"Control the pace of the story by varying sentence

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jun 30, 2004 9:27 pm

Writers name three good reasons to slow the pace of a story:1. To simplify the complex.
2. To create suspense.
3. To focus on the emotional truth.

Consider this unusual lead to a story about the city government budget:Do you live in St. Petersburg? Want to help spend $548 million?It's money you paid in taxes and fees to the government. You elected the City Council to office, and as your representatives, they're ready to listen to your ideas on how to spend it.Mayor Rick Baker and his staff have figured out how they'd like to spend the money. At 7 p.m. Thursday, Baker will ask the City Council to agree with him. And council members will talk about their ideas.You have the right to speak at the meeting, too. Each resident gets three minutes to tell the mayor and council members what he or she thinks.But why would you stand up?Because how the city spends its money affects lots of things you care about.Not every journalist likes this approach to government writing, but its author, Bryan Gilmer, gets credit for an effect I call "radical clarity." Gilmer eases the reader into this story with a sequence of short sentences and paragraphs. All the stopping points give the reader the time and space to comprehend. Yet there is enough variation to imitate the patterns of normal conversation. (Roy Peter Clark)***"Normal conversation," maybe, if you're talking to a baby. Also, anyone who has covered a city council budget hearing knows that the councilmen are not "ready to listen to your ideas on how to spend it." (The Onion this week, in a list of "Good-Citizenship Tips," suggests that people "waste enormous amounts of your and others' time by speaking out at city-council meetings that drag on for hours." That's more like it.) Even if that story had been well-written, it should be spiked because a budget-hearing advance deserves a brief, not a novel for television.***[ June 30, 2004: Message edited by: blanp ]

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Wed Jun 30, 2004 9:56 pm

Meetings are places where people take minutes and steal hours, with the exception of public forums at city councils. They dispaense with the minutes side of the equation.

jmcg · **Posted:** Wed Jun 30, 2004 10:00 pm

You're quite right, blanp.Forget the writing. It's perfectly ordinary, and the length of one sentence or another, one paragraph or another, is irrelevant.It's the naivete that's utterly stunning here. If this guy has much reporting experience at all, then this is inexcusable. And this is supposed to be one of the top 10 papers in the country? I'm was in St. Pete for a few days recently. I'm not sure it's the best paper in the Tampa Bay region.

Matthew Grieco · **Posted:** Wed Jun 30, 2004 10:06 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by jmcg:
I'm not sure it's the best paper in the Tampa Bay region.<hr></blockquote>"Florida's best newspaper."Says so right under the flag.

Jackie · **Posted:** Wed Jun 30, 2004 11:03 pm

It's true. Only the best newspapers encourage their reporters to write a bunch of dumbass questions into their stories.Do you live in St. Petersburg? Want to help spend $548 million? Would you pilfer any of it? Would you spend it wisely? Are you still reading? Are you stoned? Are you sure you live in St. Petersburg? Did you buy drugs in St. Petersburg to get stoned?I swear I got a story from a reporter once and most of the first FIVE inches was question after question after question.

juliette14 · **Posted:** Thu Jul 01, 2004 10:12 pm

It reads like it should have some skeezy promo music and flashing graphics behind it.

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Mon Jul 05, 2004 12:25 am

Keep poetry out of this. This business has nothing to do with poetry, thank Christ.

Matthew Grieco · **Posted:** Tue Jul 06, 2004 7:15 pm

I have no problem with poets in the features pages. I never read those sections anyway.Real news should be written as real news. There's no need for creative language in a breaking story -- just throw the accuracy at me. It's amazing how smooth it goes down.

SusanV · **Posted:** Tue Jul 06, 2004 8:47 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Matthew Grieco:
I have no problem with poets in the features pages. I never read those sections anyway.Real news should be written as real news. There's no need for creative language in a breaking story -- just throw the accuracy at me. It's amazing how smooth it goes down.<hr></blockquote> You will never make it as a lawyer. You obviously don't know how to obfuscate! ---

pzicari · **Posted:** Thu Jul 08, 2004 11:13 pm

Blanp is completely right on this one. (cue the rude noises). It's all very well to write lyrically about a budget hearing, but if you are reduced to explaining the budget hearing process and its goals, you probably haven't done much reporting.I mean, suppose the reporter could reveal that the new budget appears to add to the mayor's office payroll and abandon the resurfacing of streets. (Do they surface streets in Florida?) Or that there's no money for recreation. Then maybe people he's exhorting to come out to the hearing might have something to talk about.

Le Petomane · **Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 5:19 am

The idea that reporters should write like novelists, essayists or -- god help us -- poets is one of the banes of journalism. And it leads to some of the worst writing published in daily newspapers.In this case, Norman Mailer is cited as revealing to Mr. Clark the magical power of short sentences.Great. Reporters advancing city council meetings should use the grammar, diction, style and rhetorical techniques of Norman Mailer.Too bad Mr. Clark isn't a fan of H.P. Lovecraft. Immitating the writing in, say, The Dunwich Horror should produce a city council advance that would hold every reader's attention for 300 inches.

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"Control the pace of the story by varying sentence

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