Specificity and the 6 Journalistic Questions

If you’re not clear on what the Six Journalistic Questions are, read a previous post on them here.

I had a very interesting conversation with a student. He was worried because he had done his research, written his essay, followed the six journalistic questions, but he didn't have a Who.

I asked him a few questions looked at his draft and concluded he didn't need one. His essay was about local farming and agriculture - the where and the what. The When was contemporary, present day. The how and why were in there too, and it just so happened he was able to put it all together without writing about any kind of demographic.

There's no rule accompanying the six journalistic questions stating you have to have at least one answer for each question. Sometimes having a response to each comes naturally and sometimes it just doesn't matter, like my student’s contemporary When. On the other hand, it is possible to have several responses for each item.

I get two responses to this approach: the first is  is it easier to pick one or two topics and write about them? The second is how can a piece still be specific and write about so many different things?

Let me return to the student's essay to resolve this.

He had a what: potato farming. Seems innocuous enough, but if I had a student come to me and say they wanted to write about potato farming, a few things cross my mind:

Potatoes are originally from South America, and there’s  a huge variety grown in the Andes in particular.

The Great Potato Famine(s) in Ireland that came from monoculture.

They're poisonous if improperly raised and picked.

French Fries and Sweet Potato French Fries.

Idaho’s Famous Potatoes.

Vodka, but wine from potatoes is poisonous.

It may seem easy to just write about potato farming, but potato farming includes the history of a continent, a mountain range, and a country, American and Russian culinary practices, agricultural practices, and health concerns. Now, an essay about how the Great Potato Famine came from monoculture would be possible. It limits it to:

Who? - The Irish

What? - Potatoes

When? - 1840's & 50's

Where? - Ireland

How? - Potato Blight

Why? - Monoculture

It could even be expanded if you wanted to deal with other issues by including Immigration into the what, and that would prompt the question: immigration to where? But you wouldn't include in this essay about how the great potato famine led to the mass migration of Irish peoples in the 1840's and 50's to the USA with a discussion about Russian Vodka or french fries. And if you did find a connection worth writing about, then do so.

A single subject is far too broad and leads from disparate topic to disparate topic. Conversely, by identifying a number of subjects and then looking at how they intersect, it can keep you from getting caught up in tangents to topics that are too big by letting you focus only on the interconnecting relationships.

Don't get just one, don't force a response for each one, and be flexible and willing to drop or add more on an as needs basis. Put them to good use, and the Six Journalistic Questions can help a lot.

The Six Journalistic Questions

Sometimes known as the 6 W's or the 5 W's and an H. Just go with whatever helps you remember it, asking yourself these six questions can help improve your writing process.

One of the easiest ways to figure out what to put into a piece of writing is to list out your specific topics. But it can be difficult to know what exactly should be identified or how to identify it. Thankfully, the Six Journalistic Questions give cues as to what to look for:

Who?

What?

When?

Where?

How?

Why?

Ever since a colleague shared a simple powerpoint about these gems with me they have become integral to how I teach composition. They are useful in thesis development, research, organization, introductions, conclusions...or just about every where. Each one stands apart and helps a writer identify and connect every topic with every other topic, helps ensure each topic is addressed, that there aren’t any tangents, and makes a piece of writing more specific.

I'm wary to say there's a panacea for bad writing or for teaching composition, but this is the closest.

The responses to these questions can be broad or specific and sometimes just identifying them can help you see how broad or specific your topic is. Some elaboration:

Who – What person or group of people are you writing about?

This deals with demographics. This could focus on an individual, like a biography. It could be a broad political demographic like New Yorkers or an ethnic demographic like Caucasians, or any other way to group or organize people. I had one student who led me along for half the class thinking he was writing about red-headed people.

Note: This is not your audience. This is whom you are writing about. Not to whom you are writing.

What – What things, physical or intangible, are you writing about?

Think nouns. Are you writing about a chair, or about the moon? A specific chair, or chairs in general? This opens it up to whatever objects or concepts you want to, and not necessarily physical ones. I like to read about narrative. I can pick up books or movies, things that tell and represent narratives but, narrative is an intangible concept. Nevertheless, it still goes in here.

When – What time frame are you writing about?

This could be broad or specific. A Geologist will deal with millions of years at a single stretch when the chemist or physicist will look at events that transpire in seconds or even less. It’s about determining when in history to start and when to end. Depending on the discipline, this may not even be bound by history: the historian will assign years and the chemist will merely want to know how long something takes to happen.

Where – What place or places are you writing about?

This could be a geographic location, a cultural location, or a political location, or even some combination thereof. Like the rest, this can be broad or specific or anywhere in between. The head of a pin is a place and so is a building, a country, or the universe if we want to get really big.

The last two get interesting and help to bring the rest together.

How – Are you writing about how something works?

A lot of scientific research focuses on figuring out how things work and how things operate. How looks at the interactions among the other elements in the first four W's and explores what they have to do with one another and how they contribute and lead to something.

Why – To what end does something happen?

Sometimes it goes right alongside the how. We may know how something came to be, but why? This doesn't even have to be all philosophic, but can be the end result of a+b=c. It can identify a solution to a problem or the roots of a problem itself. Sometimes it's the easy question to answer. Sometimes it’s the hard one to ask.

In a way, any piece of writing, academic in particular, is really a matter asking how

Whether you start out sorting through these or pick them out of a piece you’ve already started to help you better formulate and structure it is up to you. But no matter when or how, give it a try and see how it stacks up.

Why The Page Count?

One page. Single Spaced. Times New Roman. 10 is the smallest font size. Half inch margins.

This is what stood out to me in a writing prompt I got in grad school. It was bizarre. It amounted to about 1000 or so words, which, for an English graduate student expected to spew an analysis every time they’re asked a question, is hard. Why write three pages when I could write five, or fifteen?

I encountered a similar issue as an instructor. Each essay was required to have a minimum number of pages. No students confronted me about it, but I'm sure they wondered why they needed to have an exact number of pages filled, then I started noticing something. Those that turned in shorter essays, even if it was just a half page or so short, never wrote as detailed as they were supposed to. There were also those that were long enough or longer that still rambled, but I cannot remember a single essay that came beneath the minimum and did everything that it was supposed to. I've even assigned essays that were too short – a horde of 3 page essays that were never quite up to par while the few 4 pages ones were. I'm not going to fault my students for a mistake that I made, but it taught me an interesting lesson: required page lengths are anything but arbitrary.

An experienced instructor will have a strong enough grasp of the requirements and expectations. They know how much writing will meet those requirements. I had another professor who required a 15 page essay. 14 wouldn't cut it. 16 was too long. The assignment had other parameters, but most of all, could we, as grad students, write an essay that met the research, intellectual, and structural requirements and keep it all within 15 pages. It was hard for me. Just like the one page, single spaced one mentioned above.

Reflecting on both these assignments, I learned the same lessons: be detailed enough to meet the rigor and detail required, and be economical enough to say it as clearly and succinctly as possible.

There are other factors that go into it as well, especially as you move into the professional world. Maybe a magazine or newspaper won't take your 10 page treatise because they only have 30 pages that they can fill and have a dozen contributors that they have to put in there. But then why 30 pages? Why not 40? Costs of printing, distribution, and storage can lead to that number. Somewhere in every major publishing house there's an accountant who knows by heart how much every page costs at every phase of production, distribution, and marketing.

For every page length specification given, there are numerous factors – educational, practical, financial – that were taken into consideration before that number was given. If 2 pages will do, you'll be assigned 2 pages. If the work requires 5 pages of material, and the research and exploration that it entails, then you'll be assigned 5 pages.

As a last note, don't expect meeting, or exceeding, the page length of any assignment will guarantee a great score. I've seen six pages when five were assigned and thought “You could have cut this down.” You can always fill pages with building slippage or even repeat yourself. The point isn't to fill the pages, after all: it is to express yourself as well as you can, in enough detail, and to a sufficient extent. Rarely is the page length truly the minimum: it's an optimum.

Writing Exercise: The Literacy Narrative

My first foray into fiction writing was in fourth grade when my teacher gave us creative writing assignments. Fostered by a childhood of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and story-centered video games, I took to creative writing. It was a constant in my life through the unpleasant times in middle-school and high school, and it prompted an interest in stories that turned me to literature and film studies and finally into English education. The decisions of my life have been shaped by that one teacher allowing a class to write creatively. Sure I could have done something else with more prestige than being a teacher, but I love what I do. I love writing, I love literature, I love composition, and I love my life.

That's a (very short) Literacy Narrative. Most people encounter writing assignments in composition and English courses like this, and they force you to evaluate your relationship with literacy, words, and reading and writing. Not everybody gets involved in the classics like Dickens, Melville, Gilman, or Derrida; but most people have some relationship with reading and writing, regardless of skill level. The Literacy Narrative is a way to get beyond the basic premise of “I love/hate/am good at/enjoy writing/reading” and explore the reasons and the history behind it: why do you have this relationship with words?

For me, it was a fourth grade teacher's assignment, a favorite author, and a small collection of video games, most of which were my brother's. The right cocktail of instruction, books, and visuals pointed me towards story. It's never as simple as “I was always good at it” nor “I’ve always hated it.” I'd rather have a student tell me their laundry list of bad experiences with English teachers or they can never seem to figure out writing than have someone say “I love to write!” and then have nothing else except a proud grin.

Ask yourself, why is writing important to you – what shaped your relationship with it? What prepubescent events led you to or away from shelves packed with books, or made your endorphins rush or your happiness fade when you find a pen in hand and a blank page before you.

If you have a negative relationship with writing, then writing can be a cathartic way to help resolve tension or anxiety and help you move forward. 

If you already have a positive relationship, have you ever felt like the oddity or wondered why other people don't feel that creative rush? Give this a try.

I'm not going to say a Literacy Narrative will turn everyone into great writers or make words their passion, but it is, if nothing else, a helpful bit of introspective and a little self-exploration.

The Writing Process? Your Writing Process

I remember when a film professor told me I could use two introductory paragraphs (it was about a 7 page essay), and when a literature professor said to pick a single statement or event from a book to write about, and even when a fellow writing instructor recommended using the Six Journalistic Questions to teach about thesis. A recent discussion about an essay of mine revealed to me that sometimes I give way too much background information before giving my thesis. These experiences all prove one thing: writing is not taught but learned. I was never taught how to write. For me, it was a coalescing of experiences, rather than a single instance, experience, or class. That may sound extremely counter intuitive coming from a composition instructor but consider the following…..

I can teach about all sorts of things and all sorts of tips and guidelines, but not everything I teach will work well for everyone’s writing.

For example, when I teach about brainstorming, I usually take a few minutes and tell my students about mind mapping, or writing a “web.” The result is usually a constellation of nodes, each identifying a different topic, all linked to a central point and one another by forking paths. This is a popular form of brainstorming and outlining. Most of my students remember it from previous classes so teaching it in college composition courses is a refresher.

Personally, I never mind map. I have no image files or pieces of paper repurposed to reflect a kind of pen and paper content colonization.

So, if I don't do it, then why teach it? 

Simple. 

It works for some people. 

I'm sure there are people, from elementary school student to tenured professor, from poet to novelist, across genre and expertise, who do it. That's great for them. It just isn't for me.

If you have a teacher who advocates a single way to write, be cautious, or get out of the class. They're just going to teach you a way that either works for them or is outlined in a book they teach from; and you’re not your teacher. You have to find an approach that works best for you, and that involves experimentation. Maybe you haven't ever mind mapped. Give it a try and see if it works. If you find that writing comes easier or you are better able to organize and structure your thoughts, then you've struck on something good for you. If not, scrap it.

Now, having said all that, there are still many steps or phases you have to take into account: You will need to brainstorm, outline, edit, revise, organize, so on and so forth. You have to find the way that is best for you. Take advice and lessons to heart, but be flexible and remember that you will discover the process that works best for you.

Friend or Foe Part 2: What’s Good About the Five Paragraph Essay

Part 2: What’s Good About the Five Paragraph Essay.

As I said in my last post, I've seen the Five Paragraph Essay taught/learned as a process, resulting in intellectual constipation. But it is good for something.

The Five Paragraph Essay is a model. It gives meaning, structure, and form. It’s an example of what an essay should eventually look like, emphasis on like. I tell my students that if you've just got two or three pages then five paragraphs would be okay on the final product. That’s for two or three pages. I vividly remember receiving a five page essay, however, with particularly long paragraphs. Suspiciously long, as each one conveniently ended with the page. The student had written a Five Paragraph essay for a five page essay. 

It wasn’t a very well written essay. Had it been better, I probably wouldn't have noticed the paragraph to page alignment. But it seemed like the student was cramming enough information into each paragraph to make them long enough for five paragraphs in spite of the number of pages. In my feedback, I pointed this out. I don't know if s/he was trying to have exactly five paragraphs, but s/he did. I advised the student about this and reminded s/he there didn't need to be five paragraphs, especially in a five page essay.

I like telling this story in class because It lets my students know that five isn’t a magic number. There's nothing wrong with more paragraphs and there's nothing wrong with fewer, nor is there anything wrong with just five. Circumstances determine what's best.

No matter what, an essay must have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion; and each body paragraph needs to cover a different but related topic that develops ideas brought up in the introduction. This is what the Five Paragraph Essay is good for. It reminds writers of the form that their final product should resemble. Get out a book or a newspaper or a magazine and look at how those pieces of writing are broken up into paragraphs, and with more than five much of the time. Then look closer and you'll find that some of these larger publications have entire chapters entitled "Introduction" and "Conclusion." Essays have introductions and conclusions. Books have them. Blog posts have them. You'll be hard pressed to have a serious publication without introductions and conclusions in one form or another.

Just don't think that the introduction has to be the first thing written and the conclusion has to be the last.

Friend or Foe Part 1: The Five Paragraph Essay

Part 1: Why I Hate the Five Paragraph Essay.

When I tutored high school students, it was interesting to see their struggles with writing assignments. Most of the time, I could trace their difficulties back to the Five Paragraph Essay, or rather, the way they had been taught to write an essay.

For those unfamiliar, the five paragraph essay is as follows:

• Introduction paragraph
• 3 Body paragraphs – each of these covers a topic introduced in the introduction.
• Conclusion paragraph.

There you have it. Five paragraphs. Seems simple enough, right?

Not to the frustrated students, who were sometimes caught between a prompt and a handout comparing writing to building a sandwich. The problem was they had learned the Five Paragraph Essay as the only way to write the essay: Step one to write the introduction. Step two was paragraph 2, or body paragraph 1. Step three was paragraph 3. Do I need to continue?

The results were students who had no idea how to write. They expected their ideas to come out perfectly the first time, and they wouldn’t lay pen to page until they had something great. I saw students who were angry, frustrated, and bitter, developing a hatred of writing rather than the skill. They made for interesting tutoring sessions, to say the least. My advice for them boiled down to this: the Five Paragraph Essay is a model and not a process.

I've wondered if the insistence on the Five Paragraph Essay is a response to students saying “I don't know how to write.” Unfortunately, it leads to meandering introductions where students figure out what they’re writing about, followed by a good paragraph on the topic they spent their introduction figuring out. Having exhausted their first idea, the rest of the essay meanders before petering out in a conclusion that may or may not address the same topic as the introduction. Now with the requisite five paragraphs they forego any revision and stop with a less than ideal brainstorming session forced into prose.

It’s a tragedy that this kept students from discovering their own writing processes and developing a valuable skill. It denies experimentation and hinders the very learning it is intended to promote.

I'm starting my fourth year of teaching English composition and every class I've taught needed this lesson. Some students are liberated. For some, it's a confirmation of something they figured out already, most likely on their own. Others were so hardened against writing that they don’t even try to listen.

The Five Paragraph Essay has been poorly implemented by students and teachers. It isn’t a universal problem, as I learned when I taught Concurrent Enrollment and the students didn’t have the same issues as those I had tutored years before. But they still needed a reminder of what the Five Paragraph Essay was indeed for and its relationship to good writing.

In short, the good stuff.

Which I’ll be discussing in my next post.