yearbook writing: the chicken or the egg

Yearbook Writing:or the egg ?the chicken

Presented by Brian WilsonWaterford (MI) Kettering HS

[email protected] Twitter: @wilsob01

Sunday, November 17, 13

mailto:[email protected]




Why don’t students read your copy?

One of Fitzgerald’s more prestigious organizations is the student council. These meetings were directed by president Bob Boik. Unlike most organizations, the student council met twice a month during a school hour to discuss topics that concern the student body.


The council organized both the Homecoming and Snowcoming dances. They also organized the Red Cross Blood Drive which raised blood for those in need. They managed to raise over 70 pints last spring. The student council also donated five hundred dollars to the V.I.C.A. canned food drive. During the fall, they enjoyed a day of fun when the took a trip to Camp Tamerak. This adventure taught them to be leaders. This group worked hard to make this district a better place.


How ‘bout this one? If you wanted to see hard working girls

in major motion, then Track is where you should have been. Led by Captains Liz Powell and Shannon Manoulian, the team of 17 girls achieved many goals. They finished 4th overall in the league, which was an astonishing accomplishment for them as they went up against teams with as many as 30-40 girls.


How ‘bout this one (cont)? Our ladies fared very well at

Invitationals and the Regional Meet, winning many medals. High jumper Powell qualified for the states. Even the freshmen contributed wherever they could and achieved several personal bests. These girls can be proud of themselves and all their accomplish-ments. Bigger and better things are bond to come for this terrific team!


But they WILL read.


The 10-80-10

RuleSunday, November 17, 13

Appeal to EMOTION

Make them: • Laugh • Cry • Go “Awwwwwwwww” • Grossed out


Appeal to EMOTION

When you look at me, you probably don’t see me for what I am. You see just another face, but my life is much more. I’m a goal-setter, an achiever, an optimist, and one hell of a mother. Everyone expected me to become lazy, ignorant, stop learning and wallow into some book of statistics. If they still want to put me in a book, it will have to be called “Kiyuana Proves Them Wrong.”


Appeal to EMOTIONJake Porter is 17, but he can't read, can barely scrawl his first name and

often mixes up the letters at that. So how come we're all learning something from him?

In three years on the Northwest High football team, in McDermott, Ohio, Jake had never run with the ball. Or made a tackle.

He'd barely ever stepped on the field. That's about right for a kid with chromosomal fragile X syndrome, a disorder that is a common cause of mental retardation.

But every day after school Jake, who attends special-ed classes, races to Northwest team practices: football, basketball, track.

Never plays, but seldom misses one.That's why it seemed crazy when, with five seconds left in a recent game

that Northwest was losing 42-0, Jake trotted out to the huddle. The plan was for him to get the handoff and take a knee.

-Rick Reilly, “The Life of Reilly”


Details and Specifics 9:30 p.m. An oppressive, sticky heat. Fans

whirring helplessly in the background. It’s a deadline night. Junior Farah Kent, News Editor for the High

Tide, pulls her thick hair back into a messy bun and scoots the wheely chair closer to the pearly white Mac. Kent sighs in frustration as she struggles to fix the dimensions of photos from Club Sign Up Day, many of which are coming out too cloudy or pixilated. A community bottle of red fruit punch Powerade is being passed around in a desperate attempt to cool off the frantic staff members.


From the sidewalk, the tiny convenience store looks much as it has for decades. The display case is lined with tins of chewing tobacco and rolls of toilet paper. A handwritten sign advertises bottled water for 35 cents. Another warns that the proprietor doesn’t take debit or credit cards--cash only.

Details and Specifics


Connect to your reader

She sat in the cold, hard seat and tried to concentrate on the Calculus test in front of her, but it was difficult. She had to go to the bathroom really bad.


Trends in copy


Story Telling Devices

• Shorter bursts of copy• Quotes, quotes, quotes-10:1 rule• Extended captions• Information boxes:

– Q&A– He said/She said– Top 10 list

• Find the gravedigger.

(or Alternative Story Forms)


Shorter copy bursts


Story Telling Devices

• Shorter bursts of copy• Quotes, quotes, quotes-10:1 rule• Extended captions• Information boxes:

– Q&A– He said/She said– Top 10 list

• Find the gravedigger.

(or Alternative Story Forms)


Find the Gravedigger...Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was going to be working on Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the kitchen for breakfast. His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received the phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living. "Polly, could you please be here by eleven o'clock this morning?" Kawalchik asked. "I guess you know what it's for." Pollard did. He hung up the phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

-Jimmy Breslin, New York Herald Tribune,


http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jfk.htm






How to get better stories

• Observe and report• Hold Quote/Caption panel interviews• Share great writing• Brainstorm Building Tour• Throw profile darts



• Observe and report• Hold Quote/Caption panel interviews• Share great writing: 300 word stories• Brainstorm Building Tour• Throw profile darts


300-word storiesThe few drivers on this dark, lonely stretch of the Suncoast Parkway in Pasco County pull up to the toll booth, hand their dollars to Lloyd Blair and then speed away. None of them knows why the old man sits here, night after night, working the graveyard shift.

Well, here's why:


Because years ago, on a freezing winter night at a party in Queens, N.Y., he met a woman named Millie.

Because he fell in love with her brown hair and wide eyes and 100-watt smile.

Because they got married, moved to Staten Island, had a son and worked for decades in Manhattan; she as an accountant, he as a banker.

Because it had been their dream to retire to Florida, and so they saved all their lives to make it possible.

Because, just as they began to talk of leaving New York and heading south, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and they spent their time and money traveling to New Jersey, San Diego and Mexico in search of a cure.

Because, in the end, they came to Florida anyway.

Because they finally bought a house in Spring Hill, although she was too weak that day to get out of the car.

Because she died nine days later on Jan. 5, 2002, a day "the whole sky fell," he says.

Because, after she was gone, he found himself alone and $100,000 in debt.

300-word stories


And so he took a job collecting tolls. The drivers who pass by see a smiling 71-year-old man with blue eyes and a gray mustache who tells each of them, "Have a great night!"

They don't know the rest of Lloyd Blair's story, or that he keeps Millie's picture in his shirt pocket, just under his name tag, just over his heart.

-Brady Dennis, “After the Sky Fell”, Tampa Bay Tribune

[It’s 298 words. I counted. Consider an EXACT word count too.]

300-word stories



• Observe and report• Hold Quote/Caption panel interviews• Share great writing: 300 word stories• Practice writing concisely• Brainstorm Building Tour• Throw profile darts


Use Twitter to craft writing.

Practice writing concisely


6 word stories:

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.

Nobody knows this, but I’m famous.

Head: green smoothie. Gut: bacon cheeseburger.

So broke I can’t pay attention.

All those pages in the fire.

Caps and gowns. Ups and downs.

Practice writing concisely


Brainstorming processWKHS-TV Brainstorming Sheet

Fill in at least 16 for full credit

InterviewsInDepth look into something or someone

EdiorialsOpinion of something going on at the school or in the world

Man on the Street Hearing students’ opinions on a speci!c subject

TrendsAny speci!c trends you notice at WK?

In the Locker Room at WKInDepth look at sports

News in WKHSNews speci!cally related to WK

News in WaterfordNews related to Waterford, including other schools and businesses

News in the WorldNews related to other areas

Opening Ideaswhat would be a good opener for the show?


Yearbook Writing:or the egg

Presented by Brian WilsonWaterford (MI) Kettering HS

[email protected] Twitter: @wilsob01

?the chicken






yearbook writing: the chicken or the egg

Education

student council

northwest high football

northwest team practices

terrific team

school jake

student body

hard working girls

high jumper powell