Shaping Ideas

Joseph Campana
joecampana25@gmail.com
 Before Flying Out The Door, Consider All
of The Following:
 The Range of your story

 It’s Central Message

 The Approach that best fits the story

 The Tone you will write in

 Range
 Thinking too small: What would the “End of the
Line” piece have looked like if they had thought too
small?

 Thinking too big: an impossibly long or superficial

or scattered piece (hugging the fat lady in the circus)

 Solution: think first of your story only in terms of

cause and effect, thinking of time, distance, and
constituencies.
 Theme
 Identify what your story is going to be about

 From your notes, carve out one or two tightly written

sentences that express the central idea of your piece.

 If you do not know what you are trying to say about your
subject, your reader will not be able to piece it together
either; in other words the heart of your story should be
obvious to you and your reader

 This sentence may turn into the basis of the lead

 Approach, 1
 Are you writing a general profile or a microcosm
profile

 In other words: Are you writing about something

we are familiar with and demonstrating what is
unique about your subject?

 Or, are you writing about something that appears to

be unique and showing readers what is typical
about it?
 Approach, 2
 The instinctive method

 The dogged, roundup method

 Both have their strengths and weaknesses…

 The middle road: what Blundell calls the

collective method
 Tone
 Know your feelings about your material and identify what
from the story has generated these feelings. Nurture a sense
of healthy skepticism

 Problem One: the wrong tone; relatively uncommon

 Problem Two: no tone; relatively common

 No tone: When the piece is bogged down in facts and

numbers and quotes, but the elements of drama are missing
 Heroes and foes: the struggle between them is drama