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Secret of great editorial writing: Tell the story, and tell a story
 

Some days, we all feel like Bill Murray's character in the movie Groundhog Day. The same people, the same events, the same minutiae-inundating us over and over.

 

Then it starts creeping into our writing. The same old Thanksgiving editorial. The same old don't-forget-to-vote editorial. The same old dont-blow-your-fingers-off-with-Fourth-of-July-fireworks editorial.

 

Then it hits you. You're in a rut.

 

So what do you do?

 

You could always do what Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day. But for most of us, trying to seduce Andie McDowell isn't a practical approach toward improving our writing.

 

What's more practical is to take the advice of experts: Tell a story, and tell it with passion.

 

Mary Schulken knows passion. Now associate editor at The Charlotte Observer, she once covered an education meeting as a young reporter and came away livid at how a help session designed for poor, rural school systems was dominated by larger, wealthier school systems.

 

Urged by her editor to write an editorial about it, she did. And "lousy editorial though it was," Schulken said, it was written with passion.

 

There's no formula to writing editorials with eloquence and punch, but Schulken does have three guidelines she uses as a daily "gut check":

 

* "Be there-and put your reader there, too." Go where news happens, and come away with the feel for an issue that you can deliver to your reader with "strong, evocative writing."

 

* "Use humor and surprise." Logic and reason are good, but they alone won't win the day.

 

* "Throw a thunderbolt at a fathead once a week or so," Schulken said, "and you'll be the better for it. They'll be the better for it."

 

* "Leave your reader knowing what to do." Just spit it out.

 

* "Call for specific action, and use words that motivate people to act."

 

There's always a story to tell

 

No matter how boring an issue or event might look, there's always a story to tell in everything. Andrew Malcolm, a former editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times, found that out as a rookie reporter covering the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Trudging across the boring battlefield, he was drawing a creative blank.

 

But thanks to a chance meeting with a colorful Flemish farmer, the reporters assignment morphed from what could have been a dull historical retrospective into an engaging piece on what it's like to live on a famous battlefield.

 

Look for a new perspective on old issues. If you've written four editorials already on that stupid bond issue, strive to make that fifth editorial sound like the first by using fresh context and colorful words-but without getting mired in too many details.

 

People are "hard-wired to listen to stories," Malcolm said, yet editorials too often lapse into dry lectures. His advice was to "set out to write unpredictable" editorials.

 

"Tell the story," Malcolm said, "and tell a story."

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