How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 16

"Well, Ella," said the judge, patiently, ignoring her sullenness, "I think we shall send you back to Park Ridge for a while. But if you ever change your mind about wanting friends let us know, because we'll be here and shall feel the same way as we do now about it."

To explain to readers of the _Kansas City Star_ how a bloodhound runs down a criminal, a special feature writer asked them to imagine that a crime had been committed at a particular corner in that city and that a bloodhound had been brought to track the criminal; then he told them what would happen if the crime were committed, first, when the streets were deserted, or second, when they were crowded. In other words, he gave two imaginary instances to ill.u.s.trate the manner in which bloodhounds are able to follow a trail. Obviously these two hypothetical cases are sufficiently plausible and typical to explain the idea.

If a bloodhound is brought to the scene of the crime within a reasonable length of time after it has been committed, and the dog has been properly trained, he will unfailingly run down the criminal, provided, of course, that thousands of feet have not tramped over the ground.

If, for instance, a crime were committed at Twelfth and Walnut streets at 3 o'clock in the morning, when few persons are on the street, a well-trained bloodhound would take the trail of the criminal at daybreak and stick to it with a grim determination that appears to be uncanny, and he would follow the trail as swiftly as if the hunted man had left his shadow all along the route.

But let the crime be committed at noon when the section is alive with humanity and remain undiscovered until after dark, then the bloodhound is put at a disadvantage and his wonderful powers would fail him, no doubt.

INCIDENTS. Narrative articles, such as personal experience stories, confessions, and narratives in the third person, consist almost entirely of incidents. Dialogue and description are very frequently employed in relating incidents, even when the greater part of the incident is told in the writer's own words. The incidents given as examples of narrative beginnings on pages 135-37 are sufficient to ill.u.s.trate the various methods of developing incidents as units.

STATISTICS. To make statistical facts comprehensible and interesting is usually a difficult problem for the inexperienced writer. Ma.s.ses of figures generally mean very little to the average reader. Unless the significance of statistics can be quickly grasped, they are almost valueless as a means of explanation. One method of simplifying them is to translate them into terms with which the average reader is familiar.

This may often be done by reducing large figures to smaller ones.

Instead of saying, for example, that a press prints 36,000 newspapers an hour, we may say that it prints 10 papers a second, or 600 a minute. To most persons 36,000 papers an hour means little more than a large number, but 10 papers and one second are figures sufficiently small to be understood at a glance. Statistics sometimes appear less formidable if they are incorporated in an interview or in a conversation.

In undertaking to explain the advantages of a cooperative community store, a writer was confronted with the problem of handling a considerable number of figures. The first excerpt below shows how he managed to distribute them through several paragraphs, thus avoiding any awkward ma.s.sing of figures. In order to present a number of comparative prices, he used the concrete case, given below, of an investigator making a series of purchases at the store.

(1)

Here's the way the manager of the community store started. He demonstrated to his neighbors by actual figures that they were paying anywhere from $2 to $8 a week more for their groceries and supplies than they needed to. This represented the middlemen's profits.

He then proposed that if a hundred families would pay him regularly 50 cents a week, he would undertake to supply them with garden truck, provisions and meats at wholesale prices. To clinch the demonstration he showed that an average family would save this 50-cent weekly fee in a few days' purchases.

There is no difference in appearance between the community store and any other provision store. There is no difference in the way you buy your food. The only difference is that you pay 50 cents a week on a certain day each week and buy food anywhere from 15 to 40 per cent less than at the commercial, non-cooperative retail stores.

(2)

The other day an investigator from the department of agriculture went to the Was.h.i.+ngton community store to make an experiment. He paid his 50-cent weekly members.h.i.+p fee and made some purchases. He bought a 10-cent carton of oatmeal for 8 cents; a 10-cent loaf of bread for 8 cents; one-half peck of string beans for 20 cents, instead of for 30 cents, the price in the non-cooperative stores; three pounds of veal for 58 cents instead of 80 cents; a half dozen oranges for 13 cents instead of the usual price of from 20 to 25 cents. His total purchases amounted to $1.32, and the estimated saving was 49 cents--within 1 cent of the entire weekly fee.

Since to the average newspaper reader it would not mean much to say that the cost of the public schools amounted to several hundred thousand dollars a year, a special feature writer calculated the relation of the school appropriation to the total munic.i.p.al expenditure and then presented the results as fractions of a dollar, thus:

Of every dollar that each taxpayer in this city paid to the city treasurer last year, 45 cents was spent on the public schools. This means that nearly one-half of all the taxes were expended on giving boys and girls an education.

Of that same dollar only 8 cents went to maintain the police department, 12 cents to keep up the fire department, and 13 cents for general expenses of the city offices.

Out of the 45 cents used for school purposes, over one-half, or 24 cents, was paid as salaries to teachers and princ.i.p.als. Only 8 cents went for operation, maintenance, and similar expenses.

How statistics may be effectively embodied in an interview is demonstrated by the following excerpt from a special feature story on a workmen's compensation law administered by a state industrial board:

Judge J.B. Vaughn, who is at the head of the board, estimates that the system of settling compensation by means of a commission instead of by the regular courts has saved the state $1,000,000 a year since its inception in 1913. "Under the usual court proceedings," he says, "each case of an injured workman versus his employer costs from $250 to $300. Under the workings of the industrial board the average cost is no more than $20.

"In three and one-half years 8,000 cases have come before us. Nine out of every ten have been adjusted by our eight picked arbitrators, who tour the state, visiting promptly each scene of an accident and adjusting the compensation as quickly as possible. The tenth case, which requires a lengthier or more painstaking hearing, is brought to the board.

"Seven million dollars has been in this time ordered to be paid to injured men and their families. Of this no charge of any sort has been entered against the workers or their beneficiaries. The costs are taken care of by the state. Fully 90 per cent of all the cases are settled within the board, which means that only 10 per cent are carried further into the higher courts for settlement."

PROCESSES. To make scientific and technical processes sufficiently simple to appeal to the layman, is another problem for the writer of popular articles. A narrative-descriptive presentation that enables the reader to visualize and follow the process, step by step, as though it were taking place before his eyes, is usually the best means of making it both understandable and interesting.

In a special feature story on methods of exterminating mosquitoes, a writer in the _Detroit News_ undertook to trace the life history of a mosquito. In order to popularize these scientific details, he describes a "baby mosquito" in a concrete, informal manner, and, as he tells the story of its life, suggests or points out specifically its likeness to a human being.

The baby mosquito is a regular little water bug. You call him a "wiggler" when you see him swimming about in a puddle. His head is wide and flat and his eyes are set well out at the sides, while in front of them he has a pair of cute little horns or feelers. While the baby mosquito is brought up in the water, he is an air-breather and comes to the top to breathe as do frogs and musk-rats and many other water creatures of a higher order.

Like most babies the mosquito larva believes that his mission is to eat as much as he can and grow up very fast. This he does, and if the weather is warm and the food abundant, he soon outgrows his skin. He proceeds to grow a new skin underneath the old one, and when he finds himself protected, he bursts out of his old clothes and comes out in a spring suit. This molting process occurs several times within a week or two, but the last time he takes on another form. He is then called a pupa, and is in a strange transition period during which he does not eat. He now slowly takes on the form of a true mosquito within his pupal skin or sh.e.l.l.

After two or three days, or perhaps five or six, if conditions are not altogether favorable, he feels a great longing within him to rise to something higher. His tiny sh.e.l.l is floating upon the water with his now winged body closely packed within. The skin begins to split along the back and the true baby mosquito starts to work himself out. It is a strenuous task for him and consumes many minutes.

At last he appears and sits dazed and exhausted, floating on his old skin as on a little boat, and slowly working his new wings in the sunlight, as if to try them out before essaying flight. It is a moment of great peril. A pa.s.sing ripple may swamp his tiny craft and s.h.i.+pwreck him to become the prey of any pa.s.sing fish or vagrant frog. A swallow sweeping close to the water's surface may gobble him down. Some ruthless city employe may have flooded the surface of the pond with kerosene, the merest touch of which means death to a mosquito. Escaping all of the thousand and one accidents that may befall, he soon rises and hums away seeking whom he may devour.

A mechanical process, that of handling milk at a model dairy farm, was effectively presented by Constance D. Leupp in an article ent.i.tled, "The Fight for Clean Milk," printed in the _Outlook_. By leading "you," the reader, to the spot, as it were, by picturing in detail what "you" would see there, and then by following in story form the course of the milk from one place to another, she succeeded in making the process clear and interesting.

Here at five in the afternoon you may see long lines of sleek, well-groomed cows standing in their cement-floored, perfectly drained sheds. The walls and ceilings are spotless from constant applications of whitewash, ventilation is scientifically arranged, doors and windows are screened against the flies. Here the white-clad, smooth-shaven milkers do their work with scrubbed and manicured hands. You will note that all these men are studiously low-voiced and gentle in movement; for a cow, notwithstanding her outward placidity, is the most sensitive creature on earth, and there is an old superst.i.tion that if you speak roughly to your cow she will earn no money for you that day.

As each pail is filled it is carried directly into the milk-house; not into the bottling-room, for in that sterilized sanctum n.o.body except the bottler is admitted, but into the room above, where the pails are emptied into the strainer of a huge receptacle. From the base of this receptacle it flows over the radiator in the bottling-room, which reduces it at once to the required temperature, thence into the mechanical bottler. The white-clad attendant places a tray containing several dozen empty bottles underneath, presses a lever, and, presto! they are full and not a drop spilled. He caps the bottles with another twist of the lever, sprays the whole with a hose, picks up the load and pushes it through the horizontal dumb-waiter, where another attendant receives it in the packing-room. The second man clamps a metal cover over the pasteboard caps and packs the bottles in ice. Less than half an hour is consumed in the milking of each cow, the straining, chilling, bottling, and storing of her product.

PRACTICAL GUIDANCE UNITS. To give in an attractive form complete and accurate directions for doing something in a certain way, is another difficult problem for the inexperienced writer. For interest and variety, conversation, interviews and other forms of direct quotation, as well as informal narrative, may be employed.

Various practical methods of saving fuel in cooking were given by a writer in _Successful Farming_, in what purported to be an account of a meeting of a farm woman's club at which the problem was discussed. By the device of allowing the members of the club to relate their experiences, she was able to offer a large number of suggestions. Two units selected from different portions of the article ill.u.s.trate this method:

"I save dollars by cooking in my furnace," added a practical worker.

"Potatoes bake nicely when laid on the ledge, and beans, stews, roasts, bread--in fact the whole food list--may be cooked there. But one must be careful not to have too hot a fire. I burned several things before I learned that even a few red coals in the fire-pot will be sufficient for practically everything. And then it does blacken the pans! But I've solved that difficulty by bending a piece of tin and setting it between the fire and the cooking vessel. This prevents burning, too, if the fire should be hot. Another plan is to set the vessel in an old preserving kettle. If this outer kettle does not leak, it may be filled with water, which not only aids in the cooking process but also prevents burning. For broiling or toasting, a large corn popper is just the thing."

"My chief saving," confided the member who believes in preparedness, "consists in cooking things in quant.i.ties, especially the things that require long cooking, like baked beans or soup. I never think of cooking less than two days' supply of beans, and as for soup, that is made up in quant.i.ty sufficient to last a week. If I have no ice, reheating it each day during warm weather prevents spoiling.

Most vegetables are not harmed by a second cooking, and, besides the saving in fuel it entails, it's mighty comforting to know that you have your dinner already prepared for the next day, or several days before for that matter. In cold weather, or if you have ice, it will not be necessary to introduce monotony into your meals in order to save fuel, for one can wait a day or two before serving the extra quant.i.ty. Sauces, either for vegetables, meats or puddings, may just as well be made for more than one occasion, altho if milk is used in their preparation, care must be taken that they are kept perfectly cold, as ptomaines develop rapidly in such foods. Other things that it pays to cook in large portions are chocolate syrup for making cocoa, caramel for flavoring, and apple sauce."

By using a conversation between a hostess and her guest, another writer in the same farm journal succeeded in giving in a novel way some directions for preparing celery.

"Your escalloped corn is delicious. Where did you get your recipe?"

Mrs. Field smiled across the dining table at her guest. "Out of my head, I suppose, for I never saw it in print. I just followed the regulation method of a layer of corn, then seasoning, and repeat, only I cut into small pieces a stalk or two of celery with each layer of corn."

"Celery and corn--a new combination, but it's a good one. I'm so glad to learn of it; but isn't it tedious to cut the celery into such small bits?"

"Not at all, with my kitchen scissors. I just slash the stalk into several lengthwise strips, then cut them crosswise all at once into very small pieces."

"You always have such helpful ideas about new and easy ways to do your work. And economical, too. Why, celery for a dish like this could be the outer stalks or pieces too small to be used fresh on the table."

"That's the idea, exactly. I use such celery in soups and stews of all kinds; it adds such a delicious flavor. It is especially good in poultry stuffings and meat loaf. Then there is creamed celery, of course, to which I sometimes add a half cup of almonds for variety.

And I use it in salads, too. Not a bit of celery is wasted around here. Even the leaves may be dried out in the oven, and crumbled up to flavor soups or other dishes."

"That's fine! Celery is so high this season, and much of it is not quite nice enough for the table, unless cooked."

A number of new uses for adhesive plaster were suggested by a writer in the _New York Tribune_, who, in the excerpt below, employs effectively the device of the direct appeal to the reader.

Aside from surgical "First Aid" and the countless uses to which this useful material may be put, there are a great number of household uses for adhesive plaster.

If your pumps are too large and slip at the heel, just put a strip across the back and they will stay in place nicely. When your rubbers begin to break repair them on the inside with plaster cut to fit. If the children lose their rubbers at school, write their names with black ink on strips of the clinging material and put these strips inside the top of the rubber at the back.