Comments on: Think outside the pyramid for writing structure

By: Read all about it - Wylie Communications, Inc.

Read all about it - Wylie Communications, Inc. — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 04:04:18 +0000

[…] according to “Ways With Words,” a 1993 project of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Poynter Institute, the St. […]

By: annwylie

annwylie — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 14:06:04 +0000

Hi Ed. Good to hear from you here.

Agreed: In fact, it wouldn’t be a feature story structure without a nut graph. And the solution to laborious leads is simple: Don’t write them.

But the research from two significant studies is in, and the pyramid lost. Yet, we remain married to a structure that’s been proven in the lab “not to work with readers.” It’s time we mastered the feature-style story structure (complete with nut graph!) and started writing stories that people want to read instead of just the stories that we’re used to writing.

By: Chris Biddle

Chris Biddle — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 16:39:10 +0000

Ann Wylie, I am an avid reader of your blogs and find them to be, for the most part, right on. I agree with this blog’s assessment of the pyramid style of writing with one caveat: Feature leads can be laboriously long before “getting to the point,” i.e. answering the reader’s question: Why should I read this? I favor feature leads as long as the point of the story is encapsulated high up in a “nut graph,” as we call it in the newspaper business, which gives the story a sharp context around which the feature lead is fashioned. That’s my humble ten cents on the topic from 15 years in the news reporting business and 23 years in business communications.