The Middle Part Nobody Plans

You've got a lede. Congratulations. You are now standing at the top of a large empty field with a pile of notes, and the field is called "the rest of the article," and you have no idea which direction to walk.

This is where most beginners panic and start writing in the order things happened. "The meeting started at 7. First they said the pledge. Then Gary talked about culverts." Two hundred words later, the vote still hasn't happened, and the reader has left the building. Marge has a red stamp for this. It says "CHRONOLOGY IS NOT A STRUCTURE." The stamp is very worn.

Here's how to plan the middle in about ten minutes.

The nut graf: the "so what" paragraph

Right after your lede, usually in the second or third paragraph, comes the nut graf. ("Graf" is newsroom for paragraph. Newsrooms abbreviate everything. They'd abbreviate "abbreviate" if they could agree on how.)

The nut graf tells the reader why this story matters. It zooms out one step from the lede. The lede says what happened; the nut graf says why it's a big deal, or what bigger thing it's part of.

Now the reader knows what happened, why it's happening and that it's bigger than one vote. If they stop here, they're informed. If they keep going, it's because you gave them a reason.

For an opinion piece, the nut graf is where you state your argument plainly, if the lede only teased it, and give the main reason in a sentence.

The inverted pyramid

News writers have used this shape for well over a century, and it still works because readers still quit early. Picture a triangle standing on its point. The wide top is the most important information. It narrows as you go down to the least important stuff at the bottom.

Why this shape? Because readers quit. Constantly. Some read the headline and lede only. Some read half. A few read everything, bless them. The inverted pyramid means everyone gets the most important facts, no matter where they stop.

It also helps on screens. Nielsen Norman Group's eye-tracking research found that people often scan web pages in an F-shaped pattern: a couple of sweeps across the top, then down the left edge, picking up the first words of paragraphs. So the top of your article and the first words of each paragraph carry most of the load. Put the good stuff there.

A ten-line outline

Before you write the middle, list your paragraphs in order. One line each. That's the whole outline. Here's a template for a 600 to 900 word news story:

1. Lede: what happened, who it affects
2. Nut graf: why it matters
3. Most important detail (the vote breakdown, the dollar figure, the date it starts)
4. Best quote from someone affected or someone who decided
5. Second key detail
6. The other side: who disagrees and why, in their words
7. Context: history, comparisons, how we got here
8. Second quote
9. What happens next: next vote, deadline, when it takes effect
10. Kicker: a strong quote or the next date readers should know

Each line might become one to three paragraphs. Ten lines times roughly 70 words is about 700 words. Look at that. You're in range and you haven't written the middle yet.

For an opinion piece, use this shape:

1. Lede: your position, or a fact that sets it up
2. Nut graf: your argument in plain words, plus the main reason
3. Evidence one, with source
4. Evidence two, with source
5. Evidence three, or a real person's experience
6. The strongest argument against you, stated fairly
7. Your answer to it
8. What should happen, specifically: who should do what, by when
9. Kicker

Sorting your facts

Go through your source log from lesson 3 and assign every fact a line number from your outline. Some facts won't fit anywhere. Good. Those are your leftovers. They go in the "later" file or the trash. Marge says the most important editing happens here, before you write a word, when you decide what's not coming to the party.

Ask of each fact: does it help prove my cousin-test sentence? If yes, it gets a slot. If it's interesting but off-point, cut it. Yes, even the jar. Unless your story is about the jar. Someday someone will write the definitive story about the jar.

One idea per paragraph

This is the rule that makes everything else easy. Each paragraph does one job. One fact and its explanation. One quote and who said it. One step in the argument.

Paragraphs in news writing are short. One to three sentences is normal. A single-sentence paragraph is fine, and sometimes it's the strongest thing on the page. School taught you that a paragraph needs a topic sentence and five supporting sentences. School was preparing you for essays graded by a tired teacher at midnight. You're writing for a person on a phone at a red light. (Don't. But they do.)

Three ideas, three paragraphs. Each one can now move around independently. Want the quote higher? Drag it. Want the history lower? Drag it. Paragraphs that do one thing are like Lego bricks. Paragraphs that do five things are like a Lego brick somebody glued to a sandwich.

Transitions without the fancy words

You don't need "Furthermore" or "Moreover" to connect paragraphs. Those words are the khakis of writing: they go with everything and nobody remembers them. Instead, let the first words of each paragraph pick up something from the last one. A name. A number. A place. "Banks" in one paragraph leads naturally to "Banks also said..." in the next. If two paragraphs don't connect at all, one of them is probably in the wrong spot.