Synopsis by ANNE C. MULKERN

There's a poet in you. And Patrick May wants to help you get it out.

May believes good writing sounds good, that it flows in a poetic sense. Capture the emotional intensity that lies beneath your story, he says. The more feeling you can elicit, the better your work. If that passion happens to have sexual innuendo, that's even better.

May comes to writing after years of peripatetic living. He dropped out of college after 20 minutes, he says, and hit the road. For eight years he traveled through Alaska and Seattle, hopping on trains, driving cabs, and participating in war protests. He traveled through Iran, Turkey, and Africa, all the while keeping a journal. While in Greece he met an Australian journalist and realized he could get paid to travel and write. He went back to school and worked in Miami before moving to California.

May has the job so many journalists want. He finds the best stories about people and tells them in the most poetic way possible. He knows this is getting tougher to do in journalism, but says it's worth trying to do, even a small bit, in the basic daily stories. He breaks it down into 10 steps:

• Dig beneath your subject. Get at the feeling underlying the event. Make the story deal with more than just the obvious.
  
  When May wrote about a bike ride to raise money for AIDS research, he wanted to convey the feelings of those riding in honor of people they had lost, or could lose. The story is about more than a bike ride, it's about life and death. So he uses words to show us.
  
  "In wave upon wave, the cyclists wound down the mountain road into Half Moon Bay Sunday morning, skirting fields jammed with berries and buds, carrying thoughts of loved ones gone from their lives, riding upon feather-light aluminum in silence to the sea."
  
  The "wave upon wave" suggests the rhythm of life, while the "berries and buds" show that life continues. There is not just information, but feeling.
• Pack it in tightly. Think of each paragraph as a miniature story. Grab your reader by the throat. Layer in suspense. Wrap it up at the end.
• Be an artist. Think of words as paint or musical notes. Use color, texture and contrast. Imagine your story is a movie. Describe it.
• Get inside your characters' heads, and put your reader there beside you. Ask yourself: What makes this person tick? Bring the reader as close to the subject as possible. Be bold. Take chances.
• Write like a snowball. Let short sentences accelerate the drama. Lure readers in with detail built upon detail. Look at each sentence as a piece of a puzzle. Find a rhythm in the words.
  
  "Two miles outside town, Soda Springs road slithers through cow pastures, past squeaking oil wells, and over what someone long ago nicknamed Crybaby Bridge. Locals say you can hear voices out here at night. On July 28, just after 1 a.m., one more ghost was added."
  
  The last two sentences speed up the action. Something is about to happen.
• Use the power of the past. Keep in mind your subject's place in time. Use the past and future to highlight the significance of the present.
• Respect the kicker. Give the ending of your story the same care as the lead. Think of it as the last chance to inspire your reader. Beware of quote and set-up, but don't get addicted to using quotes.
• Let the story tell itself. Step back, and share with the reader what you've seen.
• Find a motif. Listen, while reporting, for a recurring theme. Use it to tie a story together. Let it build to a rhythm of seduction. In this story about Libby, Montana, dust is the theme.
  
  "The dust made this town what it is. Carried by wind off the strip-mined mountaintop, it brought jobs for decades. It (?) out the new Little League field beside the river. It paid for mortgages on houses with white picket fences around gardens filled with more dust. It also got into the miners' clothes, lodged in their lungs and settled in their souls."
• Open your heart. Be bold enough to try and feel what the people you're writing about feel. Translate the emotional grist of your story, through your words, for your readers. Tie emotion in your story to real things. The more specific details, the better. Be human.