How long is too long?

They do that because they see young writers have monetary and critical success writing in precisely this manner.

 

However long it takes to get every kid on the roster's name in the paper. For the home team. The visitors (if out of area) might get their team mentioned if I'm feeling generous.

 

If you play if safe forever, you'll write 12 Inch prep gamers forever.

There is plenty of good advice on this thread, but the subtle digs at the earnest young writer who thinks he's Rick Reilly (or I guess in this era, Bill Simmons) and writes long because he -- or she -- thinks their writing and their observations are "soooooo amazing" always takes the pat-on-the-head, lessons-of-grizzled-veteran speech a bit too far for me.

If an editor says write 10 inches, do that. But there will also be times when you can ask for more space (not on deadline of course), push the standard convention, find your pitch and crush it.

 

My gamers are way too long right now. I need to work on tightening. I can definitely see that as a fault in my writing. We tend to not write folos at our paper, so I get trapped into thinking I need to get some folo-like details in the middle of a game story.

I had a feature that was supposed to run tomorrow that was bumped to Friday, so this thread gave me the impetus to go in and try to pare it down some. Definitely found some places to tighten, especially in the quotes.

 

Can you talk to my SE? He doesn't do it intentionally, but he has a bad habit of cutting stories where they fall. If that's on a paragraph leading into a quote, which makes for an awkward ending, so be it.
Drives me nuts every time he does it.
I work the desk often enough to understand and not get upset when something gets cut. I'm writing high school gamers, not the Declaration of Independence. But for God's sake, at least take a minute (especially when you're not right up against deadline) to make it make sense.

 

Plus, internship coordinators at publications are looking for talent, the ability to write, turn a phrase, etc. And college kids are turning in their best clips, not the nine-incher that slid in just above the textbook exchange ad.

 

I remember having to tell a young reporter not to feel obligated to use a quote from every person they talked to. If the person doesn't give you anything worthwhile, or if the next interviewee says the same thing more concisely, skip it.

 

What does that possibly have to do with how much I give them for a gamer?

I'm sorry, but I'm not turning out the paper that night to give them their best opportunity for a clip.

 

Honestly, I wonder if people who want to write really long, in-depth stuff would be better off at magazines than newspapers.

 

The thread evolved, shotty, from "How much space does a game deserve?" to "Young writers should stop trying to overwrite and think they deserve more space because they are special."

Where Alma and I are coming from is saying, yeah, that is true to an extent, but the writers who tend to get blown as young effing studs aren't the ones writing perfect safe 10-inch gamers for long periods of time. It's just a reality. Maybe unfair, but good writers master that length quickly and then need to stretch their legs. Good papers figure out ways to find opportunities let them take those risks. Not always, but sometimes. That's important to bring up, I think, when people talk on these threads in absolutes.

 

Well, you can say whatever you want to say, but the clips college kids show any prospective employer aren't 10-inch gamers. And if they were, the employer wouldn't hire them.

I'll grant you that it's flawed. But young writers who often get a job/internship got it because of their profile/feature/column clips. Not because they could file tight on deadline. Some of them can and some of them can't.

 

I know I can say whatever I want to say, Alma. :

And what I want to say is that it's a rare newspaper that hands a writer, even a young one, a steady diet of 10-inch gamers without that writer getting an opportunity to spread his wings a little bit. I don't see where the argument is over the gamer.

If it makes it easier to wrap one's head around it, consider the gamer the grunt work. Although I think the gamer can be just as much an art form as anything else. Even the 10-inch gamer.