Observation and Description

Post date: Jan 12, 2016 6:59:17 PM

The ability to describe something (a person, a place, an event) is a necessary requirement for writing a strong story, whether it is a news or feature story. We will get into the specifics of stories tomorrow. Today, I want you to work on being descriptive and on asking creative questions. Make sure you use all of your senses; don’t just focus on what you hear or see. For this exercise, we’re going to observe people interacting, a thing, and a place. Obviously, as a journalist, your job is to observe all three of these, so we’ll take the time to do different levels of interaction. Before we get going on this, we’ll watch the following video, from TED-ED, about the power of simple words (link below). Being descriptive does not mean you need to use all of the $20 dollar words you may learn in English class. It means you need to be accurate and true and convey the meaning of what has occurred.