How to write from various facts?

The news item, a fascinating manna of writing, has inspired both the most realistic and the craziest stories of all time. The news item belongs, in essence, to everyday life. It is an event that disrupts the smooth running of things. In this, it can only interest all writing enthusiasts.

Since the publication of more developed newspapers, the news has held an important place, if not preponderant, in the media. The news item has always aroused curiosity, even in tragic cases.

By definition, the news item is brief information, and certain facts make the headlines of the written press or television by their symbolic scale. How to create a Wikipedia page for your business many of the novels are inspired by these true stories, which sometimes exceed the imagination.

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The news item: what is it?

A news item is a press article which reports, in a fairly brief manner, a real event. It can be a story of various, unusual, unexpected events, often considered of little importance. In fact, a news item does not belong to any news. It is necessarily out of the news. It is neither political, nor social, nor economic, nor cultural.

Yet it occupies an important place in newspapers and magazines. Most of the time, this news originates from accidents, natural disasters, natural curiosities, heroic acts, crimes or suicides.

The news item describes what seems to come out of everyday life, from ordinary people, whether by the action itself or by the specificity of the people involved. He is the witness of a society at a given moment in its evolution.

The news item officially appeared in the press in 1838. The term refers first of all to unclassifiable news, news that does not find its place in any of the sections (international, political, sport, entertainment) of a newspaper.

Paradoxically, this irrelevant news, of the order of the disparate or the motley, by showing something unusual, or unimportant, which attracts curiosity, becomes indispensable, inevitable and fascinating news in the lives of people who read it.

If the news item is unclassifiable, it is also because it is a kind of negligible and ephemeral quantity in which we relate intimate, non-historical events affecting anonymous people. It is perhaps precisely in the anonymity of its protagonists that the news item draws its strength.

The news item is ambivalent: it seems harmless, because we don't feel concerned as individuals; but its universal character sometimes touches us by its extreme proximity.

The content of a news item

The news item is essentially a narrative type text, since an event from everyday life is told there. The goal is to give the reader the illusion of participating in the action. Generally, news items in the press are often intended for a local audience. They are of interest only to readers of the region concerned.

The form of the news item is always the same:

· A title, rather catchy by its font size and its meaning (well-chosen words, phrase, play on words, short sentence).

· A subtitle, possibly, which completes the title by providing some additional details and by encouraging the reader to continue reading.

· An article answering the five questions below (divided or not into paragraphs according to its length, which itself depends on the importance of the event).

· The author's signature.

The article of the news item resumes its chronological sequence:

· before the fact itself

· the fact

· The consequences of this fact.

The journalist, to write his article, has the obligation to answer a minimum of questions according to Laswell’s law:

· Who is it?

· What is it about?

· When did that happen?

· Where did this happen?

· Why did this happen?

We can possibly add: how did it happen?

All this information can be supplemented and illustrated by a photo or a drawing well-chosen and captioned.

The news item article should provide the reader with a set of coherent, verified, interesting, and, if possible, complete information.

The journalist must situate the news item in time and space. To do this, he uses the indirect style, specific to the narrative style. He sometimes tends to amplify the importance of the fact related by using many adjectives. The tenses used are generally the imperfect and the past tense. The passive voice is also very present in this type of text.

The importance of the titles of the various facts

The wording of the title is fundamental. It should be eye-catching, informative or inspiring. Wikipedia editors it must also contain specificity and be short.

Several types of sentences or structures are possible in the headlines of news items:

· An exclamatory sentence: “Stop ineffective schoolwork!”

· A precise question: “What is the secret of academic success?”

· A question / an answer: “Succeed in school? It's within your reach”.

· A statement / explanation: “You can succeed in French: a complete guide for students”.

· A clash by the number: “10 tips for a successful studies”.

· A neologism (creation of a word that does not exist): of rhyming, alliteration, assonance: "Learning without mistaking."

· An inversion of the key words: “To study to know, to know to study”.

· A paradox: “To succeed, work less!”

· A double meaning and puns: “The teacher in his pocket”.

The usefulness of a news item for writers

Writers often use news items to find inspiration. It is not a new phenomenon.

Gustave Flaubert used a story like this to give birth to MadameBovary. Flaubert therefore used a Norman news item which had hit the headlines of his time, the Delamare affair, which served as the basis for his masterpiece.

In 1849, Louis Boulet and Maxima du Camp advised Flaubert to cure him of his “romanticism”. Here is in substance what they said to their friend: “Take a down to earth subject, one of those incidents in which bourgeois life is full, something like La Cousin Bette, like Le Cousin Pons de Balzac, and treat them in a natural, almost familiar tone”.

Most of the time, the authors seize a news item by claiming to have invented it, sometimes to the point of betraying the veracity of the fact for the benefit of their history. Many detective stories have thus transposed various facts that have become unrecognizable.

In his novel Cold Blood, Truman Capote is an investigator, narrating the quadruple murder of a Kansas family in the United States, by not allowing himself any deviation from the imagination. These murders had been treated simply by simple briefs, which inspired the writer.