What are Your Story’s Strongest Assets?

You should have at least three, but not too many. Don’t bury them!

I was editing a story recently in which the writer had a nifty premise based on excellent data, including a recent survey that revealed a rising trend in a behavior that people often later wished they had not done. The writer used the survey results as the lede, then backed into the story’s main point (buyer’s remorse), which was also supported with statistics. She had another strong asset: She’s an expert in the field, with  first-hand knowledge of the problem and anecdotes to support the data. Three great assets.

However, the survey’s results were buried amid a 71-word lede that was loaded with writerly fluff—unnecessary adjectives and generic, predictable passages that added nothing to the surprise and importance of the data. Then came some general statements that aimed to back up the existence of the trend, but none of them surprising or highly compelling—all stuff most of us know. (This is a common writer flaw: Penning hollow passages like “nobody wants …” or “anyone who has ever…”.)

Finally, the point of the story—the buyer’s remorse—was made about 200 words down, in the fourth graph. 

Delaying the point of a story might be justified in a long, complicated magazine-style feature with a tremendous number of astonishing aspects or a deep, rich, largely underreported history and a dedicated readership. But even then, the journey to payoff has to be entertaining, enlightening, intriguing, or otherwise anything but tedious. In this case—the writer was conveying a pretty straightforward concept that we’re all familiar with—there was no reason for the delay.

I’ve written before about the importance of getting to the point:

• How to Create a Successful Story Top

The fix, as I suggested to the writer: Determine your strongest assets, the key assets, and let them do the heavy lifting.

If you think you have a lot of strongest assets, step back and take an objective look at them and determine the three that stand out the most. Three or four, maybe five in a long feature. But if you can’t have 10 strongest assets — that violates the whole definition of strongest. Then prioritize your assets. Every story has to have one main point, and a key asset to support it. It may be delivered in the lede, or the nutgraph, but it will be high up, and it’s got to be clear and uncomplicated, visually accessible. It must take center stage. 

(Unsure what’s a lede or a nutgraph? See Fundamental Elements of a Good Story.)

The other key assets will be similarly emphasized and highlighted, but the hierarchy should make the main point, the premise, abundantly clear.

And then sure, you’ll need to support your best assets with informative, important detail, but don’t bury the good stuff under excess baggage. Don’t water things down to the point that your best assets drown in a sea of words that don’t add meaning or urgency. Don’t force 600 words into a 900-word story.

Let’s look at the sorts of assets that might be key to any story, and get specific about how to make them shine.

Image: Pexels/Tara Winstead