How to Determine what (and Who) You Need to Know to Tell a Newsletter Story About Any Subject

You've just been asked to write a story for your neighborhood newsletter, but you don't know where to begin. You've heard something about the principles of: who, what, when, where and why? For a start, that sounds like a good list. Read on for other things to consider in conceptualizing the story.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A story idea
• A notepad
• A pen/pencil

How to determine what (and who) you need to know to tell a newsletter story about any subject

1. The first element to understand about any story is who is involved? People are part of everything. So who are these main characters going to be? Also identify secondary characters and those that just might provide some insight on the situation, even though they aren’t directly involved. There always will be a protagonist (or two), and if you don’t have a antagonist, you don’t have conflict, and you probably don’t have much of a story. So identify the players, and their motives, and you’ll have a pretty good grasp of what needs to be said and who needs to be saying it.

2. Now decide what the situation is. The process? The potential ramifications? What exactly is happening at this time?

3. Is your story timely? You need to know when exactly is this thing you’re writing about going to happen (or when did it happen)? And when is something else about this going to happen in the future? That will help with planning and scheduling of your story as well as doing the necessary research.

4. Imagine your scenes. Where is this all taking place? Put your reader in a place, and make those descriptions vivid.

5. Determine the motives. Why is this happening now? What caused it to happen? Why would your readers care about it? What behind-the-scenes machinations are contributing?

6. Look for the process behind the situation. If you’re telling your reader about something foreign to most or something complicated, tell them exactly how it works in simple steps. If it’s pretty well understood how something happens, then how did it happen this time? Any special circumstances?

7. Figure out what the costs are. Virtually everything has a cost, and your readers want to know what that is--always. Budgets, donors, allocations, etc. Also, if just using resources already available, then what are those, and how does that affect other projects?

Tips & Warnings

• Don't forget to mobilize your readers. They might want to do something about this story you are telling them. So let them know how to do something.
• Don’t forget to plan the illustration of the story and prepare its complementary components, including sidebars and schedules. Those tasks can sneak up on you.