How do you approach game coverage?

Isn't every game a tale of two teams?

 

That's why it's gold every time.

Keep up.

 

I'm still working on your well-written/well-designed idea from that other thread.

 

Yeah, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes.

 

Thank you.

 

Let's not oversimplify this thing. If you're writing a 100-200 word gamer on deadline, then yes, clear and concise is the way to go. Avoid confusing or misleading words and please leave your goddamn thesaurus alone.

But not everyone is doing that for a living. Some of us work at weekly or bi-weekly rags, and we may be condensing two or three of Podunk High's games into one 800-1,000 word article. If that's the case, sooner or later you're going to start running over the same words too many times and readers find that boring. A little creativity never killed anyone. I'm not saying you should use a different synonym for "scored" or "grabbed" each time, but mixing in something different could give an ordinary article a little more character.

That said, I would still never use the word "corralled" to describe rebounding. Christ, that's horrible.

 

Still haven't seen what's wrong with grabbed. Sometimes synonyms work and sometimes they don't ... I don't believe there's a hard and fast rule whether or not to ever use them. Sometimes it's necessary to break something up. You don't want to write player X scored xx points, player Y scored xx points and player Z scored xx points. I think you need to break that up a little, player Z added xx points or chipped in with xx points. Same thing with 3-pointers. I'm not saying you should say dropped some bombs from downtown, but saying he was 3-4 from beyond the arc or whatever is better than just saying 3-pointer over and over if it's in the story a lot.

 

The refs cornholed Central High last night. [/boots]

 

Sigh ...

 

What's best are obscure references that confuse. Example:

Like the mythical hydra, Northburg's basketball team just kept coming. Whenever Westville East would cut off one of the heads, two more would appear.

Then Elmer Cummings became the Iolaus to Llove Torres' Hercules. Cummings held the torch as Torres lopped off the heads. Soon Northburg's Southerners were the equivalent of a flailing, headless body.


Coaches like those analogies, too, especially the ones that refer to jail, prison, crime or theft.

 

more with the hookers in the barn, eh dye?

 

Nicely put, though I disagree that different synonyms add "character" to a story. They do little, good or bad. And they're certainly not the journalistic abomination some posters have implied.

Well, until your slip "caroms" into a prep roundup.