It is entirely possible that you will stop reading this copy before you reach the end of the paragraph. One long-running study can shed light on why: in 2004, participants were able to focus on one on-screen task for an average of two and a half minutes. By 2016 that time had diminished to 47 seconds. Couple that with a world hammered by burning issues, from multiple wars to economic uncertainty and a spiraling climate crisis, and you begin to see the problem. The stories delivered by journalists are critical and complex, yet may be ignored by even the most interested audiences if not deemed intriguing enough “content.”
What’s the solution? Tell better stories. Ones so gripping you don’t want to swipe them away.
And how do you craft a magnetic story? Given the high stakes outlined above, it may be counterintuitive to say “by thinking like a child,” but it’s true. Looking back over a career that includes writing hundreds of long-form narratives, I know that the worst pieces I wrote were ones where I furrowed my brow, chewed on my pen and tried to tackle the topic like a gray-bearded intellectual. Right from the brainstorming phase I censored any idea that seemed frivolous or unusual.
The strongest pieces, meanwhile, embraced strangeness. My first-ever long-form science feature for Discovery Channel Magazine was a doozy for someone who never got to grips with the hard sciences. “Can you write about the new Hadron Collider at CERN?” my editor asked. “I’d like to do a story about quantum physics.”
Nodding confidently and sweating profusely, I proceeded to Google Hadron + CERN + quantum. Baffled but undeterred, I managed to snag an interview with a professor of particle physics at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). My challenge was to kick off the interview in a way that would instantly set the stakes, communicating to the professor the accessible tone in which the Discovery Channel brand told a story — with wide-eyed, geeky enthusiasm. “So, professor,” I began. “Do you think you could beat Einstein in an arm wrestling match?” There was a long pause down the phone-line before the academic started chuckling. The ice was broken, and he shared fantastic answers about a complex, era-defining experiment in a way that a schoolboy and his grandmother alike could enjoy.
The lesson to me was manifold: That academics, even those who wear pocket protectors, are people too, and enjoy a Q&A that doesn’t feel like a re-run of every press interview they’ve ever given. That a safe, dry question will lead to an equally dry answer. And most importantly, the more you enjoy your background research, the more this will shine through for the reader.
So how else can you turn back the clock, and think like a child as you prep for a story?
Don’t be afraid to look stupid.
After all, kids aren’t. They revel in their curiosity and are unashamed of what they don’t know. If you're approaching a topic you’re not familiar with, open the interview by letting the expert know, so they can chat to you minus the jargon — which is exactly what readers will expect of the final product. “Explain it to me like I’m five” is an excellent shortcut to clarity (and a highly useful forum on Reddit).
Don’t set boundaries.
Looking to build your career? It helps to fantasize like a toddler, particularly if you’re a freelancer. It is all too easy to slide into pessimism and call it “being realistic” by not sending pitches to your dream publication. But the clichés are true: you don’t know what’s possible if you don’t try and, more importantly, keep doggedly trying, failure after failure.
I had to pitch outlets like the BBC and National Geographic half a dozen times each before landing a commission. What helped keep me going were two things: first, I learned to enjoy the pitching process by thinking of it as a long-running game. Second, I changed my mindset. Every rejection in my inbox I took not as a dead end but a step forward; a chance to pitch the declined story somewhere else, while coming up with a better idea to send to the first editor. As Mark Twain wrote: “All you need in this life is ignorance and self-confidence; then success is sure.”
Ask weird questions.
Not just of interviewees, but of yourself. There’s a certain stage of toddler-hood when children ask questions that flummox even the most well-read grown-up. Questions like “Where does wind come from?” and “Do dogs get lonely?” Don’t dismiss these queries as mere inanity. At a time when extreme wildfires are made infinitely worse by persistent wind, we should be wondering how a breeze is born. A good question also gets to the heart of a story that can unlock a much larger issue. Remember when I said I sent multiple pitches to the editor of National Geographic? The pitch that got commissioned focused on a key question: “as climate change chaos gets more extreme and death tolls rise, will more people start believing in ghosts?” Purists may feel that questions like these seem like no more than flashy clickbait, but they hook a reader in who might otherwise have scrolled past, and allow them to learn about critical issues in ways they will remember.
Near the end of his career, Picasso noted ruefully that “Once I drew like [Renaissance painter] Raphael, but it has taken me a whole lifetime to draw like a child.” Creativity, then, is as much about unlearning as it is about learning. Whether you’re looking to break into journalism, or tackle the industry’s high burnout rate by reviving your creative spark, it may be worth asking not just “what can I unlearn in terms of my process and fixed habits?”, but “how would 10-year-old me write this feature?” The answer might just make for a better story.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash.
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