Part of our mission here at BRIGHT Magazine is to raise the bar on storytelling about social issues like health, education, and poverty. However, when I say that aloud, it can sound vague at best, and holier-than-thou at worst.
To make this lofty goal more concrete, here are ten tips I’ve gleaned from pitches and drafts I’ve reviewed over the last three years. I hope they’ll give you more a sense of our brand of journalism, and make you a stronger writer in the process. [Note: In the cases of direct quotes, I’ve done my best to anonymize them.] Enjoy!
1. Be specific.
This is one of the biggest issues I have with pitches and drafts. I’ve particularly come to loathe the word “certain.” Here are two examples why (text bolded for emphasis):
“I would like to do a story about how a certain local organization goes about convincing the community to solve [insert centuries-old problem].”
Which organization? Does it have a name? And how exactly is it solving a huge, thorny problem that’s plagued society for centuries? This pitch also carries a whiff of a broader problem I’ve noticed in social issues journalism: the assumption that because you’re writing about a “worthy” issue, you can bypass some basic journalistic standards. Readers’ hearts will be warmed knowing that a nameless organization in an unspecified African country is “fixing” a problem.
“Abortion is illegal except in certain cases.”
In which cases are abortions permitted? Reading this sentence makes me feel like you didn’t do your research.
2. Whenever possible, add numbers
I have a theory: 45% of writers believe they’re “bad at math” and that they can avoid numbers for the rest of their lives; 35% are too lazy to include numbers to bolster their arguments; and the other 30% are straight up frightened of getting a statistic wrong. (…Oh, wait a second.)
Here’s one example of what happens when you avoid numbers. Again, emphases mine:
“The foundation has given hope to many children who had their parents killed in the insurgency. To an extent, it has reduced illiteracy and it’s still working to do more.”
Has the foundation actually made a difference in the community? Hard to say without knowing how many children it’s served, and the extent to which illiteracy has been reduced. Especially in remote areas, I know that comprehensive scientific trials are difficult to come by — but there’s usually something that can give a sense of scale.
3. We’re almost in 2018, folks
With rare exception will we be interested in stats from more than five years ago. One memorable draft included findings from a research study in 1950 to support the point.
4. Consider when and how to insert yourself into a story.
Invoking your personal expertise can often give your story more credibility. But there are limits to self-declared expertise, exemplified by this — real, I promise — pitch:
“My short stint working on a Kibbutz a few years prior gave me the expertise to go from Brooklyn, New York, to a small village in [insert developing country] to [help run an agriculture project].”
How does a self-described “short stint” make you an expert on a topic as vast as agriculture? This passage also has a hint of the dreaded white savior industrial complex that plagues a lot of journalism about marginalized communities of color.
5. Consider how you’re portraying the community you’re entering
On a similar note, it’s hard to write about a place when you’re an outsider, especially if you come from a place of relative privilege. Work extra hard to avoid lazy tropes about marginalized communities. I covered many of them in my essay earlier this year about development clichés; here are two others:
“These children of war are extremely resilient. They haven’t lost hope… and wear broad, contagious smiles.”
I’m not a fan of the phrase “they’re poor but they’re happy”; especially for children who have suffered through the indignities of war, it feels a bit glib.
[The tea I was served was] often drowned in heaping teaspoons of sugar or doused with powered [sic] milk. I spent months drinking more tea than progress, sometimes tossing out the brown liquid when they weren’t looking.
In this case, the writer doesn’t prefer their tea with sugar. The villagers who served him/her come across as out-of-touch to not take the author’s preference into consideration. I’d spin this; sugar is expensive, and in many parts of the world, it’s a sign of hospitality to sweeten tea for a guest.
6. Who are the experts?
The word “expert” is often tossed around in journalism — and when talking about marginalized communities, often carries certain connotations (see #15 of my guide on development clichés). I’d like more writers to ask themselves, “Are there biases in who I consider to be an expert? How can I think more creatively about expertise?”
For example: if you’re writing about a drought, why not talk to people who are experiencing it? If you’re writing about the importance of doulas, what about mothers who recently used one — or who intentionally chose not to?
One last tip: a recent draft of a feature story quoted the Bible as its only expert source. As you may guess, this probably won’t work for most secular publications.
7. Who has a last name?
Related, I’ve often seen drafts where experts are referred to by their last name while “characters” are repeatedly referred to by their first name. This is particularly true when the reporting was done in the global south. A hypothetical example:
“Agnes was in excruciating pain. According to Smith and Brown…”
8. Color is life
Whenever possible, add scenes and anecdotes, much as a fiction writer would. When done well, they breed immediacy and familiarity. Here’s a strong sentence from a scene in a prison, from a feature story we’ll be publishing soon:
“[Name] wrote down a number on a piece of paper and held it up to the glass that separated us, begging us to call him.”
Color is also important in personal essay writing. Here’s an example from the first draft of Mónica Feliú-Mójer’s excellent essay on how Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria turned her into an activist. The edits I gave her are in brackets:
“For a couple of days, Hurricane Maria paralyzed me. [Go into this a little more. What do you mean by paralyzing? How were you moving through the day?] Then, it thrust me into action. [Similarly: was there something that happened that caused this shift? I think describing this in more specificity will make this essay stronger and more inspirational.]”
9. Is it a topic, or is it a story?
This is one of the most common problems I’ve noticed with pitches we get, and I think is particularly an issue in journalism about social issues. Here’s an example:
The global sanitation crisis is a big one — 2.5 billion people lack access to hygienic sanitation.
We’re not interested in publishing World Bank-style overviews of enormous sectors; we want specific stories.
10. Don’t keep repeating yourself. Also, avoid redundancy.
Freshman year of college, we were required to take Expository Writing, where I got essays handed back to me with more red ink than black (and subsequently discovered my written voice). It was there that I was introduced to George Orwell’s seminal essay, “Politics and the English Language,” which I encourage you to read — particularly his six rules for effective prose.
Repetition may be one of my biggest pet peeves in drafts. Here are a couple of examples:
[Expert source] believes that giving power back to children who spend most of their time in the classroom is essential, both to avoid sending the message that their bodies don’t belong to them, but also so that their learning and development isn’t inhibited, as well. “If educators take their cues from what the children know intuitively, the developmental and educational needs of children can be met,” she says.
There are two forms of repetition in this passage. First (and most common), the writer spells out what the quote says before writing the quote. Second, “also” is followed by “as well.”
“Cesarean section rates had risen to 31.2%. That’s one in three babies.”
This kind of repetition can work as emphasis in a speech or impassioned opinion piece — but in a feature story, it can sound awkward.
What have you noticed when reading stories about social issues? What else could make these stories stronger? Is there anything I missed, or got wrong? I invite you all to share your thoughts below.
