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ufjschool / ob-s14

Orange & Blue issue for Spring 2014 -- Energy
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Edit "fisherman.maryreyes.md" #26

Closed jrthieke closed 2 years ago

jrthieke commented 10 years ago

Mary, I just finished reading your outline for your fisherman story. Here are my thoughts and suggestions:

  1. Really like the lede, but for me to love it you should have a killer quote follow it. Maybe something about his trip’s perceived futility.
  2. I think your organization is good, and I’m definitely interested in reading the fleshed-out version of this now, but maybe think about instead of having just one section about “The Man,” start with a little of that and then intersperse it between the other sections. The other sections have a chronological flow to them, so having a little stuff about him personally, interviews with friends, and facts about snapchats could be good pace-breakers, giving readers clear break points between sections and adding a little to color to whatever you’re saying at that point. Again, this is just a suggestion, and feel free to ignore it if you like your organization, but that just leapt out at me when I was reading it.
  3. I don’t think you need to include the competition stuff in full, but if you have information on his competition, it might be nice to throw in a sentence or two about them here and there in the story, whenever you feel a comparison could be made for emphasis. For example, if you write “Andrew does this blah blah blah” you could then add on, “which is in stark contrast to his competitors, who typically blah blah etc.” wherever you find it appropriate.
  4. Other than those things, I don’t have much else to say. I hope you get/have most of what, if not everything, you have here in your outline, because it sounds great. When you write it, make sure you hit the right balance between color and facts. It seems like you’ll have lots of hard data and numbers at parts, and I think it’s important you don’t shy away from those, but you give them their space and then move back to the story.

So, take what you will from my thoughts, and I wish you well in getting the full version of this story up!