The Inverted Pyramid
When writing news articles, we use something called the inverted pyramid.
This means putting the most important fact first.
It's hard for two reasons.
The first is that it goes against your nature. Every story you see, hear or tell has a start, a middle and a end. Usually in that order. It's the best way to explain a series or events.
However with news it's different. People don't care how or why an event happened. It's the event itself that is important. What happened? Why?
Sometimes only a line or two of the whole thing will be read and that has to be enough.
The other thing is the importance of a fact is subjective. The fact as I see as the most important might seem trivial or obvious to you. The one you choose to focus on is the angle of the story. You aren't changing the facts, you're just putting in your choice of importance.
It might be an idea, after you've plotted out your story, to do this with your key scenes. What's the most important to you? Is that what you want to be most important to your readers?
Why?
This means putting the most important fact first.
It's hard for two reasons.
The first is that it goes against your nature. Every story you see, hear or tell has a start, a middle and a end. Usually in that order. It's the best way to explain a series or events.
However with news it's different. People don't care how or why an event happened. It's the event itself that is important. What happened? Why?
Sometimes only a line or two of the whole thing will be read and that has to be enough.
The other thing is the importance of a fact is subjective. The fact as I see as the most important might seem trivial or obvious to you. The one you choose to focus on is the angle of the story. You aren't changing the facts, you're just putting in your choice of importance.
It might be an idea, after you've plotted out your story, to do this with your key scenes. What's the most important to you? Is that what you want to be most important to your readers?
Why?
Comments
Post a Comment