and unicursal mazes mentioned

•  the Archbishop’s Maze, created 1981, at Grey’s Court; rich in Christian symbolism

•  the Hampton Court maze, oldest hedge maze in the UK – a trapezoid design

•  various games connected with mazes

•  mazes in the shapes of mythical beasts – dragons, etc.

•  Hever Castle in Kent: a yew maze and a water maze

•  some of the new mazes created every year

•  all kinds of designs

Narration

We have seen in Chapter 3 how you can choose between climax order (for example, 2, 4, 3, 1) and anticlimax, without tailing off (for example, 1, 4, 3, 2), when your feature is straightforward narration/exposition, and that a good way of avoiding any tailing off at the end is to provide an echo of some kind of a striking beginning, so that there’s a satisfying circle.

The Reader’s Digest’s TOTS (triumphs over tragedies) and thriller-type crimes and adventures receive a great deal of attention to ensure that the story grips from the start and the suspense or fascination is maintained till the end. The trick is to incorporate the necessary explanation, description, background history or whatever into the piece without losing the momentum of the story. Here’s the plan of a 3500-word piece that combines several structural techniques: ‘Murder on the cliff ’ by Helen O’Neill in the issue of November 2003. It goes like this, with gaps as in the original:

•  description of the cliff rising from the Wyoming desert: ‘loose shale and parched brushwood and swirling dust winds … coiled rattlesnakes …’

•  a young mother and her child plunged to their deaths

•  two friends grew up in Green River, a mining town: Roger Brauburger and Bob Duke

•  they shot rabbits and drank beer

•  the older, with connections to small-time crime, Brauburger, at 21 bought Duke a pistol

•  Duke’s girlfriend got pregnant at 17: Duke married her but felt trapped

•  they had a son Erik

•  August 1996: Brauburger’s mother tells him of the deaths

•  it was thought Duke had gone to the jeep for a drink

•  Brauburger’s sorrow and torment at the funeral

•  why had the family gone to such a desolate place?

•  Duke moved to Houston to live with brother Mike

•  he began to phone Brauburger

•  Brauburger’s torment increased

•  his father said, ‘Go to Mont.’

•  Green River police lieutenant Mont Mecham had been suspicious about the deaths

•  but the case came under Sweetwater County Sheriff’s department

•  Brauburger reported a call from Duke out of insurance money from the deaths

•  then said he’d pay Brauburger $20,000 to kill his parents

•  also said he’d ‘done family before and didn’t like it’

•  in the summer of 1996 Duke had offered him $15,000 to kill his wife and child

•  the police tapped the next call from Duke and a date for the killing was set

•  further phone calls were recorded and the FBI arrested Duke

•  Duke was given only 10 years

•  Brauburger didn’t get his family protection programme asked for

•  he had drugs and drink problems, lost jobs

•  Tim Merchant of the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Department, re-examined the cliff deaths

•  He and prosecutor Harold Moneyhun put together discrepancies in Duke’s old story

•  on 13 August 2001 the court case faltered

•  Brauburger’s testimony was rubbished by the defence

•  a new witness saved the day – Duke’s secret girlfriend at the time

•  she said she and Duke had often visited the clifftop and he had talked of finishing with the marriage

•  but without having to pay child support

•  Duke’s story had been that he had lost his way with his family

•  the sentence was six life terms, four of them consecutive

•  Brauburger could get on with his life.

Notice the way the surprises in the story are saved up to keep the suspense going, change the pace, provide changes in direction. This storytelling technique serves in all kinds of long features. Sections of them will have their own pattern of climax or anticlimax, most important to less important or vice versa.

Argument

A sort of amalgamation of several features I’ve seen arguing about whether or not many more police should be armed with guns has produced the list below of Against points followed by For points in pairs. This results in a conclusion in favour of a moderate increase in arms.

I’m leaving out the other elements. You might start such a piece by describing a housing estate as the scene of a gun battle between police and criminals and follow up with a bloodthirsty narrative before getting into the argument. You would undoubtedly have some exposition: some comparisons with the situation in the USA and some history perhaps. I’ve suggested in the notes how some of this lead-in material might go in an intro. But let’s concentrate on the order of the argument.

Depending on your point of view, you might order (or rearrange before writing up) as all the Againsts followed by all the Fors when the argument is in favour, or as all the Fors followed by all the Againsts when the argument is not in favour, and split up into pairs perhaps (F-A, F-A, etc. or A-F, A-F, etc.) when the argument is left more open. Let’s see how the Against list followed by the For list works. You might have produced this final order after having experimented with a mind map or just put down points in any order as they came into your head.

Intro

Narrate an inner city gun battle involving police and describe the setting.

Give some figures from other countries, indicating both more armed police increasing shootings and more armed police reducing them. Relate the figures to the UK, and indicate point of view. Define ‘more’.

Body

(It’s a good idea when outlining an argument to put points in sentence form. This helps you to make the logical structure clear.)

1A	Arming more police will encourage more villains to arm. The armed response vehicles (ARVs) are sufficient.
1F	The ARVs rarely get to the scene quickly enough.
2A	The relationship between the police and the community would deteriorate.
2F	People would trade in some friendliness for more effectiveness.
3A	The answer to rising violent crime is stricter gun laws with an amnesty for guns handed in.
3F	The police are at the mercy of increasingly violent armed criminals. Collecting arms from the populace has had limited success.
4A	There’s a great danger of trigger-happy police shooting people by mistake or without sufficient cause. Look at the USA experience.
4F	The answer to that is thorough training of the police in the use of arms and clear rules of engagement. More guns would work well if combined with the stepping up of current reforms.

Conclusion

The policy would have to be cautiously implemented. Sum up why it is believed the weight of evidence is in favour. Quote?

It would probably help to flesh out this outline, developing the argument a little and showing the train of thought with some links. For example:

2A	The relationship between the police and the community would deteriorate. One advantage of a friendly relationship is that crimes are more likely to be reported (A).
2F	But too many of these reports are not followed up. And anyway attitudes to the police are complex and varied. Some people say that too many violent elements are not brought to justice. Others emphasize the evidence of corruption or racism. Others blame bureaucracy and failure to recruit. Verdict: people would trade in some friendliness for effective reforms in these areas (F).

(Link in italics.)

For a 2000-word plus piece on the above subject you might go on to do a more detailed outline, slotting in the contacts and source materials where they will be used before writing up. And your For/Against pattern might be allocated to the different sections of the piece rather than followed straight through: covering relationships with the community, the amnesty policy, training in arms, other reforms, and so on. And you would vary the order of the Fors and Againsts a bit.