Journalists' Handicaps/Advantages

[AdamMac]

I'm a long-time lurker but have posted very little, mainly because my computer system in London, where I was living until last week, didn't allow me to post. I feel I already know a lot of people here though. So, hello from your previously mute friend.

I'm a journalist with 16 years' experience and have become serious about fiction, again, in the the last two years or so.

Quite a few people here have journalism or other non-fiction experience. What kind of advantages and disadvantages has that given you in writing fiction?

Sometimes, I feel the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. I found I race through stories far too quickly. I'm used to writing a maximum 700 words or so, or editing stories down from 1,000 words to 500. The style guide for The AP, my former employer, in one section condenses the Bible into something like 1,000 words to show it can be done. I'm almost finished Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series, which totals maybe 2,500 pages, and could do the same with it.

Also, I tried to ``Write what I know.'' I covered social strife, elections, wars, etc. on most continents until 2003 and now edit business news. I started writing mainstream fiction in those real-life settings but my stories read more like non-fiction. No surprise, I guess. I have been writing non-fiction about ``what I know'' for years. So I've reunited with my former love, fantasy fiction. I may have found a happy medium there. One of my two WIPs is set in a fantasy world in a massive slum, based on places I've seen in Africa, Asia and South America.

Third, but not last, I feel awkward writing in first person, so I don't.

The advantages are obvious but basic. I can write a coherent sentence and spell correctly. I also have developed an ear for language and, I think, can quickly say what makes certain passages sexy or intriguing. Hmm... That's a short list. Any other advantages? OK, I know those are important and I'm also aware of the lengthy list of journalists who've made it big in fiction. I'm just curious about what habits they may have overcome.

So, back to the question. How has non-fiction experience helped or hindered you when writing a novel?

Thanks, Adam

[MarkEsq]

Hey Adam,

I have twice those problems - not only was I journalist but I am now an attorney. So not only is my writing normally concise, but boy it had better all flow logically and without surplus! That said, I don't view this as a handicap. I have always wanted to write fiction and have always penned silly little stories, even as a kid. So that's more in my blood than professional writing. Plus, I find that writing fiction is a wonderful release from the bonds of more terse writing. I can have fun with it, use the occasional long word, be funny.

And I think it has helped me inthe ways you describe - I edit my work as I go because extra verbiage stands out so quickly, I can spell and I have a decent vocabulary.

So think about it as being blessed.. and welcome to the site!

Cheers,
Mark

[maestrowork]

Where were you when I needed someone to write my synopsis of my 500-page ms.? LOL

I think some of your "problems" are valid -- journalists tend to have a concise style. I suspect that many non-fic writers have similar problems. I know a few news people, and they all think writing a "novel" is hard, even though they write professionally every day.

But I think one can overcome that. Take a class to learn the skills. Join a writing group, etc. etc. I tend to "underwrite" as well -- all it means is, when I edit and write my subsequent drafts, I need to flesh it out. I've heard someone say that to be a novelist, you need to know how to "bullshit" your way to 100,000 words. You need to make things up, use your imagination, embellish everything... Something a journalist is trained not to do...

On the other hand, non-fic writers are generally familiar with research and investigation methods. And have great organizational skills. Those would help immensely. Also, depending on what you write as a journalist, you may transition well to genres such as mystery (which has a straightforward, lean style anyway), historical fiction, etc.

Just my $0.0000002.

[debraji]

Technical writing has taught me how to write for different audiences, how to keep track of myriad details, and how to manage a large writing project over time.

I, too, tend to write lean and then flesh it out.

[Aconite]

My ex-journalist, current-fiction-writer friend gets straight to the action in her stories, with no dithering for twenty pages before something happens. Her opening sentences are grabbers.

[Carlene]

I too started out writing non ficiton and did that for about fifteen years before I started writing books. I'm on number ten now and I think I get better with each one. Yes, take some fiction writing classes! Most of my earlier efforts at both short stories and novels were very terse and to the point. I have learned to uses all five senses and more description. I write the entire novel, then go back and expand. Journalism has served me well, though as I have great beginnings and that's one thing you need.

[Jamesaritchie]

I think having training in journalism is 100% advantage. I majored in English Lit./creative writing and in journalism. I learned far more about literature in the lit and cretaive writing classes, but I learned far more about actually writing fiction in the journalism classes.

And one of the most important things I learn in journalism class happened during the first class on the first day. My prof, a New York Times reporter on leave from the paper in order to swap teaching for a more advanced degree, asked how many English majors were in the class, and about half of us raised our hands. He then said, "If you want to write well, then other than the basic rules of grammar and punctuation, forget everything your English professor tells you."

He was right. A really good journalism course has many facets, from the inverted pyramid of J.101, to classes in how to write headlines, how to interview, how to dig out a story, specific classes on every type of writing newspapers, magazines, or TV could want. Taken together, I simply don;t think tehre is a better training ground for a fiction writer.

It's true that not all journalists take advantage of this, but for those who do, for those who learn to write human interest pieces, including feature and series length human interest pieces, and for those who learn to write journalistic essays and opinion pieces, I don't think there is any better training for a fiction writer.

A great many of our best fiction writers have come straight from journalism, and I don't think this is coincidence. Being concise is good. The best novels and short stories are, I think, very concise. Not brief, but definitely concise.

Even Stephen King says the best lesson in writing he ever received was watching a sports editor run a pencil through one of his articles.

Ordinary nonfiction writers can be at a disadvatnge when writing fiction, but good journalists shouldn't be. There's a massive difference between writing nonfiction articles for general or technical magazines and writing good journalism pieces. Or there should be.

Length takes care of itself. You learn to write at length by reading at length. If you read a lot of novels, then the structure of a novel is there in your head, and the concise style of journalism lets you put this length down on paper with a tightness many new fiction writers never master.

Seriously, just look through the list of famous writers and see how many have emerged from the field of journalism. The number is amazing, and should be highly encouraging.

[Tish Davidson]

I found I had developed a really good ear for speech patterns (not dialects) after interviewing people for years. It helps differentiate my characters and makes writing dialogue easy.

[Cathy C]

I still write both, and ALSO spent twenty years writing legal motions and briefs, too! LOL! An awful lot of people in law seem to gravitate toward writing. I think it's realizing how persuasive words can be that attracts us.


Hmm, advantages vs. disadvantages. Good question.

First, Advantages:

1. You probably have a better eye for research. In pretty much EVERY case, a fiction novel will require some research, whether it's for a specific era, or a specific occupation or geographical location. Heck, even fantasy, where you've built your very own world will require research. What is the social structure similar to that the reader can identify with? How about the religion? Are they mechanized or still in the dark ages? What would a sword look like? How about a ray gun? Etc., etc. Those little details are very important, because readers are PICKY! I once had a reader argue about whether a stick match could have been used to light a lantern in my historical. (Yep, I'd researched it! The match was only a few years old, but WOW did it become popular fast! Like the post-it note of the 1830s!)

2. You can write a simple sentence. Don't discount this ability! The best selling books are ones which have short, simple sentences. You'd be amazed by how many writers have entire paragraphs that are ONE sentence! I once counted (and I'm not kidding!) EIGHTEEN commas in one sentence on a sample I was reviewing.

Disadvantages:

1. You have to fight your first instinct to cut extraneous information. In a short piece, it really doesn't matter what the subject is wearing, or how her hair resembles captured sunlight. "She had shiny blonde hair," is a bit TOO short! LOL! I find myself doing this ALL the time! I usually read over a paragraph or chapter I've written to expand when it seems too short.

2. Having worked with quotes, it's hard to come up with realistic dialogue that doesn't SOUND like a quote geared towards advancement of the text. But people don't talk in sound bites. They hurble, and ramble and sound like idiots at times. Sometimes, I find that saying the sentence out loud as though reading a play script can help this along. Does it feel stilted when you say it? Then it will probably READ that way, too.

Hope this helps some. Overall, I consider that my background in journalism has added to my skills as a fiction writer. But it's an entirely different hat and I have to KNOW which one I'm wearing! :)

[Jamesaritchie]

You know. I'm not at all convinced that the ability to write good dialogue isn't a distinct and separate talent from the ability to write narrative. And I do think it may be more talent than ability.

I don't believe there's any reason at all why a journalism major should write poor dialogue. Everything about journalism seems geared toward teaching dialogue, as far as I'm concerned. Good dialogue almost never sounds like real human speech, and the way journalists are taught to paraphrase the way people really talk is the way good dialogue should be written. Journalists cut all the junk from dialogue when quoting someone, and this is also an excellent way to write fictional dialogue.

But I really wonder whether you either have a tin ear or not.

Then again, I don't write dialogue with the aim of advancing the story. I write dialogue because at the moment a character speaks, a real person would also have spoken, and would have said what the character says.

I also think cutting extraneous material is a big plus. Unless there's a reason to tell people what a character is wearing, then don't tell them. If you do have a reason, just tell the reader quickly and get it over with, Again, the way good journalists do the same in human interest pieces works very well in fiction.

[Mistook]

How does a journalists training jibe with the old novelist's rule of thumb "Show don't tell"?

If there's a stumbling block, would it be there? How hard is it to convert from "reporting" a story to having one play out?

I like the points made so far about research, and the tightness of sentence structure. I can definitely see how those skills would make a story much more solid and interesting.

What about the layering of themes, characterization, plot information, etc, that goes into the dialogue for example. My understanding is that a great line of dialogue can simultaneously reveal the character, forshadow the plot, enlighten the backstory, support the theme, and add to the ambiance of the scene - all without seeming obvious.

Is that kind of multi-level strategy exactly what journalists do best, or is it more in the realm of poets? Or both?

[scribbler1382]

How does a journalists training jibe with the old novelist's rule of thumb "Show don't tell"?

What about the layering of themes, characterization, plot information, etc, that goes into the dialogue for example. My understanding is that a great line of dialogue can simultaneously reveal the character, forshadow the plot, enlighten the backstory, support the theme, and add to the ambiance of the scene - all without seeming obvious.

Is that kind of multi-level strategy exactly what journalists do best, or is it more in the realm of poets? Or both?

I think you're confusing vocational skills coming in handy in another profession with wholecloth transporting of one vocation's disciplines to another with some kind of weird inability to understand context or learn new things. If you write a shopping list, does that make you incapable of writing a letter to your Mom? Humans are multi-faceted. Not thinking so is what makes for two-dimensional and unbelieveable characters in fiction.

[Ken Schneider]

How does a journalists training jibe with the old novelist's rule of thumb "Show don't tell"?

If there's a stumbling block, would it be there? How hard is it to convert from "reporting" a story to having one play out?

I like the points made so far about research, and the tightness of sentence structure. I can definitely see how those skills would make a story much more solid and interesting.

What about the layering of themes, characterization, plot information, etc, that goes into the dialogue for example. My understanding is that a great line of dialogue can simultaneously reveal the character, forshadow the plot, enlighten the backstory, support the theme, and add to the ambiance of the scene - all without seeming obvious.

Is that kind of multi-level strategy exactly what journalists do best, or is it more in the realm of poets? Or both?


As journalists, we are not really involved in "showing" the reader much in a story. Many times we just don't have the space needed in newspapers to do so, and even if we did, readers don't usually read more than 10 inches of any story. News is short and to the point and uses the inverted pyramid style (most important information at the top, less important as the story goes on).
If the story is a feature of some sort - say for a profile of someone or something, or an investigative report - then it can be run as a gigantic story where we do show you what's going on. One series of books that displays this type of writing is the "Best American Series," which comes out with new editions each year. Online journalism is practically the same. Public relations journalism is even more to the point than news writing. The only type of journalism that is a "show" type of journalism is magazine journalism. This is true because it is so specialized in one topic and people are reading the magazine for that specific topic. This allows writers to have extra space and go more into depth giving readers specific and vivid information that the readers want.

[Jamesaritchie]

As journalists, we are not really involved in "showing" the reader much in a story. Many times we just don't have the space needed in newspapers to do so, and even if we did, readers don't usually read more than 10 inches of any story. News is short and to the point and uses the inverted pyramid style (most important information at the top, less important as the story goes on).
If the story is a feature of some sort - say for a profile of someone or something, or an investigative report - then it can be run as a gigantic story where we do show you what's going on. One series of books that displays this type of writing is the "Best American Series," which comes out with new editions each year. Online journalism is practically the same. Public relations journalism is even more to the point than news writing. The only type of journalism that is a "show" type of journalism is magazine journalism. This is true because it is so specialized in one topic and people are reading the magazine for that specific topic. This allows writers to have extra space and go more into depth giving readers specific and vivid information that the readers want.

The better columnists doing human interest pieces also show very well. It was writing human interest columns, human interest feartures, and essays for newspapers that taught me more about fiction writign than anything else.

I know many journalists never get into that side of newspaper writing, but when you do, it's a wonderful teaching ground for writing fiction.

Human interest features that are about, for example, the homeless, often show very well. The journalist has to describe the people and the conditions they live in to get the point of the piece across to readers.

Straight news stories are usually nearly all tell and very little show, but there is a lot of show in newspapers, and the journalists who write it are often extremely skillful.

[AdamMac]

Wow. What a lot of great replies.

As for show versus tell, I don't think that's really a problem. I consider it one of my strengths. Showing is really the key to writing a readable news story and can be done even in, say, a story on a monthly inflation report. It can often be done with a few words. Even including the age of an interviewee is a form of showing, albeit terse. The fact that we have fewer words to show a story is good training. I once spent a couple of weeks in a small Albanian border town and it struck me how much it was like the wild west. I focused on the sheriff to write a feature making the comparison. I described his ``saucer-sized belt buckle, leather boots, gun slung low on his hip and the drinkers hushing up as he sauntered into the bar where we met, named ``The Mountain Breeze.'' I no longer had to say the town resembled the wild west, although I think an editor did put it in.

I do find, however, that subplots, themes and the vaguer aspects of fiction can stymie me. Journalism hasn't prepared me for that. This is a seperate line of study and, yes, I think I'll take a course. It'll have to be online because English-language creative writing courses are pretty hard to come by here in Romania.

And thanks for the great reply Jamesaritchie. I see that journalism background is 100% advantage -- at least in the areas mutual to non-fiction and fiction. In other areas of fiction, journalists have to start from the bottom like anybody else.

Thanks, Adam