What is a normal amount of time to spend on preparing pitches for magazine feature stories? Some people say they spend as little as an hour, and others conduct multiple interviews before pitching. What’s usually the best approach, practically speaking?
“What methods do you use to find patients for a medical story, and what kinds of questions do you ask them, or their doctors, or yourself, to vet whether a particular patient is the right fit for a story?”
I’d like to learn how to write faster, so I could turn a story around in just a few hours. Are there some good tricks people who write news use to get stories done on a tight timeline?
I’d like to make better use of university public information officers to find ideas for features and front-of-book stories for magazines. What is the best way to do this?
When I’m reporting, everyone I meet seems to basically look ‘regular’ to me. It doesn’t seem worth saying that someone wears glasses or has smoothly brushed hair … I know I’m supposed to look for meaningful traits … What am I doing wrong?
To get myself out of a bind without having to tell my editor I was so far behind, I hired another writer who I trusted to help me with my reporting and drafting. It all worked out … but I felt kind of gross. Was it unethical for me to hire a subcontractor?
You’re assigned to cover new developments in a complicated field. You know you have to include summaries of some results, and enough background to give readers a good overview. How can you bring some deliciously compelling narrative to a summary-type story?
If you’re assigned a Q&A with a well-known doctor or scientist, how do you approach it? What’s the one question you should definitely ask anyone, regardless of background? And how do you decide what to leave out of a Q&A?
You’re finally ready to sit down and write your feature. How do you organize your interview notes and research? Seasoned writers and editors share tips on how to break down your ideas and combine them into a great story—either by outlining, chunking them out, or just letting it happen.
Some scientists and other interviewees may not want to talk about controversial subjects; they may be wary of the media; or they’re just difficult to approach. This can be difficult if your source is a key character in a feature story. What can you do to break the ice?
Writers gotta write, so at some point, we buckle down and get started. A few particularly prolific science writers offer tips and tricks for how to do that.
When you are reporting for a narrative story, interviewing sources—say a researcher or a family—how do you take notes or record what’s going on without being obtrusive?
Call for Proposals: Early-Career Fellowship Program 
Tools: Planner Pad, the Funnel of Focus 
Taking Good Notes: Tricks and Tools 
Nailing the Nut Graf 
On Being a Science Writer and Managing a Mental Illness 
A Day in the Life of Nadia Drake 
A Day in the Life of Annalee Newitz 
Pitching Errors: How Not to Pitch 
The Art of the Essay 
Trading the Pipette for the Pen: Transitioning from Science to Science Writing 
Show Me the Money: The Economics of Freelance Science Journalism 
How Rebecca Skloot Built The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 
Good Beginnings: How to Write a Lede Your Editor—and Your Readers—Will Love 
A Day in the Life of David Quammen 
David Quammen on Turning Research Into Story, Part I 
Are You a Writer or an Editor? Part I: The Writers 
How to Ace a 300-Word Story: An Interview with Roy Peter Clark 
Mac McClelland Tails Extreme Birders through Cuba 
Are You an Editor or a Writer? Part II: The Editors 
Is a Science Blog Still a Viable Path into Science Journalism? 
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