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231 minutes of video
231 minutes of audio
59 slides
74 pages of transcript
Journalistic Detail and Why You Need It
Editors often say they want “researched” and “tight” “copy”, but what does that mean and how do you do it?
In this webinar, the beginning of a new craft-oriented series on uncovering journalistic detail in your field research and incorporating it into different types of pieces, we explore what journalistic detail is, why you need it, and how to know it when you see it.
We will cover:
– What journalistic detail is and why I made it up
– What journalistic detail will really do for you
– Breaking down real-world examples
Weaving Journalistic Detail into Short Articles
In short, front-of-book pieces and in subsections of round-up features, the devil in the detail is choosing what to include from all of your research.
In this webinar, we explore how to use your magazine’s audience and the type of magazine section you’re writing as a lens to drastically simplify the agonizing decisions of what details to include, how much time to devote to them, and how to execute them from a writing perspective.
We will cover:
– Checking back on what journalistic detail is and what it can do for you
– The particular challenges of incorporating journalistic detail in short articles
– Live exercise with Delta Sky
– Breaking down real-world examples
Weaving Journalistic Detail into Descriptions of People
Fiction writers are known for their descriptions of characters, but so many writers skip these details in their travel pieces—to their detriment.
Characters are one of the main things editors regularly lament that writers don’t include in their pitches or final pieces. In this webinar, we explore how to get the details you need on the ground as well as how to incorporate them into your pieces.
We will cover:
– Checking back in on what journalistic detail is and what it can do for you
– The particular challenges of incorporating journalistic detail in descriptions of people
– Breaking down real-world examples
Setting the scene in your pieces can be the single hardest block of text for so many of us to write! How do we be “creative” or write that “flowery” stuff?
The key to writing a description of a place that (1) doesn’t take you forever and push you into a type of writing you may not be so comfortable with, and (2) actually belongs in the piece you’re writing and shows your writing chops off to your editor (especially in a pitch) is a strong foundation in journalistic detail.
We explore how it works with evocative verbal depictions of places in this webinar.
We will cover:
– Checking back in on what journalistic detail is and what it can do for you
– The particular challenges of incorporating journalistic detail in descriptions of places (and why you don’t want to describe places at all, most of the time)
– Breaking down real-world examples
Creating Ambiance with Journalistic Detail
In this series on journalistic detail, we looked at many specific situations in which you should be thoughtful about how and why you’re introducing detail, from short articles to descriptions of people and places.
In the last webinar in this series, we take it higher level—how do the details that you choose create a larger takeaway for the reader without you coming out and explicitly telling them what you want them to feel?
