Sometimes you (should) feel like a nut

This article was first printed in Media, the magazine of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Nut grafs create sanity
(Give your readers, and yourself, a roadmap.)

Round up the usual list of newswriting sins: back-in ledes; jumbled organization; lack of clarity; no raison d'etre.

The solution to all is, at core, the nut graf.

I'm on a mission to find a better term, because "nut graf" has picked up a bad rap with some writerly types, who disdain it as formulaic, stodgy, non-literary. But even the masters of long narrative form know how to weave the elements of a good nut into their copy without ruining the flow or their voice. In news, enterprise and feature stories, a nut is like a secret decoder ring. It lets the hapless reader know what the bleep your story is about and why the bleep they should read it.

It's the Why Does It Matter that gives meaning to the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Nuts can come dressed as single phrases, explainer sentences, single hard-working grafs or whole sections. They can be meted out, as a friend of mine once said, "like an IV drip," without needing to weigh down a story like a seven-course meal.

But what they all do is place a story in context. That context can be about timing (why is the story important now?), history (what change does this event signal?), politics (what issue or battle does this address or arise from?), or any other underpinning that gives significance to the raw information. At its simplest, a nut graf is a segue between the lede and the body of the story; it summarizes the significance, background and projected impact of the news.

Still clueless? Complete this sentence: This story is important because ... After you've finished that thought, erase the crutch and keep going.

Other magic to a nut graf is a selfish one:

It provides you, the struggling writer, with a roadmap. If you can write a decent summary nut (often the same kind of thing you pop on the news budget), you've just conquered the hardest part of writing. When you stumble — what stays in? what do I leave out? what goes where? — refer back to your nut. It works especially well in complex pieces where you are wrestling to discipline a lot of information. In those stories (think Wall Street Journal), the nut should foreshadow all the conflicts inherent in your subject and all the key issues necessary to explaining the subject (think Cliff Notes).

It may be art, but it's not impressionism
(God may summer at Lake Superior, but he lives in the details.)

Show, don't tell.

It's the oldest code in the craft. But do you honor it, or even know what it means?

Great journalistic writing is borne of great reporting. (I would argue that's true for all writing, but I have some professor friends who have downed much good wine trying to convince me otherwise.) And great reporting is about specifics. Even when stories come around again and again (the state fair, the car wreck, the city budget) the specifics change each time.

Those specifics are your currency. When someone reads your story, imagine them standing in an art museum. You don't want them squinting at your masterpiece, wondering if it's someone's vague notion of fruit. You want them to know — bam! — it's a Granny Smith apple with a small blemish just under the stem, sitting on a Delft porcelain plate with a crack running almost to the center. They aren't boots. They are Fryes, or Sorrels, or rubber garden clogs. Better yet, they are Fryes worn at the heel from years of dancing, or Sorrels stained yellow at the calves from snowmobile exhaust, or red rubber garden clogs muted orange by mud. This is how you make your readers see what you saw. It also is how you make your story fresh. Looking for specific details makes you a sharper reporter; choosing which details are relevant makes you a crisper writer.

I once did a profile about a woman street cop who worked the decoy unit, posing as a hooker or old lady to lure johns and muggers. She was torn between wanting to be the baddest cop on the beat and, as she said, a "fox" in her personal life. During my interview, I discovered she always carried two things in her purse: her .357 magnum and her Wind Song perfume.

Embrace that saggy butt
(Be an honest self-editor.)

Reading your own writing is like looking in the mirror: You can't see yourself the way others see you.

You are blind to your comeliest curves; you blink past your literary cellulite.

As writers, we all have trademark quirks — things we do with little awareness. I call them pattern strengths and pattern weaknesses — those signature writing touches that land under our byline no matter how often some cranky editor points them out.

So what to do?

Change your view. Force yourself to see your work with new eyes:

1. Work as a fill-in editor. This isn't the same as critiquing stories for a colleague/friend over beer. This means sitting in the critical chair between a writer's ego and the readers' needs, and editing copy for the latter (without destroying the former). You suddenly will see copy as a reader, which will make you a better writer.

2. Read on paper. It's (mostly) what we still ask readers to do. So when we stay wedded to our computer screens, and fail to read our stories as hard-copy printouts, we aren't reading in the right format. Hit the PRINT button, move to another chair, pour a cup of newsroom swill, pop your feet up (quickly, of course; you're on deadline) and read your story as if it's the first time. Then read it again, pen in hand, and note questions, speed bumps (places where your mind stumbled over the copy), things out of order, passages that bored you to distraction.

Do this just before you hit the SEND button or while the copy desk is handling your story. Sometimes you can catch problems yourself. Over time, you'll learn to pace your work so you can do this with most stories.

3. Highlight your pattern traits so you can see them as you write. This is the best tip I can offer. All it takes is a couple of highlighter pens (color of your choosing), and the discipline to sit down with yourself for an hour every two weeks. Here's how it works: Print out three of your stories. Then pick a single writing issue and highlight all the places in your copy that issue pops up. You will suddenly see, in colored relief, your pattern strengths and weaknesses. Once those patterns are emblazoned on your eyeballs in fluorescent orange highlighter, your brain will imprint orange on the computer screen.

The key is to pick one issue each time. Some to tackle:

• Prepositional phrases;
• Verbs (rebel feminist that I am, I like to highlight active verbs in hot pink and passive ones in baby blue);
• Dependent clauses;
• Clichés;
• Transitions;
• Metaphor and imagery;
• How you use quotes;
• Where elements of your nut graf appear (or whether you can find your nut graf).
• Or, better yet, think about your editor's chronic lament, and hunt for it in your copy.

I used to edit the executive editor's column in St. Paul. He had a lot of wisdom and sincerity, but the guy was a run-on dependent clause. He refused to listen to my (carefully worded) critiques — until one day I showed him a highlighted printout of his column. Every sentence began with a dependent clause. You can bet he never saw his writing the same way again.