Yearbook Writing: The Chicken or the Egg

Yearbook Writing:
the chicken or the egg

?

Presented by Brian Wilson
Waterford (MI) Kettering HS
bwilson3560@gmail.com
On Twitter: @wilsob01

Sunday, November 17, 13

Why don’t students read your copy?
One of Fitzgerald’s more prestigious
organizations is the student council.
These meetings were directed by
president Bob Boik. Unlike most
organizations, the student council met
twice a month during a school hour to
discuss topics that concern the student
body.


The council organized both the Homecoming
and Snowcoming dances. They also
organized the Red Cross Blood Drive which
raised blood for those in need. They
managed to raise over 70 pints last spring.
The student council also donated five
hundred dollars to the V.I.C.A. canned food
drive. During the fall, they enjoyed a day of
fun when the took a trip to Camp Tamerak.
This adventure taught them to be leaders.
This group worked hard to make this district a
better place.


How ‘bout this one?
If you wanted to see hard working girls
in major motion, then Track is where
you should have been. Led by Captains
Liz Powell and Shannon Manoulian, the
team of 17 girls achieved many goals.
They finished 4th overall in the league,
which was an astonishing
accomplishment for them as they went
up against teams with as many as
30-40 girls.

How ‘bout this one (cont)?
Our ladies fared very well at
Invitationals and the Regional Meet,
winning many medals. High jumper
Powell qualified for the states. Even the
freshmen contributed wherever they
could and achieved several personal
bests. These girls can be proud of
themselves and all their accomplishments. Bigger and better things are
bond to come for this terrific team!

But
they
WILL
read.

The
10-80-10
Rule

Appeal to EMOTION
Make them:
• Laugh
• Cry
• Go “Awwwwwwwww”
• Grossed out


Appeal to EMOTION
When you look at me, you probably don’t see
me for what I am. You see just another face,
but my life is much more. I’m a goal-setter, an
achiever, an optimist, and one hell of a
mother. Everyone expected me to become
lazy, ignorant, stop learning and wallow into
some book of statistics. If they still want to put
me in a book, it will have to be called
“Kiyuana Proves Them Wrong.”


Appeal to EMOTION
Jake Porter is 17, but he can't read, can barely scrawl his first name and
often mixes up the letters at that. So how come we're all learning
something from him?
In three years on the Northwest High football team, in McDermott, Ohio,
Jake had never run with the ball. Or made a tackle.
He'd barely ever stepped on the field. That's about right for a kid with
chromosomal fragile X syndrome, a disorder that is a common cause of
mental retardation.
But every day after school Jake, who attends special-ed classes, races to
Northwest team practices: football, basketball, track.
Never plays, but seldom misses one.
That's why it seemed crazy when, with five seconds left in a recent game
that Northwest was losing 42-0, Jake trotted out to the huddle. The plan
was for him to get the handoff and take a knee.
-Rick Reilly, “The Life of Reilly”

Details and Specifics
9:30 p.m. An oppressive, sticky heat. Fans
whirring helplessly in the background.
It’s a deadline night.
Junior Farah Kent, News Editor for the High
Tide, pulls her thick hair back into a messy bun
and scoots the wheely chair closer to the pearly
white Mac. Kent sighs in frustration as she
struggles to fix the dimensions of photos from
Club Sign Up Day, many of which are coming
out too cloudy or pixilated. A community bottle
of red fruit punch Powerade is being passed
around in a desperate attempt to cool off the
frantic staff members.


Details and Specifics
From the sidewalk, the tiny
convenience store looks much as it has
for decades. The display case is lined
with tins of chewing tobacco and rolls of
toilet paper. A handwritten sign
advertises bottled water for 35 cents.
Another warns that the proprietor doesn’t
take debit or credit cards--cash only.


Connect to your reader
She sat in the cold, hard seat and
tried to concentrate on the Calculus test
in front of her, but it was difficult. She
had to go to the bathroom really bad.


Trends in copy


Story Telling Devices
(or Alternative Story Forms)

•
•
•
•

Shorter bursts of copy
Quotes, quotes, quotes-10:1 rule
Extended captions
Information boxes:
– Q&A
– He said/She said
– Top 10 list

• Find the gravedigger.

Shorter copy bursts


Find the Gravedigger...
Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was going to be working on
Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment
on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the
kitchen for breakfast. His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for
him. Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received the
phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik,
who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National
Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living. "Polly, could
you please be here by eleven o'clock this morning?" Kawalchik
asked. "I guess you know what it's for." Pollard did. He hung up the
phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend
Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
-Jimmy Breslin, New York Herald Tribune,


How to get better stories
• Observe and report
• Hold Quote/Caption panel interviews
• Share great writing
• Brainstorm
Building Tour
• Throw profile darts


• Share great writing: 300 word stories
• Brainstorm
Building Tour


300-word stories
The few drivers on this dark, lonely stretch of the
Suncoast Parkway in Pasco County pull up to the toll
booth, hand their dollars to Lloyd Blair and then speed
away. None of them knows why the old man sits here,
night after night, working the graveyard shift.
Well, here's why:


300-word stories
Because years ago, on a freezing winter night at a party in Queens, N.Y., he met a
woman named Millie.
Because he fell in love with her brown hair and wide eyes and 100-watt smile.
Because they got married, moved to Staten Island, had a son and worked for
decades in Manhattan; she as an accountant, he as a banker.
Because it had been their dream to retire to Florida, and so they saved all their lives
to make it possible.
Because, just as they began to talk of leaving New York and heading south, she was
diagnosed with breast cancer, and they spent their time and money traveling to New
Jersey, San Diego and Mexico in search of a cure.
Because, in the end, they came to Florida anyway.
Because they finally bought a house in Spring Hill, although she was too weak that
day to get out of the car.
Because she died nine days later on Jan. 5, 2002, a day "the whole sky fell," he
says.
Because, after she was gone, he found himself alone and $100,000 in debt.


300-word stories
And so he took a job collecting tolls. The drivers who pass by see a smiling 71-yearold man with blue eyes and a gray mustache who tells each of them, "Have a great
night!"
They don't know the rest of Lloyd Blair's story, or that he keeps Millie's picture in his
shirt pocket, just under his name tag, just over his heart.

-Brady Dennis, “After the Sky Fell”, Tampa Bay Tribune

[It’s 298 words. I counted. Consider an EXACT word count too.]


• Share great writing: 300 word stories
• Practice writing concisely
• Brainstorm
Building Tour


Practice writing concisely
Use Twitter to craft writing.


Practice writing concisely
6 word stories:
For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.
Nobody knows this, but I’m famous.
Head: green smoothie. Gut: bacon cheeseburger.
So broke I can’t pay attention.
All those pages in the fire.
Caps and gowns. Ups and downs.


Brainstorming process
WKHS-TV Brainstorming Sheet
Fill in at least 16 for full credit

News in WKHS

News in Waterford

News in the World

Interviews

Ediorials

Man on the Street

Trends

In the Locker Room at WK Opening Ideas

News specifically related to WK

InDepth look into something or someone

Any specific trends you notice at WK?


News related to Waterford, including
other schools and businesses

Opinion of something going on at the
school or in the world

InDepth look at sports

News related to other areas

Hearing students’ opinions on a specific subject

what would be a good opener for the
show?

Yearbook Writing: The Chicken or the Egg

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Yearbook Writing: The Chicken or the Egg