Читать книгу Feature Writing and Reporting - Jennifer Brannock Cox - Страница 52

Human interest stories attempt to relate life experiences to readers. Stories like these can focus on ordinary people doing extraordinary things, often involving elements of tragedy and/or inspiration. They may also examine the personal lives of well-known people, such as celebrities, politicians, athletes and prominent business leaders. These stories are often written as profiles—articles focused on a particular person and some aspect of their life that is unique. Profiles resonate with readers because they explore human experiences that are often relatable to the audience.

Human interest features tell someone else’s story and require a lot of time and attention. At magazines, reporters may spend weeks following sources, getting to know their routines and personality. Writing a human interest feature often pushes reporters to immerse themselves in the story and truly observe subjects in their everyday setting. Because the reporter is along for the ride, many profiles begin with an anecdote to help set the scene for readers. This opening anecdote from Charlotte Observer reporter Théoden Janes illustrates the primary source’s emotions and thought processes, giving the reader insight into the source’s mindset:

Carolyn Hart was a little hesitant to tell her father that she was planning to jump out of a perfectly good airplane 10,000 feet above western North Carolina.

So she waited until the night before to call him, then held her breath.

He reacted, of course, exactly the way she’d feared:

“Ohhhhhh, do you think it’s too late for me to get to be able to join you?” Jack Hart asked.

Carolyn had rehearsed her response: “Yeah, sorry, Dad—they’re booked up. I don’t think they would let you jump anyway.”

But the next morning, when the folks at Skydive Central North Carolina called to say the weather in Maiden looked a bit too cloudy for a good jump and apologized and asked to schedule a makeup date, Carolyn Hart knew. She wasn’t going to be able to wiggle her way out of this one. And he wasn’t going to drop it.

She knew her father—who turns 100 years old on Aug. 13—was going to do everything he could to make sure that when Carolyn finally did go up in that little prop plane, he’d be sardined into the seat next to her, ready to go skydiving for the first time in his life.

—THÉODEN JANES, Charlotte Observer⁶

When writing human interest stories, conducting good interviews is crucial. We will explore tactics for conducting in-depth feature interviews in Chapter 4.