Community Writers Series II: John Seabrook, Harry's Dad

by Harry and Devin


Keywords
instincts, voice, details, relate, precise


What We Learned
We learned that writing is really no different from talking.  John taught us about putting a voice in our writing, a voice that is exactly the same as how you talk.  A voice that is made up by what facts you include in your writing, what you write about, what questions you ask, who you're interviewing, in what order you write, how you interest your reader--overall, how you write in tandem with your opinion creates a voice.  John said this was probably the most essential one of the three things that make writing good--your "fingerprint," as he called it--the others being story and details.  
As a writer, you'll sometimes write about topics that might not seem interesting to other people, so you need to have an interesting lede in order for people to read it.  Secondly, having an entertaining supply of details is extremely important, according to John.  In order to determine what to include, he said you have to completely trust your instincts--because important facts are already known, whereas seemingly non-important details can be the most interesting in articles.  According to John these three things are the most important things to include in writing.


How does your writing express you?
"My writing expresses me because of voice, the voice you're hearing now, you'd say, 'oh yeah, that's Harry's dad.'  I hope that if they took my name off this piece, you'd recognize that it's me."


Quotes
"The art of the storyteller is to present both points of view in a way that's dramatic and interesting without giving away what the writer thinks."


The goal of writing is "to teach and delight."