Writers' Workshop (2008 and Beyond, now with Updated Updates)

Re: Writers' Workshop

I got to the "here to remove the stick" part on the first page. It's long, and I'll get back to it, but I like it so far.

One technical thing that I really like, love, and something I do when writing, because of personal preference, is spelling out a state i.e. Tampa, Florida. I do that in my stories. It's such a small thing in the grand scheme of writing, but I want to be able to read the entire state's name and not a stupid abbreviation. To me, it adds so much.

But anyway, I'm sure I'll enjoy the final 5 pages.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop

Much more interesting, and more pertinent story in that same New York Metro:

http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/16529/index.html

Interesting lead. It gets your attention because you never see such a thing. It's long but the letters break it up, makes you want to read.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop

Here it is folks. Try and go easy on me, but I must admit, I can't wait to hear any feedback. As a side note, I yanked this out of our system's archives which doesn't retain punctuation and apostrophes and stuff. I tried to fill them all in, but I may have missed some.


BLOOMSBURG — Justin Thomas looks far too young to be 25. His baby-faced looks hint at 18. Add his small stature, maybe even 16.

But talk to Justin Thomas, even for just 10 minutes, and he'll blow your mind.

Blind yourself to his exterior presence and, minus the weathered, raspy voice of a man in his 60s, you’d swear Thomas has the life experiences of a man who’s long been retired.

But these aren’t your walked-to-school-five-miles-uphill-both-ways stories. These are the stories of a self-proclaimed ignorant boy, turning into a man. Transformed by life’s teachers and war. And Thomas is more than happy to share his experiences.

Heck, the Bloomsburg University 125-pound wrestler spent his 11 1/2 months in the middle of Baghdad looking for stories to tell. He knew there was a possibility he might not make it back home.

But what if he did? What if he could survive the car bombs, the roadside explosions and the firefights?

"It's all just one crazy story," Thomas says now, 10 months removed from his active duty in the Middle East.

Thomas' stories revolve around reaching for a dream. A dream that keeps him from quitting no matter how many stories block his path. The road to his dream has been tough. Sidestreets have beckoned him for attention. But he’s focused. He’s focused because that dream is happiness.
All I want is pretty much what every guy wants, Thomas said. A beautiful wife, a beautiful home, cute kids running around and to be able to provide for them.

It's a simple dream. But more importantly, its an attainable dream. Its a dream Thomas knows if he works toward, can be his.

And although Thomas knew he would have to work for his dream. He never expected the last six years of his life to test him the way it has.

But boy, what a story it makes.

Following the three Ds
Justin Thomas never really considered college after graduating from Northwest High School. The money wasn’t there to pay for it; he never even took his SATs. Despite being a PIAA Class AA state-qualifier wrestler for coach Scott Hughes at Benton, he wasn’t sure college was for him.
Hughes always told his wrestlers the sport they love so much is one of the best ways to get an education. That education can lead to a good job and success, as long as you follow his three Ds: desire, dedication and determination. Hughes often asked Thomas why he didn’t go to college following graduation.

But Thomas wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. The only things he was sure of were his dream and that selling women’s shoes probably wasn’t going to get him there.

He always said, It’ll be a waste of talent if you don’t go, Thomas said. You’re not going to make it big in life if you don’t start taking care of yourself and doing the right thing.

While he continued to figure out what he wanted to do, most of his friends, including his identical twin brother Billy, had joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. Mainly because it would pay for their college tuition. And pre-Sept. 11, what harm could come out of participating in his mandatory one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer?

Besides, it had almost been a family tradition to serve in the military. His father served in the Vietnam War and his grandfather served in World War II. Thomas felt it was only right to do his part. Like almost every other American, he never expected to see terrorists crash planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He just knew he wanted to put his life on the right track and continue to work toward his dream.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop

(continued)

Be our waterboy
Thomas finally started college, enrolling at Luzerne County Community College, and he eventually transferred to Bloomsburg University. That’s where he decided to get back into wrestling.
The Huskies had been struggling. They were in the process of acclimating to new coaches Dan Wirnsberger and John Stutzman.

The coaches saw the frame of a guy who wrestled as a 103-pounder in high school and weren’t sure what they had.

"When Coach Wirnsberger first saw me, before we even started with anything, he was joking around and looked at me and said, If this doesn’t work out for you, you can always be our waterboy," Thomas said.

And it almost did work out for Thomas. He was going to have a chance to compete for the Huskies at 125 pounds until the NCAA ruled him ineligible.

Because he never took his SATs, Thomas had to apply to the NCAA Clearing House, an organization that deals with initial eligibility for prospective student-athletes. The Clearing House ruled Thomas ineligible for the 2002-03 season.

But Thomas continued to work out for wrestling and fulfill his National Guard obligations. He was ready to compete in the summer freestyle season when he suffered yet another setback.

Thomas and a group of his friends got in an argument one night with another group of men. The group followed Thomas and his friends, and a fight broke out. Thomas ended up being stabbed in the back with a four or five-inch blade. The blade pierced and collapsed one of his lungs, but he did not realize he was stabbed until his back, pants and even his socks had become soaked in blood.

Thomas lay in a hospital for a week recovering. It could have been the last straw for his wrestling career, but he refused to quit. He looked at the situation as just another story to tell.

"They’re all setbacks," Thomas said. "Anything that keeps you from moving forward toward your goal is a setback. But I just didn’t want to quit."

He continued to work during the summer and rejoined the Huskies in the fall of 2003. He was scheduled to be a key contributor for Bloomsburg once again at 125.

Stutzman took him to the Oklahoma Gold Classic in Brockport, N.Y. He pushed Thomas because he saw potential.

"He kept saying to me all the time the same things that Coach Hughes would say," Thomas said. "If you keep pushing yourself, you’re going to get there."

Thomas was prepared for the season.

What he wasn’t prepared for was a phone call telling him he had to go to war. He especially wasn’t prepared for that call the day after his birthday.

But Thomas likes to joke when things get serious. Its his way of coping with the situation and lightening the mood. Sure, it was another setback from the pursuit of his dream, but he wasn’t going to let it get him down. Instead, he completed his fall 2003 semester at BU before shipping out to Fort Dix in New Jersey for his final training, before heading to Iraq with the 109th Field Artillery unit of Nanticoke.

"I started making jokes about it," Thomas said of his deployment. "People are like 'Can't you be serious?' But what’s the point of being all sad about this? You can either be optimistic about it or pessimistic and I didn’t want to sit here and cry about it."

A wild ride
The plane carrying Thomas and other troops was alive. Soldiers joked on their trip into Baghdad, where Thomas would be stationed.

But slowly, it became more and more quiet. Uncertainty of what awaited them was the driving force behind the silence.

It's dark outside. It has to be. It makes it more difficult for insurgents to shoot at what they can't see. In a total blackout setting, where all lights are out, pilots use night vision to land the plane.

The transportation flight has a roller coaster finish. Pilots land the plane as fast as possible, descending in a spiraling, curly fry-shaped maneuver.

"I’m thinking, This is going to be pretty cool," Thomas said. "It can't be that dangerous because I’m sure these guys have done this a bunch of times. But it was definitely a wild ride."

Almost immediately, troops were instructed to lock and load their weapons for the trip to their Forward Operating Base (FOB). They rode in trucks, looking like opened back ends of dump trucks or garbage trucks. The only protection between themselves and a roadside bomb is the body armor they’re wearing.

"Had we known the things then that we know now, a lot of the guys are saying There’s no way I’m getting on that truck," Thomas said.

Thomas' introduction to the life of war was abrupt. In his second month, as soldiers prepared to leave when their tour of duty was up and new soldiers prepared to take over, all hell broke loose in Baghdad.

April 2004 was the second deadliest month for coalition soldiers during the Iraq War. Thomas was right in the middle of it.

"Everything went from fine one day to totally crazy," he said.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop

(continued once more)

You have to do it
Even as a guy who doesn’t get scared easily, Thomas began to worry. How long could he make it in this atmosphere? It seemingly was only a matter of time until something bad happened to him. So he prepared as best he could, even writing a death letter for his family should he not make it.

Baghdad nights were a light show. Tracer rounds (military ammunition leaves a visible trail as it flies) flew through the sky. Gunshots and explosions were always within earshot.

Thomas dreaded seeing any kind of action. Then, he thought, a little action might not be bad as long as no one gets hurt. Why not, it’ll be a great story when he gets home.

Then he began to think clearly. No action is the best action.

"It's not cool to kill anybody," he said. "But sometimes you have to do it. If someone is trying to take your life, you have no choice but to return fire."

Thomas worked on city patrols and rode with convoys. Often he looked for roadside bombs, but it was generally inevitable one would go off.

Trained as a field artilleryman in his unit, Thomas was used to dealing with the 95-pound balls filled with TNT which U.S. forces would fire at insurgents. It was those same type of bombs insurgents used in roadside attacks, using a detonating device to create havoc instead of launching it at coalition forces.

The roadside bombs made the earth jump, causing a rain of dirt and rocks. The blasts are concussive. In one case, it knocked out one of the gunners on the vehicle Thomas was riding in for a few seconds.

Even worse than the roadside bombs were the car bombs.

"They’re just huge. If one went off at the Bloomsburg Fairgrounds, its probably going to blow windows out at Nelson Field House," Thomas said.
"I'll never forget the first time it happened. Everyone around us had hearing loss for a few days and some had permanent hearing damage. We were cruising along and I’m looking out the window, and all I see is a flash. And it seemed like everything stopped for a split second. I just did this (ducking, covering his head and ears with his hands). It seemed like everything just rumbled. The problem really is that loud noises scare the (crap) out of me. The driver, just because of a natural reaction, sees the explosion and hits the brakes. I’m like, You keep going! We don’t stop!
The blast could have been from 10 to 20 yards away, but I honestly can't say how far for sure. But if it was any closer, it probably would have killed us."

Mind on the mat
Thomas never forgot his wrestling background while in Iraq. He was even paired on one mission with a soldier who was a four-time state runner-up in Ohio.

Thomas used any free time he had to try and get away from what surrounded him. The endless gunshots and explosions often took their toll, and the only way he could find refuge was to check up on collegiate wrestling back in the states on the Internet.

He often e-mailed Stutzman to get an idea of who were the Huskies top wrestlers. He kept up on the success of fellow 125-pounder Mike Sees as he worked toward an EWL title.

"The whole time I’m thinking (Sees) is getting the mat time," Thomas said. "He’s going to be so far ahead of me."
But Thomas was sure he could make a comeback when he returned to the U.S. earlier this year. He re-enrolled at BU and for the first time since his senior year with Benton, he was back on a wrestling team, not to mention on the Dean's List with a 3.58 GPA.

Thomas has been instrumental in allowing Sees to rest a hurting back this year. He’s given him a chance to heal, and the Huskies have not skipped a beat with him in the lineup. But his most important role on the team is being a highly competitive workout partner for both Sees and true freshman Ricky Donald.

"The odds were totally against me if I came back," Thomas said. "But I feel there’s a lot of things I can help those two do. Coach Hughes used to always say Champions come in pairs, and Coach Stutzman agrees 100 percent."

 

Re: Writers' Workshop

(And one final time)


Its all right there
Justin Thomas is close.

He is a year and a half away from graduating with a bachelors degree in secondary education. He can see his dream on the horizon and for once, it seems very real.

His girlfriend Gina Marino is expecting their first child, a son, within the next month. Thomas is more excited than ever. He carries his cell phone with him everywhere, including the wrestling room, just in case he should get the phone call that the baby is coming. He’s skipping the Huskies trip to Nebraska next week just to make sure he doesn’t miss the birth of his son.

"It's all right there," said Thomas, who has a down payment ready for a house. "I’m a year and a half away from it. It's all right there, and I never thought it would come as fast as it did."

Justin Thomas looks like a boy of 18. His presence suggests a man much older.
He’s been without direction in his life, stabbed, shot at, blown up, even had part of his trigger finger ripped off in a freak accident.

He’s a veteran of war and of life and a wise man, all at 25.

Just sit and listen to his stories for a while. Look into his eyes and understand his feelings surrounding every word.

He could have quit when the roof came crashing in on his life, not once, not twice, but many times. But that’s not in his nature.

Why stop now when it’ll just make a great story later?


Thanks in advance folks. Great thread by the way.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop

* The story becomes much more powerful if it opens with the wrestler on the streets of Baghdad.
* You seem to be inserting commercials in the middle of the prose which weaken the whole thing. You shouldn't need phrases like "But boy, what a story it makes." to sell the reader. Let the story do that for you.
* If you learn the secret to doing the above consistently, clue me in.

(This is all from the first post. Haven't read the rest yet.)

 

Re: Writers' Workshop


RedHot,

You story is good, but I have some suggestions:

* Write tigher. Your lede, for example. He is 25 but looks 18, maybe 16. Instead of going that way, look for a specific example that would let people visualize it. Maybe he is regularly carded or mistaken for a high school student or whatever. Instead of saying what he looks like -- show what he looks like. Saying someone looks young means little, but saying they are mistaken for a high school intern at work is telling.

* You need more specifics in general. For example, the incident where he was stabbed. Did you get the police report on that? I bet it could provide a lot of details that would make describing that incident more immediate and real. The Iraq section seems like blur. Was he hurt? Any buddies hurt? What does he think of us being there?

* Is this a one source story? Is anyone quote other than the wrestler? You really needed to talk to coaches and perhaps Army buddies in here.

* Finally, this is in chronological order. That's generally not the best way to tell a story. Maybe you could have led with him on the frightening night getting off the plane in Iraq then worked back to how he got there and how everything worked out. That is what the narrative form writing coaches would tell you. But to pull off a story like that you need a lot more reporting and a lot of detail. You want people to feel like they are there rather than hear what a guy who has been there has to say about it.

Good effort. Good luck.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop

The parts are good here, RHCP, but the story screams to be tightened in a lot of places. It seems like you can take 10 inches out of it just by tightening phrases.

Like this one: It's a simple dream. But more importantly, its an attainable dream. Its a dream Thomas knows if he works toward, can be his.

Turn that to: It's a simple yet attainable dream, one Thomas knows can be his if he works toward it.

I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to write for impact. The problem with that is you have several sentence fragments in there that aren't really sentences, so it tends to read a bit jumbled.

Also, do enough reporting to turn the lede into a true scene setter. Like Ace said, this story is screaming for a picture of this guy in Iraq up high. Whether that comes from him, or a buddy or his commanding general, that would lend the story itself so much impact and suck the reader in. Remember, you're trying to sell your story to the reader, and you generally have a few grafs up high to do it. Make them count.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop


Oh, also, the dream thing didn't work so much for me because that is pretty much what everyone wants.

 

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Wrtiers should take note of the Heinz story for some other good examples, too:

* How did the jockey -- Dave Gorman -- feel about the horse being injured? Heinz doesn't say he was sad or distraught or angry. Instead he quotes an anonymous infield man:

"Gorman was crying like a baby," one of them, coming out of the jockey room, said. "He said he must have stepped in a hole, but you should have seen him crying."

That's powerful. Not only do you get the reaction of the jockey, you get the reason the accident probably happend and a sense of the urgency of the situation. All in two sentences.

* Ostensibly, Heinz was there to cover the race. Who won? He never says. Think saying that Butterface won in 1:04 is gonna add anything to the story? Heinz remained focused. You have to be willing to leave things out of your story if you are going to be a writer.

* Description is imporant, but you have to know how to use it. Saying that Angelina Jolie spread orange marmalade on her wheat toast while sitting in a coffee shop talking to a reporter doesn't add much. Maybe if she slathered it in butter it would tell you something.

But Heinz here describes the scene in the barn.

"He walked across the road and around another barn to where they had the horse. The horse was still in the van, about twenty stable hands in dungarees and sweat-stained shirts, bare-headed or wearing old caps, standing around quietly and watching with Mr. M.A. Gilman, the assistant veterinarian."

By describing the appearance, demeanor and number of the stable hands in the barn, you are right there. You always want the reader to be able to picture the story in their mind and I dare you to read this story again and not be able to visualize it start to finish.

 

Re: Writers' Workshop



Some random thoughts this afternoon, in no particular order, while I shirk some book research and wait for my lunch to thaw:

- A_F's post from New York is, as promised, a pretty solid profile - lively and smart, well-observed and generally vivid in the telling. And I have to agree with him that it lands with a whimper rather than a bang. The piece didn't really have an ending - it just stopped. I guess the question is why. Couple of things, I think. 1) It's always tough to land a profile with a satisfying chill to the reader, since there's rarely a narrative arc to pay off. In fact the profile form resists great endings. 2) That said, the challenge to the writer is to make one. 3) One of the ways to do so (and the one chosen by the writer of this piece) is to pose a question at the top of the piece and then allow the profile to answer it. In this case, the question (implied, but not asked outright) is, "Can Damon Save the Yankees?" I think the failure (if it can be called that - it's a fine piece) in the last graf occurs because the writer answers a different question, i.e. "What will happen to Damon if he fails to save the Yankees?" The dissonance between the one and the other may be just enough to disappoint the reader.
The lesson being, perhaps, that to maximize the resonance at the end of a piece, we have to honor, if not precisely return to, the original premise whence we began.

Beginnings and endings, and their impact on one another - especially in the writing of features - are going to be huge on this thread.

- Alma's link to another New York feature makes that very point. The lede is a real daredevil turn - an alphabetized list of the characteristics of a new subspecies of sub/urban adults. And while any list is usually a device or rhetorical strategy best reserved for humor - or a ham-handed shortcut for the feeble-minded - in this case it really works. It draws the reader along at an amazing clip, all the while building evidence and making its argument that this new species of bobo actually exists. So just read the first page if you're pressed for time. It's a good lesson in narrative architecture.

- To RHCP, a couple of thoughts on the feature you so kindly posted, and I'll keep them brief.

1) It's a solid story as it stands, but echoing some previous posts I'd say this: If I were your editor, I'd want twice as much detail in half the space. In fact, as an exercise, I'd suggest trying to cut the piece exactly in half. Pretend your boss just came to you and said, "sorry, we just lost a page, I need that profile trimmed." Now what? What stays? What goes? What's really important to the telling of this story?

2) As I said above, profiles are really tough, because there's usually very little rising action. A couple of things you can do to mitigate that: Think very, very hard about why you're telling this guy's story. What is the occasion for the telling of the story; meaning why now versus six months ago or six months from now?

3) As was said a couple of posts ago, this is a tough story to write chronologically. It's a story that really wants to begin in the middle, as his plane descends into Baghdad. To ease timeline problems in a story like this, where you're forced to move forward and back in time, try writing each story element as a separate "module" of text. Write the story of his time before Iraq as one module. In Iraq, another. Back from Iraq, yet another. It's an interesting way to break time down into more manageable pieces. You can shuffle them around more conveniently, too, as you edit yourself. It's much easier to fiddle with a story built in discrete pieces than it is to manhandle the thing as one big block of text from beginning to end.

4) And pursuant to that plane flying into Iraq, and your description of it, I found this at the New York Review of Books:

"Ladies and Gents," the South African pilot matter-of-factly announces over the intercom, "we'll be starting our spiral descent into Baghdad, where the temperature is 19 degrees Celsius." The vast and mesmerizing expanse of sandpapery desert that has been stretching out beneath the plane has ended at the Tigris River. To avoid a dangerous glide path over hostile territory and missiles and automatic weapons fire, the plane banks steeply and then, as if caught in a powerful whirlpool, it plunges, circling downward in a corkscrew pattern.

Upon arriving in Amman, the main civilian gateway to Baghdad, one already has had the feeling of drawing ever nearer to an atomic reactor in meltdown. Even in Jordan, there is a palpable sense of being in the last concentric circle away from a radioactive ground zero emitting uncontrollable waves of contamination. - from the lede of a piece by Orville Schelll detailing the life of the press in Baghdad.

I thought you'd enjoy knowing that your rendering of the descent into Baghdad was so accurate. Thanks again for sharing your work with us.

More later, including the secrets of WC Heinz revealed.