{"id":6009,"date":"2016-08-24T07:24:39","date_gmt":"2016-08-24T11:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6009"},"modified":"2016-08-24T07:24:39","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T11:24:39","slug":"in-a-surprise-move-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6009","title":{"rendered":"“In a Surprise Move, God . . .”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Inverted

photo: Derek Key, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Is the inverted pyramid dead? That trusty journalistic technique that crams all the basic information about an event\u2014the who, what, when, where, why and how\u2014into the fewest possible words at the top of the story, then proceeds to fill in decreasingly important details?<\/p>\n

Award-winning hard-boiled crime novelist Bruce DeSilva thinks so, and said as much during a panel at the recent Deadly Ink conference in New Jersey. DeSilva was a prize-winning journalist before becoming a novelist seven years ago and worked on stories winning nearly every journalism prize, including the Pulitzer.<\/p>\n

DeSilva apparently was warming up for a turn on the Writer\u2019s Forensics Blog<\/a>, where he goes into the flaws in the pyramid in more detail, repeating this \u201cwhat the Bible would have been like if a journalist wrote it\u201d example:<\/p>\n

In a series of surprise moves intended to bring all of creation into existence out of what leading scientists call the \u2018singularity,\u2019 before energy, matter or even time existed, God yesterday said, \u2018Let there be light,\u2019 according to reliable sources close to the project.<\/p>\n

His point was that the transition from the artificiality of journalese to writing fiction is difficult. The two require a completely different voice. In fiction, the depiction of events is more realistic in that they generally unfold chronologically, with the wwwwwh answers coming near the very end, not in the first sentence or two.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, other former journalists on DeSilva\u2019s panel\u2014including author Dick Belsky<\/a>\u2014pushed back. Belsky thinks the techniques of journalism, such as digging in and getting the story and grabbing the reader\u2019s interest up front, do translate well. And, the profession provides a believable background for his character, investigative reporter Gil Malloy.<\/p>\n

Fellow panelist E.F. Watkins said the hardest thing about her transition from busy newsroom to chair in a quiet office, alone, was learning not \u201cto give things away too fast.\u201d But, she knows how to meet a deadline and how to get her facts right.<\/p>\n

According to DeSilva, the main lesson he learned from his journalistic career is that \u201cwriting is a job.\u201d\u00a0 A job you go to daily, in the mood or not, in the company of the muse or not. \u201cYou put your butt in your desk chair every day and write.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the inverted pyramid dead? That trusty journalistic technique that crams all the basic information about an event\u2014the who, what, when, where, why and how\u2014into the fewest possible words at the top of the story, then proceeds to fill in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\"In a Surprise Move, God . . .\" - the transition from journalist to novelist requires shedding old (bad?) habits","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,40,174,261],"tags":[587,588,589,590,586],"class_list":["post-6009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-journalism","tag-bruce-desilva","tag-deadly-ink","tag-dick-belsky","tag-ef-watkins","tag-journalist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1yV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6012,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6009\/revisions\/6012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}