Blog #5: Due 11/19

11/18/2018

So far we have read three feature pieces: "The Making of Dylan Roof", "The Girl in the Window", and "The Bravest Woman in Seattle". Please choose one of these and explain what you have learned about feature writing from reading it that you did not know in the first half of our semester. Use specific examples from the essay. Be sure to respond to at least one classmate.

12 Comments

Nicole Wojnowski

11/19/2018 06:57:35 am

In “The Girl in the Window”, this was probably the most memorable piece out of the three. The incredible detail and vivid language paints a clear picture in your mind as to what is going on and what everything looks like. An example of the author using this type of writing is “She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out…” This makes you want to scoop her up yourself and rescue her herself. It puts you into perspective of how bad it really is. Any author could’ve written in detail about what it was like, but this author really hit the nail on the head and engages, emotionally attaches the reader and shows the reader what lack of vital tools this girl didn’t have. From a psychology major’s point of perspective, this child missed three crucial stages of learning which severely impacted her development and caused a different growth and lifestyle for this innocent child. For me, I take away from this story from a writing view, that using quotes in this particular piece was crucial as well as the amount of detail used. I didn't realize how powerful someone can make a writing piece. The author was able to find a healthy balance between quotes and other detail to get the message across. I felt engaged to the story the whole time. For a longer piece such as this one, it can be hard for me to focus on the what I am reading which ultimately, I end up losing what the concept of the story is. Shorter paragraphs that were for the most part helped in a sense that it didn’t feel like you were looking for the end of the paragraph every time you got to the next one, like some of the other stories that we read. The whole time, the story kept me asking “now what?” and “what happened next?” which made me want to read more. For something as controversial as this topic, this was our most successful discussion in class and I felt that her writing still allowed for questions to be answered to be left up to us to figure out or think about which I didn't realize how helpful that would be until we got to our discussion. Something that I would like to know is how do you find that good balance? When do you stop? Do you need more? This was a very strong and powerful piece that was beautifully written.

Brian Garland

11/19/2018 10:55:18 am

Exactly, what I feel "The Girl in the Window" and "The Bravest Woman in Seattle" is how they involve and engage the reader while also allowing the reader to make a judgement. The writer is supposed to remain objective while describing horrible things that most people would break from bias attempting to describe what happened.

Especially in the scene that describes her laying in feces and bugs, we are able to see everything but the author remains objective in describing the scene.

I also think the organization is used well in each. "The Girl in the Window" uses long, painful sentences to describe the girl's horrifying situation, while "The Bravest Woman in Seattle" uses sharp, rapid-fire sentences that capture the scene of the crimes.

Ashley Szczoczarz

11/19/2018 09:16:06 am

Reading “The Girl in the Window” was both interesting and educational. I was captured by the author’s writing style and was intrigued by her level of expertise in the subject. Prior to reading feature pieces, I was blind to the amount of research that was necessary to complete a successful piece. Although I knew that research was involved, I did not realize the extent of the research that was needed. Lane DeGregory wrote the piece in a way that brought the audience into the story and brought justice to Danni’s story.
The author researches each aspect of Danni’s life. She begins the story with the horrible living conditions in which she was found. The author describes, through her research with police officers and child service workers, Danni’s condition through almost all of the senses. She utilizes smell by stating a quote by the responding officer: ““I’ve been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it never stunk that bad”. She then includes visuals with a quote from the officer: “There’s just no way to describe it. Urine and feces — dog, cat and human excrement — smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet”. She incorporates sound by discussing the sound of crushing cockroaches on the floor, and the touch of Danni’s body by recalling the officer’s experience of picking Danni up and how “It felt like I was picking up a baby”. All of these descriptors come together to make the audience aware of how treacherous Danni’s life had been in those moments. In addition to the detail of her difficult life, she researches and discusses her life later with her adoptive family. The author also does something that seemed surprising but necessary by interviewing Danni’s biological mother and forming her side of the story.
In addition to the research done, I also did not realize the amount of non-bias that is needed to develop such a successful story. The author’s writing style allowed me to form my own biases, rather than hearing hers. It was a difficult story to tell, but the author did it in a professional way that conveyed a true aspect of feature writing.

Emma Mills

11/19/2018 09:17:23 am

Since reading the three feature pieces “The Girl in the Window” really stuck out to the most. This piece is a newspaper feature which makes sense because of how long the article is. There is a bigger issue that appears throughout the piece that the reader itself has to figure out.
There is strong detail that is shown in this piece. It stuck out to me the most because it was vivid. You could really imagine yourself standing in the room and seeing the feces on the floor and the little girl in the dark room. It was real when one of the officers said “I’ve been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it never stunk that bad, Holste said later there’s just no way to describe it. Urine and feces-dog, cat and human excrement smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet. Everything dank and rotting.” This is very vivid and for a officer who has been through so much cant even deal with everything he is seeing. This really puts into perspective how serial everything was. You can imagine yourself walking into the house and seeing this.
The writer has done an in intense amount of research for this article. She went and interviewed people because she wanted to know the truth about the story. She really wanted to share Danny’s experience and leave nothing out. As the reader there is an underlying message that you see and that is about the child protection system. It makes you think why couldn’t they have removed her from the situation when she was younger.

Brian Garland

11/19/2018 10:49:52 am

I chose "The Bravest Woman in Seattle" for its use of dialogue, imagery and organization to deliver a horrific account of the murder of Teresa Butz.

What I learned most about feature writing is to involve the reader. As this piece does, Eli is simply recounting the events and allowing for readers to judge what is happening. The author does not shift away from objectivity, although he includes a part about the entire court crying while hearing the testimony.

The author's organization moves from a painfully slow speed in the courtroom testimony to a rapid pace when the murder is described. The reader feels like a victim of the rapist that cannot escape or look away.

How the author characterizes the murderer is also applicable to my own writing. The murderer commits unspeakable crimes, but what is most horrifying is how he is talking to his victims to make them suffer more, such as when Teresa tries to grab the knife from the rapist while he says "No.No.No.No." and "Don't do that".

The courtroom is only one part of the piece, and the transition between the scene of the murder and the courtroom is made easier by using markers and description that let us know which location we're in.

Duncan Passell

11/19/2018 11:10:49 am

Reading the piece about the Girl in the window helped me learn about feature writing is to tell the story you want to tell and let the audience fill in the bias with their own feelings. The story of Dani is so tough and hard to read and thus didn’t need to take a stance on the story one way or another. The author of the story even takes the bold step of interviewing the mother of Dani to give us the perspective of her mind set. The topic I chose for my feature is my biological father’s suicide and what lead to that point, so grim dark features such as these help me find a way to take an issue that is hard and difficult and take it in a direction where I don’t put in my bias, despite how close the subject is for me. It is helpful to see how terrible the subject matter was and how it was handled that can give structure to my piece to look at it as just reporting the facts of what happened. I think my feature would best be described as a mixture of the girl in the window and the piece about Dylann Roof as the author takes that also dark subject matter and injects her personal bias into the story but only after the facts had been laid out and the purpose had been completed. I found it super interesting to contrast these stories about terrible things being told in such a factual way that allowed you to have a pure reaction without having any author input. Just cold hard reality and how we deal with that.

Sasha Rockwell

11/19/2018 05:43:10 pm

Reading "The Bravest Girl in Seattle", I learned a lot about feature writing, and it helped me to understand this authors writing style better. What I really noticed from this piece was that there was so much imagery and description that was vivid in detail. It was easy to see and understand what was conveyed, and allowed the reader to step inside the experience for themselves to understand how emotionally tolling it was, for the victim, and for everyone in the court room who were so moved and saddened by the story. I really liked how certain parts of the story went faster, and slowed down. Part of this was the author getting into every detail of what happened, and also the use of repetition, which was a great addition to the piece. It added another emotional level to it that moved me a lot.

Nicole Giannino

11/19/2018 08:59:12 pm

Hi Sasha,

I also wrote about this piece, and something that I pointed out about the detail and imagery, was that I feel as though the author painted such an incredible picture but he did it in such a simple way. I dont think that he needed to drown the paper in adjectives, it was more about the way he said everything, and how he incorporated the quotes that made the story so visual. I really think that this taught me so much about dialogue and about description and imagery. I liked how you talked about the pace of the piece as well. Great post!

Nicole Giannino

11/19/2018 08:55:13 pm

For my post I chose to evaluate “The bravest Woman in Seattle”. I think that this piece was absolutely incredible, and it was one of my favorite pieces read this year. I think that this essay taught me a lot about detail, and also about dialogue. I have always struggled with dialogue in the past, and sometimes I have a hard time knowing what is too much and what is not enough in terms of details. I think that this piece did a perfect job in both of these categories.
For example, something we talked about in class was the part of the essay about everyone in the courtroom crying. It says, “The horror of what happened next made the court reporter's eyes well up, made the bailiff cry, had the whole room in tears. The jury handed around a box of tissues. The prosecutor took long pauses to collect himself…” Obviously this is only part of the quote, however I thought that this really taught me a lot about detail. I think that yes, in a lot of cases it would be easy to say “the witness’s testimony had everyone in the room crying”. However, this isn’t very descriptive, and it makes you visualize nothing. I think that this part was perfectly written, and I think that the repetition, and the details of who was crying (although in reality it was everyone) listing them all out like that painted a picture in my mind. I think that the biggest take-away with details, and making the reader visualise what you are writing about, is not overloading it with adjectives and making it so descriptive that it’s too much, but rather making it simple, but making it visual enough for the reader to feel like they are there experiencing it too.
This article also taught me that just because you load up your paper with dialogue, doesn’t mean you lose the story, it actually enhances it. I think that I worry a lot about overdoing it with the quotes from interviews, because I still want the story t shine through, and not have it be quote, after quote. But this essay taught me that as long as I use quotes in the correct way, I can use as many as my heart desires! For instance, in the beginning of this piece it says, “A young South Park girl named Diana Ramirez had already told the court that the man looked familiar. "His eyes," Ramirez said.”. I think that this was so much more valuable to the story than just saying the whole quote and only incorporating the direct part “his eyes” for me, really put emphasis onto it.
Overall this piece was really life changing and I thought that it was written beautifully, even though it is such a terrible topic. The author did a really wonderful job.

caitlin

11/26/2018 01:51:26 pm

the piece im choosing is "the bravest women in Seattle". This feature essay showed me how to construct an article with a story format. I was so engaged with reading this peice by Eli Sanders because I felt like I was in the court room witnessing everything. The haunting details of the victums statements and the night of the attack, was so vivid that i could feel her pain and suffering. for example, when describing the night before the attack, i could visualize the two womens relationship and could feel the emotional connection they had just through a couple lines. This feature article was haunting and incredible. for my work, I will try to compose a story telling like aspect.

Vickie Volcy

11/28/2018 04:23:49 pm

The article I choose is the girl by the window which is a sad story because this little girl was neglected by her. This little girl had a chance of living a healthier and happier life style but her mother made the wrong decision by not taking care of her. Even though her mother could not take care of her she should have made the right decision for the little girl. The girl in the window symbolizes someone who needs a lot of help because she is not in a good living environment. In my opinion the police and child services did not do that much investigation in her case. If her mother took good care of her than she would have a better future. Her mother s decision of not taking care of her affected her personal and her future. The either did a good job of doing some many interviews and figuring out what happened to her 10 years later. Something I learned from this reading and feature writing is that it is better to do more interviews about a topic or story. You have to be more creative, unique, specific when it comes to a feature or any type of writing styles.

nicole farnworth

12/2/2018 06:03:06 pm

The article I chose was "the girl in the window", and this piece showed how anyone can be a parent by law, but not everyone knows how to take care of a child and love them properly. This piece was extremely upsetting to read, a poor child was neglected by her mother, and was too little to even defend herself. The poor child lived a good chunk of her life in filth,darkness, and depression. The mother did not think she was doing anything wrong either, which only enraged me while I was reading. How can someone give birth to a beautiful, small child and act as if they don't exist? I like how the writer kept biases away from the piece and speak as neutral as possible.

Blog #5: Due 11/19

Leave a Reply.

Archives

Categories