How to write from various facts?
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.
