Writing Tools

I spent a recent Saturday at the University of Miami, teaching a writing tools workshop for a group of 42 talented high school journalists gathered from around the country for a program called J-Camp, sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association. Each of the students had received a copy of the book "Writing Tools," and you could tell from their questions that many of them had read the book.

The best question came from Jiakun Ding, a young man from Queens, N.Y., not far from where I grew up. His question went something like this:  "In Tool #1, you say to put subjects and verbs near the front of the sentence, and that the verb is the strongest element. But then in Tool #2 you seem to say that we should put the strongest word at the end. So where should the verb go — at the beginning or at the end?"

In answer to this great question, I drew on the board a picture of an old-fashioned choo-choo train.  At the front was the locomotive and the coal car, the sources of power — that is, the subject and the verb. Next came about six or seven nondescript passenger cars, and at the very end the caboose. In other words, lead with power, hide boring stuff in the middle and conclude with something interesting.

My favorite example comes from this old news lead from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

"A private plane carrying U.S. Sen. John Heinz collided with a helicopter in clear skies over Lower Merion Township yesterday, triggering a fiery, midair explosion that rained burning debris over an elementary school playground."

Subject and verb ("a plane collided") come early, and a crucial news detail ("playground") is saved for the end. Lesser details such as the name of the township nestle in the middle.

And congratulations to all the graduates of J-Camp on their outstanding work. Now it's our job to create a future for journalism they can inhabit.