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ABOVE THE FOLDA NEWSLETTER ON WRITING AND EDITINGStar Tribune

Minneapolis, Minn.Fall 2006

Vol. 6, No. 4

2 Tips: How writers and editors in the Star Tribune newsroom put that final

polish on stories.6Grammar mistakes:

These rules are made to be broken. 8 Recommended reading: A Scottish his-torian walks across Afghanistan, and

finds—surprise--that people cannot be pi-geon-holed.

We’ve learned to think in terms of drafts—especially when we’re working on projects or enterprise, anything that doesn’t have to be slammed into the

paper in the next ten minutes. But what, precisely, do we do to get from one draft to the next? Turn inside for advice from those who actually do it.

Turn inside.

Spit and polish. Or, just polish.

“I remember

years ago, I

wrote a story for

my hometown

weekly and

asked my mother

to read it before I

handed it in. She

said, ‘It’s very

nice honey, but

what is it

about?’ ”

— Janet Moore

When I polish my own stories, I read them over and over and over, out loud, silently, on printouts, on the screen, and I

tweak and I change and I rewrite. If a sentence sticks out, I don’t immediately beat it back, but I worry it and almost always eventually change it. I trust my gut, even when someone else reads the story and says they like it the way it is. My standards are high, and I don’t let go until I like it all the way through, or deadline grabs it.

When I work with a writer to polish his story it’s much the same thing, though I am probably more e∞cient. First we work on basic structure. Then we tackle the lede and the nut section. And at some point, the editing ends and the polishing begins — reading each

sentence for emphasis and flow. Striving for clarity — is there a more e∞cient way of saying this? A more direct way? Examining endings — endings of sentences, of paragraphs, of sections, of stories. Do they end with oomph? Do they end on a good firm clear powerful word? Or do they trickle away dully? If there’s passive voice, was it intentional and does it serve a purpose? Can we beef up the verbs?

I don’t follow a checklist like that; I do it through reading and re-reading and re-reading.

Some might call it tinkering. But I call it polishing. Polishing methods are intensely personal. Read on for tips on how some of the writers and editors in our newsroom do it.

— Laurie Hertzel

Polishing your stories to a high sheen

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I trust my gut,

even when

someone else

reads the story and says they like

it the way it is.

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Rochelle Olson: It’s all the same for me — polishing and rewriting. I fire o≠ a draft pretty quickly. Then I start at the top and go through it again, looking for everything from spelling to balance, context and accuracy. Sometimes that means very little work and sometimes it means a complete rewrite from top to bottom.

Curt Brown: One practical polishing ritual is to go to galley mode in DTI and get rid of all widows. It’s amazing how many extra words you can omit. And as dorky as it seems, reading out loud reveals awkward clunkiness.

Connie Nelson: I do all the usual writery things: Once I’ve got a solid draft, I let it sit for a day, if I’ve got the time. Then I reread the whole thing straight through without making any changes. If something seems o≠, I take another run through it and make the necessary changes. Finally, I read the story aloud. It may bug my co-workers, but I find it much easier to hear if a story has abrupt transitions, awkward or run-on sentences or clunky wording.

Janet Moore: For a beat reporter, rewriting and polishing are real luxuries. (And yes, I do think they’re di≠erent. Rewriting is, well, rewriting a piece, while polishing is sort of like mopping up spare and unnecessary words.)

I just walk away from a story — ideally for several hours. When I get back, there are usually words, phrases, sentences, entire paragraphs that seem awkward. Often, the whole story seems stupid. So I try to fix it. Sometimes I’ll ask an unbiased person to take a look at it and ask for

feedback. (That wouldn’t include the editor; they’re too close.)

I remember years ago, I wrote a story for my hometown weekly and asked my mother to read it before I handed it in. She said, “It’s very nice honey, but what is it about?”

I still ask myself that question, and if I can’t answer it, that’s when the rewriting part comes in.

Gail Rosenblum: I think I polish “by gut,” (I always print the story out and read the hard copy holding a red pen) and then I trust that excellent editors will get it to its “final resting place” in the Source section. But I confess that I also have about one day a week of total panic after I’ve “finished” a story ... this panic usually arrives a day or two after I’ve written the piece, when I realize I’ve left out a key quote or important piece of context ...I’m quite sure that my sharp ace Susan and the copy editors wish I’d have this epiphany about 48 hours earlier than I do...If they’re gracious enough to give me one more crack at it, to add something essential or take out something inane, I feel better and feel like it’s really “done,” or as “done” as a newspaper article can be.

Josephine Marcotty: For polishing, I try to read it as if it were the first time. I read sections out loud to myself to hear how they sound. I take out unnecessary words and quotes, and try to think of more exciting active verbs.

I just do what my editor tells me to do. (Joke.) I think of writing (re-writing) like trying on dresses at a store. I always try on several, even though they all fit. And then I choose the one that works best. [Fold notes: Huh? They all fit? We’re unfamiliar with that experience.] That way I can let go of my equity in

I just do what my editor tells me to do. (Joke.)

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any one version of the story — any lede, in particular. For a narrative-like story, I focus on how to organize the events and facts that create the best story line. For other types, I focus on how the info best fits together so that understanding builds layer by layer in the readers mind.

Chris Welsch: I continually rewrite as I write. Every time I reopen the file, I comb through the draft for places to tighten, redundancies to clip and verbs to strengthen. I look for connections between segments that I can build on for transitions.

Once a rough draft is done, I let it sit for a few hours or overnight to try

to regain a fresh eye. When I’m coming back to a completed draft, I’m also trying to assess the critical question: Did I make the point I was trying to

make?

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was from an English professor named Bob Bergstrom. He recommended letting a story rest for a day or two between revisions. He said you should think about the story just before going to sleep — not to wrestle with it, but just to bring it to mind. He believed the subconscious has a lot more firepower than the conscious mind when it comes to the complex, creative act of writing. I have great success with that approach when I have time to use it. It can resolve di∞culties with a lot less agonizing. Unfortunately, we seldom have time for that kind of luxury.

I have a bad habit of using “it” a lot, and a few other annoying quirks that I can’t seem to quit as a writer but can usually find when I’m being my own editor. I do focus on making the verbs active. I’ve internalized the advice of one of my journalism professors, Richard Streckfuss, who said “Sentences are designed to carry only one idea at a time.” When I see a sentence with two or three ideas, I can almost guarantee it’s not clear.

I also “hear” my writing. I don’t read it out loud, but I sound it out in my mind. That’s where I reinforce the rhythm and pacing of the story and try to give it a uniform tone.

I am always worrying about accuracy, but I do a particularly hard-nosed double-check for accuracy after the first draft is completed. I make a list of things I’m

Once a rough draft is done, I let

it sit for a few hours or overnight to try to regain

a fresh eye.

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I am always worrying about accuracy, but I do a particu-larly hard-nosed double-check for accuracy after the first draft is completed.

not sure about and call back sources, do Web searches, whatever I can do to verify information.

The other thing I do, which is mainly internalized at this point, is to make sure that the whole thing tracks from scene to scene. When I’m editing other people’s travel stories, I often give this tip: When you’re writing a narrative, the readers are like blind people you’re leading on a rope. If you don’t tell them you’re about to go up some steps or through a doorway, they’ll trip or bang their heads on the wall.

So I try to make sure that each step of the way, the readers know where they’re going next. I don’t want them to let go of the rope.

Chris Serres: My polishing techniques are fairly pedestrian. Mostly, I like to make sure the tone is right, that the language fits the gravity of the story. To do that, I like to read my stories aloud, often to my wife, Karolina. She is brutally honest and will tell me when a story falls flat. It’s probably annoying, but when I’m done reading the story I ask Karolina what she liked and what conclusions she drew. If she liked a particular anecdote, I might move it up higher in the story. If I have to explain a lead and why it’s relevant to the point of the story, then I know something is wrong and I’ll ditch it. I don’t do a lot of word editing at the polishing stage, though I do check for active verbs, cliches and unnecessary cuteness. I dislike baroque writing and try to stick to short, simple sentences.

Claude Peck: I don’t have specific polishing tips, but I do have personal editing preferences that I tend to come back to. Similes need to really work and be fresh and applicable, not just tossed in for e≠ect. The perfectly apt simile may

be the one thing that a reader remembers and takes away from a story or a review. Introduce a simile or a metaphor, but don’t belabor it by using it two or three times at the top and again at the kicker.

In almost all cases, I like “said” as a quote attribution. Not “explained” or “added” or “mumbled” or “hypothesized.” I like “said” because it’s so simple and short and omnipresent that it more or less disappears.

Quotes should be used to advance a story, and therefore they shouldn’t need a summary setup that robs them of that function.

Maybe my single biggest emphasis is on clarity. That gets into flow, argument, logic, structure, language. Don’t forget that quote fragments often work as well as the quote that occupies an entire paragraph.

I may do a major edit, and I may do or suggest fairly large rewrites, but I hesitate to call it rewriting. More often, I suggest a new lede and say why, or suggest a di≠erent transition and say why, then I let the reporter rework it. I also may make structural suggestions: Move your third section to the #2 position and rework the transitions to make it work. Or peel this section o≠ into a sidebar. Or find your lead in the draft’s third paragraph.

Another part of a big edit is taking out stu≠ that doesn’t work and suggesting the addition of things that seem missing. Additional reporting may be necessary.

Longer stories should not be a straight line from A to B. They should turn corners, open up new lines of inquiry, search out drama and maybe even foreshadow and delay gratification. You want a reader to stay with you till the end, and you may want to use literary tricks to keep them reading.

By Holly Collier

Imagine a snopes.com for urban legends of editing. Not the “kidney thief e-mailed me a virus that crashed my hard drive and flashed my car

headlights, prompting a gang member to shoot at me” legend. I mean the grammar and usage legends that persist without rules to back them.

Five grammar myths that we’re going to bust right here, right now

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For example:

• Despite what Mrs. Berry told you in the sixth grade, it’s fine to start a sentence with “and” or “but” or any other coordinating conjunction. But don’t overdo it.

• It’s also fine to split an infinitive. (Think about “Star Trek,” and boldly go and split infinitives, if it’s in the best interest of the copy.) Here’s an example where not splitting the infinitive changes the sentence’s meaning: “The organization helped persuade President Bush to condemn publicly race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan.” Bush wasn’t condemning “publicly race-conscious policies.” He was publicly condemning race-conscious policies. Quite a di≠erent thing. Accuracy and clarity are paramount.

• It’s fine to end a sentence with a preposition. Working with Words, by Brian S. Brooks and James L. Pinson, second edition, points out a simple example: “What are you waiting for?”

• It’s OK to separate helping verbs. Catherine Preus and I remember that when we started working here — when Edit Check left a neon-green trail of all of our changes — we watched editors rearrange adverbs to keep the helping verbs together. We followed suit. We taught other people to do the same. But we were making sentences clunky. So we went to the grammar books, and the grammar experts smacked our hands, which were already smarting from those chunky Atex keyboards. It’s fine, and many times even preferable, to separate those helping verbs. Listen to your ear. You know when rearranging verbs makes a sentence clunky, or worse, changes the meaning.

Here is what two experts say on the subject:

John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun, in a tattered handout from long ago: “The title of the Shirley Jackson novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle is in idiomatic English. If a journalist had written the book, the title would probably have been We Always Have Lived in the Castle. The belief that no adverb may be allowed to come between an auxiliary verb and a main verb is a durable superstition.”

It’s fine to end a

sentence with a

preposi-tion.

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From Working with Words:

“We have been unable to find any grammar book that agrees with this practice; in fact, Wilson Follett’s influential book Modern American Usage says of it, ‘The results are uniformly bad.’ ”

Enough experts. Here’s a Star Tribune example.The family never will stop grieving.

Would you put “not” in front of the verb here? (The family not will stop grieving?) Then why put “never” there?

And here’s a funny example, back from the days of Atex, with commentary from Steve Ronald, a former Star Tribune wordsmith who is occasionally spotted at metro-area art fairs. One evening, Steve was proofing a page that included a timeline, and he burst out laughing. He then dashed o≠ this message:

Here’s a situation where someone wanted to keep a compound verb together and created a weirdness. Since some writers and editors persist in such usage in every situation, including ones that would never be uttered in conversation, perhaps this little example is worth saving to make the point that one’s knee shouldn’t always jerk to do it.

1992 June: Voelz fires women’s gymnastics coaches Katalin and Gabor Deli. Gabor is dismissed when a tape showing him having sex with his wife accidentally is shown to team members. Katalin is fired for what Voelz says were NCAA violations and lying to Voelz.STEVER 13-APR-02,18:09

Of course, Gabor wasn’t having sex with his wife accidentally. The video was shown accidentally. Moving the “is” changed the meaning of the sentence in a way that Stever noticed, laughed at—and fixed.

• One more usage point. Enormity. Join the purists in fighting the battle on this one because even the dictionary is starting to cave. The word enormity doesn’t mean big. It doesn’t even mean really big. It means great wickedness or a monstrous, evil or outrageous act. And there’s no other word like it.

If you want to say bigness, write enormousness, or vastness. Just don’t say enormity.

Catherine Preus contributed to this report.

It’s OK to separate helping verbs.

ABOVE THE FOLD is produced for the employees of the Star Tribune. Unless otherwise indicated, its contents are the work of Laurie Hertzel, projects editor and writing coach. Copy editor: Holly Collier. Designer: Judy Romanowich Smith

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RECOMMENDED READING

An intimate, unadorned look at Afghanistan“The Places in Between,” by Rory Stewart. (Harcourt, $14 paperbound, 297 pages.)

About five years ago, Scottish historian Rory Stewart decided to walk across the Mideast. He walked across Pakistan. He walked across Nepal, and India. But he couldn’t get into Afghanistan.

After 9/11, he saw his chance. With the fall of the Taliban, he grabbed a visa and headed for Herat. His plan was to walk west to east, from village to village, across the mountains, in midwinter, ending at Kabul.

A scholar, Stewart understood the culture, the traditions, the beliefs, and some of the languages of Afghanistan. He was as well-prepared and clear-eyed about this trip as a Westerner could be. Still, his trip was viewed as folly.

“You are the first tourist in Afghanistan,” an o∞cial warned him at the start of his journey. “It is midwinter — there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee. Do you want to die?”

He didn’t die, although he came close a couple of times. The result is not just a travel book, but an intimate look at a complicated and mysterious country. Stewart is not naïve. He does not attempt to draw conclusions about the country or the people or do anything else so foolishly

sweeping. Instead, he gets to know people, and he reveals them to be sometimes good, sometimes generous, sometimes frightened, sometimes evil.

His writing is unadorned and concrete. You feel the hip-deep snow, the hot tea, the warmth of some people, the chill of others. As he walks, he views a country that has always been fragmented by warlords and mullahs and geography. He walks through the Turquoise Mountains, where locals are looting valuable archaeological sites with no understanding of their significance. In some places, he is taken in to private homes, in the Muslim tradition, fed and given a bed for the night. In other places, he is viewed with suspicion, and sleeps alone on mosque floors.

You come away with a deeper appreciation of the complexities of Afghanistan, and of its traditions.

A remarkable journey, and a remarkable book.

Laurie HertzelSta≠ writer

You feel the hip-deep snow, the hot tea, the warmth of some people, the chill of others.