Writers and editors work together all the time, but the two clans are somewhat mysterious to one another. Mutually suspicious, even. How do you know which career path you should specialize in? And how do editors become editors, anyway? Ann Finkbeiner and Laura Helmuth asked several journalists to describe the differences between writers and editors. [...]
Archive for the ‘Elements of Craft’ Category
Are you an editor or a writer? Part II: The editors.
Posted by Christie Aschwanden on January 16th, 2013
Are you a writer or an editor? Part I: The writers.
Posted by Christie Aschwanden on January 15th, 2013
Are you an editor or a writer? How do you know? What are the crucial differences between the two specializations? The question arose when Slate science editor Laura Helmuth was visiting a class that Ann Finkbeiner teaches at the graduate program in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Ann, hoping to help her students figure [...]
Post-Slam Dunk
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann on November 19th, 2012
The great thing about a Pitch Slam is that everyone benefits from courageous writers who conquer their nerves enough to pitch an idea, at a microphone, in front of a room full of their peers and a panel of editors from top publications. By any measure, the Pitch Slam at ScienceWriters2012 was crammed with outstanding pitches [...]
Cramming for the Slam
Posted by Jeanne Erdmann on October 24th, 2012
Few tasks bring more stress and anxiety to freelancers than pitching a story, except coming face-to-face with an editor at a meeting and pitching a story on the spot — in front of an audience. With ScienceWriters2012 and the Pitch Slam in just a few days, we decided to help freelancers prepare by offering up [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft 
Tags: Ask TON, Elements-of-Craft, Erdmann, Ferber, Maher, McKenna, Pitches, Pitching, ScienceWriters 
2 Comments »Like being there: How science writers use sensory detail
Posted by Jyoti Madhusoodanan on October 17th, 2012
“At this time of year, with new growth laying a haze of green over the wet fields, the farm country around this small town smells faintly but distinctly of manure. It’s a rich, warm aroma, appropriate to the place that bills itself on road signs as “Canada’s foremost cattle county.” But follow the dip in [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Elements-of-Craft, Guest Contributor, Madhusoodanan, Narrative, Reporting, Sensory Detail 1 Comment »Sharpening ideas: From topic to story
Posted by Dan Ferber on July 11th, 2012
George Johnson wanted to write about new developments in cancer research for the New York Times. But he needed to find a story that would let him to do it. So last year Johnson, a regular contributor to the Times’ science section who’s writing a book about cancer, cut a deal with his editor. He’d [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Characters, Elements-of-Craft, Ferber, Guest Contributor, Narrative, Pitching, Story Development, Structure 4 Comments »Making the leap from news to books: Critical questions
Posted by Charles Choi on May 30th, 2012
Authors of science books often begin as writers of science news. As a science journalist who is looking to write a book, I’ve become very curious as to how other science journalists made the leap forward. I suspected that the questions that go into books might be different from those that drive newspaper and magazine [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Blum, Books, Choi, Dobbs, Elements-of-Craft, Guest Contributor, Hutson, Koerth-Baker, McKenna, Narrative, Reporting, Zimmer 5 Comments »Pitching errors: How not to pitch
Posted by Laura Helmuth on January 4th, 2012
Writing a good pitch is really tough. Writing a bad one is easy. Editors see the same mistakes over and over again, even from good writers. A few weeks ago, seven editors from a variety of publications participated in a round-table discussion, in a series of group emails, about how NOT to pitch. I started [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Elements-of-Craft, Guest Contributor, Helmuth, Pitching 24 Comments »Lost and found: How great nonfiction writers discover great ideas
Posted by Brendan Borrell on December 13th, 2011
In June 2010, Michael Finkel needed a new idea. The Bozeman-based author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa and writer for GQ, National Geographic, and Men’s Journal wasn’t satisfied with the stack of print-outs in the two-inch deep brownie pan on his desk. And none of the hundreds of ideas in a Word document [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Borrell, Elements-of-Craft, Finding Ideas, Guest Contributor 4 Comments »Taking good notes: Tricks and tools
Posted by Siri Carpenter and Jeanne Erdmann on December 6th, 2011
Whether you rely on a digital recorder or a laptop or a ragtag collection of mismatched notebooks, you need to take good notes. That doesn’t just mean that your handwriting needs to be legible — though that matters too. It means that your notes capture the essence of what you have observed, from the words [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Field Reporting, Grimm, Interviewing, Notes, Notetaking, Reporting, Tools 4 Comments »Holly Tucker animates a centuries-old science story
Posted by Cynthia Graber on September 26th, 2011
In her new book Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, historian Holly Tucker weaves a tale of the first blood transfusion experiments (at the time, such transfusions were all animal-to-human) during the mid-17th century, about 150 years before blood transfusion began to enter modern medicine in earnest. Tucker delves into [...]
Naming the dog: The art of narrative structure
Posted by Christie Aschwanden on September 14th, 2011
The Open Notebook is doing something new. Since we launched last fall, we have focused on deconstructing the process that goes into individual stories that possess the quality of awesomeness. We love doing these story-behind-the-story interviews and have plenty more in the hopper. But, thanks to a very generous grant from the National Association of [...]
Posted in Elements of Craft Tags: Aschwanden, Elements-of-Craft, Guest Contributor, Longform, Narrative, Structure 5 Comments »