GROUP 4 PRESENTATION- ROY PETER CLARK: FOURTEEN TRAITS OF GOOD WRITERS &
ELEMENTS OF NEWS
ROY PETER CLARK: Fourteen Traits of
Good Writers
TRAIT 1
Good writers see the world as their
journalism laboratory, a storehouse of
story ideas- If they can get out of the room,
they can find a story.
TRAIT 2
Good writers prefer to discover and
develop their own story ideas. They have
an eye for the offbeat and may find
conventional assignments tedious.
TRAIT 3
Good writers are voracious collectors of
information. This usually means that they
take notes like crazy.
TRAIT 4
Good writers spend too much time and
creative energy working on their leads.
They know that the lead is the most
important part of their work, the passage
that invites the reader into the story and
signals the news.
TRAIT 5
Good writers talk about “immersing
themselves” into the story. They live it,
breathe it, and dream it.
TRAIT 6
Most good writers are bleeders rather
than speeders. When they write, in the
words of sportswriter Red Smith, they “open
a vein.”
TRAIT 7
Good writers understand that an
important part of writing is the
mechanical drudgery of organizing the
material, what Saul Pett describes as
“donkey work.”
TRAIT 8
Good writers rewrite. They love computer
terminals, which permit maximum
playfulness during revision.
TRAIT 9
In judging their work, good writers tend
to trust their ears and their feelings more
than their eyes. Editors “look for holes in
the story.” Writers want „to make it sing.”
TRAIT 10
Good writers want to tell stories. They
are constantly searching for the human side
of the news, for voices that enliven the
writing.
TRAIT 11
Good writers write primarily to please
themselves and to meet their own
exacting standards, but they also
understand that writing is a transaction
between writer and reader.
TRAIT 12
Good writers take chances in their
writing. They love the surprising and the
unconventional approach to a story.
TRAIT 13
Good writers are lifelong readers, mostly
novels, and they like movies. They collect
story ideas and forms from other genres.
TRAIT 14
Good writers write too long, and they
know it. They want their stories to be
“seamless” or “connected by a single
thread” or “to flow.”
NEWS
News is an oral or written report of a
past, present, or future event. It should be
factual, truthful, accurate, unbiased, and
interesting. But what is interesting to one is
not always interesting to another.
Elements of News
 Conflict- This may involve physical
or mental conflict man versus man,
man versus animals, man versus
nature, or man versus himself.
 Immediacy or timeliness- This
element emphasizes the newest
angle of the story. The more recent
the event, the more interesting it is
to the reader.
 Proximity or nearness- This may
refer to geographical nearness as
well as to nearness of kinship or
interest.
 Prominent- Some people are more
prominent than others by reasons of
wealth, social position,
achievements.
 Significance- Whatever is
significant to the life of an individual
is interesting to him.
 Names- Important names make
important news.
 Drama- this adds color to the
story. The more picturesque the
background and the more dramatic
the actions are, the more appealing
the story is to the reader.
 Oddity or unusualness- This refers
to strange or unnatural events,
objects, persons, and places. An
odd story is interesting not because
of its news value but because of the
human-interest side of it.
 Romance and Adventure- The
romance of Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton had hugged
headlines for many years. Romance
may be experienced with other
things. There were the romance of
Hemingway with the sea and of the
astronauts with space.
 Sex- Since the dawn of history, sex
has always interested man. Stories
of sex are usually related to stories
of romance, marriage, divorce, and
the varied activities of men with
women. This is not always the case.
 Progress- The onward and forward
march of civilization or the progress
of a country is chronicled step
by step in the newspaper. The trend
today is towards development
communication. Reports on
the significant changes in
the established order and
on scientific achievements are in
order.
or
 Animals- Stories of animals,
especially those with talents are
good reading matter because of their
human-interest value.
 Number- Sweepstakes numbers,
vital statistics, election results,
scores in games, casualties,
fatalities, price of goods, and ages of
women make good news.
 Emotion- All the
other elements of news mentioned
above appeal to the emotion. But the
term emotion here includes the
various human responses such as
the innate desire for food, clothing,
shelter; the universal interest in
children, animals, and nature; and
the natural feeling of love, sympathy
and generosity, of fear, hatred, and
jealousy.