The last guest speaker

Tags

baltimore, baltimoremagazine, featurestory, personalnarrative, Towson, towsonuniversity

Today, writer Ramsey Flynn came to class to talk about his personal narrative “You haven’t lived until you’ve died”.

He gave advice on how to make a personal narrative interesting to your audience. He says the best way to pull a person into your personal narrative story is to start with the conflict and build it right away.

Next, throughout the story keep adding more twists to the conflict and never let your readers expect the ending. But lastly, always satisfy the conflict in the end.

Flynn also gave us advice on how to transform your experiences into a story to tell your readers. For his story he went back to all his surgeons and other nurses/ doctors who may have been around his procedure or have done a similar operation on someone else.

Flynn also interviewed all his family members, especially his wife, to get important details that he may not have remembered. He said he probably did between 80-100 interviews to get his story 100% right.

This particular story took him years to put together and to make everything factual and perfect.

After Flynn’s visit I am uncertain about my personal narrative topic and am trying to find another story in my life that could be better told and more interesting to my audience.

This class has been very helpful in the way of meeting experienced journalists and getting to know more about writing that does not come from a textbook.

 

A trip to Mt. Vernon

Tags

baltimore, Brasil, Brazil, FrancisScottKey, historicalsociety, JohnHopkins, journalism, maryland, Mt.Vernon, PeabodyInstitue, snowday, St.PaulStreet, Teds, towsonuniversity, travel, TU, WaltersArtMuseum, WashingtonMonument

“I’ve lived here my whole life, I love this neighborhood,” Alvaro Roman, co-owner of Ted’s Musicians Shop, was sitting behind his desk with a black beanie and a heavy jacket. It was the coldest day in February and Mt. Vernon was covered in snow and ice.

Until recently, I had never been to Mt. Vernon. I have driven through the neighborhood but never stopped to eat or check out any shops or museums.

A visit from Andrea McDaniels

Tags

baltimore, baltimoresun, collateraldamage, DruidHill, featurewriting, Towson, towsonuniversity, violence

Andrea McDaniels from the Baltimore Sun came to speak to my feature writing class today.

She came to talk about her latest project Collateral Damage and some of her best writing tips.

Collateral Damage is a three-part series for the Baltimore Sun on violence in Upton/ Druid Hill and how it affects people.

The first part was about the young children who often suffer from PTSD, the second was on families struggling to help victims of the violence and the last part was about family members dealing with grief over a loss of a loved one to violence in the neighborhood.

The project came out of one article she was writing that she felt like had too much information and that the article “was everywhere”. Her media editor helped straighten the story but together, they also came up with a way to expand it.

She found most of her sources through the social workers in that neighborhood’s schools because Upton/ Druid Hill is not an area a reporter can really walk around all day and ask questions.

It took McDaniels a full year to report and write the three-part project.

Some of her best advice was to always make variation in sentence length and to put the most interesting idea last in a sentence or paragraph.

“Writing never gets easier,” McDaniels repeated throughout her visit. But she also said that writing is a craft and can always be improved. Editors and random writing tips will always help a journalist for every story.

It was nice to finally have a female reporter come to class to talk but every visitor has given great advice that I will take with me through my last year at Towson and on to my first job.

Wil S. Hylton

Tags

baltimore, baltimoremagazine, baltimoresun, campus, featurestories, journalism, maryland, newmexico, newyorkcity, theNewYorker, Towson, towsonuniversity, writing

On Wednesday, Wil S. Hylton came to my feature writing class to talk about writing profile stories and his journey and experiences as a journalist.

Wil has a very different clothing style and I later came to realize his style reflects his years in New Mexico and New York city. He did not remain stagnant in Baltimore.

He starts to talk about the program at his high school that basically got him a job at the Baltimore Sun, using his hands to express his thoughts, his legs stay crossed as he leans back comfortably at the table.

Hylton admits he “was just this kid who had a lucky break,” as he barely passes high school and doesn’t get into or go to any college but still manages to land jobs at papers such as the Baltimore Sun and magazines like Baltimore Magazine.

His philosphy of journalism is all about doing “whatever it takes to get a story.” He laughs as he says he would smoke a joint for an interview or drink a lot, just to make them more comfortable. And to “put your chips on the table next to theirs.”

He, like many others, believes that “journalists have a role to provide a perspective in the world.”

Some of Hylton’s advice was to do multiple interviews on one person in the story. Mainly the central or primary character. This way you can get the best detail out of a story. Also, the details in their stories that change mean that they haven’t thought about it much and now the details become vivid to them.

Hylton gave me a lot of good advice to think of as I start following around and interviewing my next profile story subject.