Over the next few months, Poynter will publish short versions of 21 chapters of the book “Help! for Writers,” by Roy Peter Clark. Published by Little, Brown, the book lists common problems writers face and offers 10 solutions for each of the problems.
Problem 2: I hate writing assignments and other people’s ideas.
Solutions
1. Learn to turn an assignment into your story.
Good work requires you to test the assumptions built into any idea. The assignment may be to find out why there are so many auto accidents along Route 19, but your research may show that the statistics are skewed by trouble at one particular intersection. The assignment may have come from someone else, but you can turn it into your story.
2. Treat assignments as story topics rather than story ideas.
Remember that “Write something about Mother’s Day” is only a topic or occasion, not a full-grown story idea. The key choices remain with you, including whether to writer about mothers, grandmothers, or great-grandmothers; you could write about the Mother Superior who works at the Mother House.
3. Make it your own.
Many high school graduations are written about in formulaic ways. But each ceremony has its special feel, and the attentive writer has the ability to capture that in the writing. What narrative details do you notice that make this ceremony special? How can you convey what it was like to be there?
4. Send up a flare to express dissatisfaction with an assignment or to suggest something better.
When the 2015 Chicago Cubs lost in the playoffs to the New York Mets, Dan Barry of The New York Times found a way to write a game story unlike any other. He went back to 1908, the last time the Cubbies had won the World Series, and imitated the style of the sports scribes from a century ago. Surprises may delight an ordinary reader, but not a teacher or an editor, who will expect the final work to adhere to directions. So by all means try something new. But first send up a flare.
5. Take what you think is a bad assignment and brainstorm with other writers on how to turn it into something special.
Generating great story ideas is not just a two-player game. A group of three or more can accelerate the brainstorming process and help you build the best possible story idea out of what you thought was a dry or routine assignment.
6. Use your favorite search engine to discover surprising connections.
In a half second, more than 40,000 links become available to you for a topic such as “School Crossing Guards.” Search engines can make writers lazy, but the aces know how to use them as starting points to identify sources, subjects and news items so that they can better use time in the field.
7. If the story assignment points left, don’t be afraid to turn right.
Part of your rebellion against assignments involves a skeptical, contrarian attitude that can serve the writer and the reader well. It is the duty of the writer to challenge the premise of an assignment, which, if it is wrong, deserves debunking. Shattering a common premise makes one hell of a story.
8. At least on occasion, stop grumbling and just follow the assignment.
If you want your teacher or editor to have your back, you must have that person’s back back. One way to win the privilege of working on your own story is to be a trouper rather than a prima donna or a prima dog. An assignment often comes down to you from your boss’s boss with lots of fingerprints all over it. Spend as much time as you need to get the story done at a decent quality so you can get on to more interesting work.
9. Talk over the story idea with some of the stakeholders or even with some friends who are not writers or editors.
You probably got your “bad” assignment becomes someone, however selfishly, really cared about a news item, issue, or problem behind the assignment. They are going to put a speed bump on 66th Avenue South. So who cares? Well the folks on 63rd Avenue South care because now all the speeders will be zooming down their street and threatening their kids playing in the street.
10. Keep at hand a list of story ideas so that when you get a “bad” assignment you can try to trade it for one of yours.
“I need someone to check out this zoning variance at city hall. You up for it?”
“I’ll take it if you need me to, chief, but I just started working on this tattoo story?”
“Tattoo story?”
“Yeah. There’s this bridge club of old ladies, and at one of their meetings they go a little tipsy and all decided to get matching tattoos. Of scorpions!”
Previously: 10 things to do when you can’t think of anything to write