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 
14 Comments »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 »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 »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 [...]
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 3 Comments »