How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 17

In the same way labels can be made for bottles and cans. They are easy to put on and to take off. If the garden hose, the rubber tube of your bath spray, or your hot water bag shows a crack or a small break, mend it with adhesive.

A cracked handle of a broom, carpet sweeper, or umbrella can be repaired with this first aid to the injured. In the same way the handles of golf sticks, baseball bats, flagstaffs and whips may be given a new lease on life.

If your sheet music is torn or the window shade needs repairing, or there is a cracked pane of gla.s.s in the barn or in a rear window, apply a strip or patch of suitable size.

In an article in the _Philadelphia Ledger_ on "What Can I Do to Earn Money?" Mary Hamilton Talbot gave several examples of methods of earning money, in one of which she incorporated practical directions, thus:

A resourceful girl who loved to be out-of-doors found her opportunity in a bed of mint and aromatic herbs. She sends bunches of the mint neatly prepared to various hotels and cafes several times a week by parcel post, but it is in the over-supply that she works out best her original ideas. Among the novelties she makes is a candied mint that sells quickly. Here is her formula: Cut bits of mint, leaving three or four small leaves on the branch; wash well; dry and lay in rows on a broad, level surface. Thoroughly dissolve one pound of loaf sugar, boil until it threads and set from the fire. While it is still at the boiling point plunge in the bits of mint singly with great care. Remove them from the fondant with a fork and straighten the leaves neatly with a hatpin or like instrument. If a second plunging is necessary, allow the first coating to become thoroughly crystalized before dipping them again.

Lay the sweets on oiled paper until thoroughly dry. With careful handling these mints will preserve their natural aroma, taste, and shape, and will keep for any length of time if sealed from the air.

They show to best advantage in gla.s.s. The sweet-smelling herbs of this girl's garden she dries and sells to the fancy goods trade, and they are used for filling cus.h.i.+ons, pillows, and perfume bags. The seasoning herbs she dries, pulverizes, and puts in small gla.s.ses, nicely labeled, which sell for 10 cents each, and reliable grocers are glad to have them for their fastidious customers.

CHAPTER VII

HOW TO BEGIN

IMPORTANCE OF THE BEGINNING. The value of a good beginning for a news story, a special feature article, or a short story results from the way in which most persons read newspapers and magazines. In glancing through current publications, the average reader is attracted chiefly by headlines or t.i.tles, ill.u.s.trations, and authors' names. If any one of these interests him, he pauses a moment or two over the beginning "to see what it is all about." The first paragraphs usually determine whether or not he goes any further. A single copy of a newspaper or magazine offers so much reading matter that the casual reader, if disappointed in the introduction to one article or short story, has plenty of others to choose from. But if the opening sentences hold his attention, he reads on. "Well begun is half done" is a saying that applies with peculiar fitness to special feature articles.

STRUCTURE OF THE BEGINNING. To accomplish its purpose an introduction must be both a unit in itself and an integral part of the article. The beginning, whether a single paragraph in form, or a single paragraph in essence, although actually broken up into two or more short paragraphs, should produce on the mind of the reader a unified impression. The conversation, the incident, the example, or the summary of which it consists, should be complete in itself. Unless, on the other hand, the introduction is an organic part of the article, it fails of its purpose.

The beginning must present some vital phase of the subject; it should not be merely something attractive attached to the article to catch the reader's notice. In his effort to make the beginning attractive, an inexperienced writer is inclined to linger over it until it becomes disproportionately long. Its length, however, should be proportionate to the importance of that phase of the subject which it presents. As a vital part of the article, the introduction must be so skillfully connected with what follows that a reader is not conscious of the transition. Close coherence between the beginning and the body of the article is essential.

The four faults, therefore, to be guarded against in writing the beginning are: (1) the inclusion of diverse details not carefully coordinated to produce a single unified impression; (2) the development of the introduction to a disproportionate length; (3) failure to make the beginning a vital part of the article itself; (4) lack of close connection or of skillful transition between the introduction and the body of the article.

TYPES OF BEGINNINGS. Because of the importance of the introduction, the writer should familiarize himself with the different kinds of beginnings, and should study them from the point of view of their suitability for various types of articles. The seven distinct types of beginnings are: (1) summary; (2) narrative; (3) description; (4) striking statement; (5) quotation; (6) question; (7) direct address.

Combinations of two or more of these methods are not infrequent.

Summary Beginnings. The general adoption by newspapers of the summary beginning, or "lead," for news stories has accustomed the average reader to finding most of the essential facts of a piece of news grouped together in the first paragraph. The lead, by telling the reader the nature of the event, the persons and things concerned, the time, the place, the cause, and the result, answers his questions, What? Who?

When? Where? Why? How? Not only are the important facts summarized in such a beginning, but the most striking detail is usually "played up" in the first group of words of the initial sentence where it catches the eye at once. Thus the reader is given both the main facts and the most significant feature of the subject. Unquestionably this news story lead, when skillfully worked out, has distinct advantages alike for the news report and for the special article.

SUMMARY BEGINNINGS

(1)

(_Kansas City Star_)

A FRESH AIR PALACE READY

A palace of suns.h.i.+ne, a gla.s.s house of fresh air, will be the Christmas offering of Kansas City to the fight against tuberculosis, the "Great White Plague." Ten miles from the business district of the city, overlooking a horizon miles away over valley and hill, stands the finest tuberculosis hospital in the United States. The newly completed inst.i.tution, although not the largest hospital of the kind, is the best equipped and finest appointed. It is symbolic of suns.h.i.+ne and pure air, the cure for the disease.

(2)

(_New York World_)

STOPPING THE COST OF LIVING LEAKS

BY MARIE COOLIDGE RASK

After ten weeks' instruction in domestic economy at a New York high school, a girl of thirteen has been the means of reducing the expenditure in a family of seven to the extent of five dollars a week.

The girl is Anna Scheiring, American born, of Austrian ancestry, living with her parents and brothers and sisters in a five-room apartment at No. 769 East One Hundred and Fifty-eighth Street, where her father, Joseph Scheiring is superintendent of the building.

The same economic practices applied by little Anna Scheiring are at the present time being worked out in two thousand other New York homes whose daughters are pupils in the Was.h.i.+ngton Irving High School.

(3)

(_The Outlook_)

THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN MILK

BY CONSTANCE D. LEUPP

Two million quarts of milk are s.h.i.+pped into New York every day. One hundred thousand of those who drink it are babies. The milk comes from forty-four thousand dairy farms scattered through New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and even Ohio.

A large proportion of the two million quarts travels thirty-six hours before it lands on the front doorstep of the consumer. The situation in New York is duplicated in a less acute degree in every city in the United States.

NARRATIVE BEGINNINGS. To begin a special feature article in the narrative form is to give it a story-like character that at once arouses interest. It is impossible in many instances to know from the introduction whether what follows is to be a short story or a special article. An element of suspense may even be injected into the narrative introduction to stimulate the reader's curiosity, and descriptive touches may be added to heighten the vividness.

If the whole article is in narrative form, as is the case in a personal experience or confession story, the introduction is only the first part of a continuous story, and as such gives the necessary information about the person involved.

Narrative beginnings that consist of concrete examples and specific instances are popular for expository articles. Sometimes several instances are related in the introduction before the writer proceeds to generalize from them. The advantage of this inductive method of explanation grows out of the fact that, after a general idea has been ill.u.s.trated by an example or two, most persons can grasp it with much less effort and with much greater interest than when such exemplification follows the generalization.

Other narrative introductions consist of an anecdote, an incident, or an important event connected with the subject of the article.

Since conversation is an excellent means of enlivening a narrative, dialogue is often used in the introduction to special articles, whether for relating an incident, giving a specific instance, or beginning a personal experience story.

Narrative Beginnings

(1)

(_The Outlook_)

BOOKER T. WAs.h.i.+NGTON

BY EMMETT J. SCOTT AND LYMAN BEECHER STOWE

It came about that in the year 1880, in Macon County, Alabama, a certain ex-Confederate colonel conceived the idea that if he could secure the Negro vote he could beat his rival and win the seat he coveted in the State Legislature. Accordingly the colonel went to the leading Negro in the town of Tuskegee and asked him what he could do to secure the Negro vote, for Negroes then voted in Alabama without restriction. This man, Lewis Adams by name, himself an ex-slave, promptly replied that what his race most wanted was education, and what they most needed was industrial education, and that if he (the colonel) would agree to work for the pa.s.sage of a bill appropriating money for the maintenance of an industrial school for Negroes, he, Adams, would help to get for him the Negro vote and the election. This bargain between an ex-slaveholder and an ex-slave was made and faithfully observed on both sides, with the result that the following year the Legislature of Alabama appropriated $2,000 a year for the establishment of a normal and industrial school for Negroes in the town of Tuskegee. On the recommendation of General Armstrong, of Hampton Inst.i.tute, a young colored man, Booker T.

Was.h.i.+ngton, a recent graduate of and teacher at the Inst.i.tute, was called from there to take charge of this landless, buildingless, teacherless, and studentless inst.i.tution of learning.