Morning Chip, (at least it is here)
I check out the Poynter site often and nearly always read "Chip On Your Shoulder." You and others often write of draft copies of stories and it got me thinking.
Drafts, for me, as a small weekly community newspaper editor with a very small staff, are a luxury that we can ill afford. It would be fantastic to have the time to spend on a story as writers in dailies usually have. But, with a need to complete four or five stories a day (plus photos -- we don't have a photographer), the first copy is usually the last copy -- at least until I get my hands on it.
Any suggestions or advice to tighten up, tidy up and "innovate" up our writing when time is at a premium?
Liam Baldwin, Editor
Piako Post
Morrinsville / North Island / New Zealand
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Dear Liam,
Thanks for starting your day with Poynter Online and for sharing your thoughts from the other side of the world.
Drafts aren't a luxury. They are a necessity, I believe, if you hope to hold on to an audience that wants and needs stories that are interesting, clear, accurate and fair.
But I suspect the word itself suggests a leisurely approach to writing, one that's out of place in your shop and, for that matter, in most newsrooms, whatever their size. In news, the ticking clock rules.
A draft need not be a complete version of a story that a writer has sweated over for hours and that an editor has red-pencilled or responded to with noteface comments. Writers use "draft" as a noun — a version of a story — or a verb — to discover a story by writing it.
My first drafts may be half the agreed-on length and look pretty messy. I may try a lead or two and a nut graf, or sketch out the main points in bullet our outline form.
Basically, I try to get something down that I can work with. The key point is that these are tossed off quickly. At this point I'm striving for velocity to race past the critical "you suck" voice in my head that can bog me down.
Whatever I produce in that first burst of writing becomes my first draft (there are writers who call it their "zero draft," an approach that allows them to be even less demanding) when I hit the print button.
Seeing the words on the page gives me a kind of psychic distance I need to see the possibility of the final draft. Reading it over, I spot misspellings, structural problems and other flaws that need attention. At this point I just keep writing, printing out, marking up, making changes as deadline approaches.
With each version I get a better sense of what the story is, what it needs. Even then I see it as a work-in-progress that can be improved by getting some other eyes on it. My goal is to be clear, interesting, accurate and that's a continuing process.
This is the process for a police brief or a long feature.
Trying to write this column to make my own deadline, I sympathize with your time pressures. They exist everywhere, from large dailies to small weeklies. There isn't an editor or reporter I know who feels he or she has enough time. It's the nature of the beast. What I'm suggesting is a change in attitude and work habits rather than an extension of the 24-hour clock.
Time is always at a premium, so let's use the little we have more efficiently and wisely by doing these three things:
Write earlier. Most reporters put off writing until the last minute. They have to wait, they think, for the call from the source, or that document, or the interview, until their notebook is full and there's no more time to report, before they can set words down. Big mistake. Write early to find out what you know and what you need to know. Let the draft guide your reporting as well as your revision. Writers waste time procrastinating, thinking, pacing, smoking, drinking, gabbing when they could be writing — to see what they think and know and then decide whether they've communicated it clearly — and then rewriting. Write in between calls. Write in your notebook. Write the background first. Put the quotes you think will be in the story and the attribution. "Get black on white," Guy de Maupassant, the French writer advised.
Hit the print button often. Professional writers have an advantage over mere mortals. We can type fast. Instead of wasting precious minutes crafting the perfect lead, I'd rather spew out a rough draft of a story that I can print out and then mark up with a pen. I note what can be cut, what can be moved, a question that needs answering. I even check and number the items to change. In one recent 750-word story, I made 90 such checks. Then I return to the keyboard and start making changes as fast as possible.
Lower your standards. At first. Drafts hold the promise of the final version. Look for the possibilities in raw copy instead of dismissing it as a failure. A draft is a necessary step on the way to publication. Too many of us think we can skip that part and instead waste valuable time polishing and then publishing first drafts instead of reading, responding, and revising them.
My day's over. Yours is just beginning. Hope this helps.
Chip
