This document discusses narrative journalism and sports feature writing ideas. It describes the "glimmer moment" when a writer observes something that could be turned into a story. Writers are encouraged to always be on the lookout for potential story ideas. Several techniques for generating story ideas are provided, including reading widely, thinking about personal issues or social media trends, finding behind-the-scenes people to profile, and trusting the creative process. The goal is to get editors and readers interested in where the story idea came from.

1. JRN 470 / JRN 574
Narrative Journalism / Sports Feature Writing
Fall 2020 / Rich Hanley

2. Session No. 2 - Ideas
● “The glimmer moment.” That’s the description writer
Cynthia Gorney deploys when discussing idea formation.
● The moment occurs when a writer observes something, reads
something, experiences something or hears about something
and immediately thinks, “that can be a feature story.”
● Writers must always be prepared for the glimmer moment.

3. Session No. 2
● That means seeing the observable world through the lens
of a writer and developing an understanding that stories
are generally right in front of us.
● There are practices that can help us reach the glimmer
moment more systematically and launch the progression
from idea to completed story (and a check for it!).
Writer’s Digest compiled a list of 20 ways to an idea.

4. Session No. 2
● The goal: to get editors and readers to say: where die
that idea come from.

5. Session No. 2
● Example of A
Creative Idea
Gary Smith of Sports
Illustrated wrote “The
Moment of Truth” based
on a single photograph
he encountered.
Smith’s ideas stem from
a search for what he
calls “emotional
truth.”

6. Session No. 2
● Smith tracked the lives of each person in the TCU locker
room in the photograph taken before the 1957 Cotton Bowl
against Syracuse and Jim Brown.
● https://www.si.com/longform/cotton-bowl/index.html#full

7. Session No. 2
● What follows is a list of idea-forming techniques to help
drive the process and keep you writing when the initial
impulse-driven idea generator runs out of fuel.
● But please note, talent matters. Gary Smith is perhaps
the best sports feature writer ever, because he has an
eye that transcends the subject he covers.
● He exemplifies the process.

8. Session No. 2
● Read Widely
● Trade journals are useful in developing ideas as these cover a
single industry such as dairy farming. A story may pop out that
has a broader reach than the trade readership.
● See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_magazines for a
list of trade journals and links.
● One example of this is dairy farming, of which there are several
national and regional trade journals.

9. Session No. 2
● Read Widely
This story on school
milk sales can lead to
several ideas, for
example.

10. Session No. 2
● Read Widely
Among them: the plight
of dairy farmers who
sell milk to school and
are now another victim
of COVID-19.

11. Session No. 2
● Read Widely
Think of Women’s Wear
Daily, a trade magazine
for fashion.
Feature idea from the
piece: who rents
clothes?

12. Session No. 2
● Read Widely
Sports Business
Journal is a trade
publication that
covers the money
side of sports.
Ideas pop there all
the time.

13. Session No. 2
● Read Widely
● The point isn’t to spend hours a day combing through obscure
trade journals in search of an idea.
● Pick some in areas of interest and visit the websites to detect
trends or stories that are flying under the radar of the public.
● Trade journals can provide ideas and narrative paths that fall
outside the scope of personal experience and observation. (they
also are useful when an idea is identified for background)

14. Session No. 2
● Read Widely
● It’s also important to read widely so you’ll know what other
writers are up to and won’t inadvertently pursue a story that’s
already been posted or published.
● This is essential if you are a free-lancer and must pitch ideas
to editors. New ideas will generate interest and respect; ideas
that are already circulating will not.

15. Session No. 2
● Read Widely II
● Read national publications and see if it’s possible to localize
or regionalize the piece.
● The idea would be original as its narrative would be based on
local and regional variations on the larger theme.
● For example, think of the national story on the collapse of dairy
farming. Is there a local family-owned dairy farm that’s closing
or fighting back against the trend?

16. Session No. 2
● Read Widely II
● Think also about what you’re not reading. This is as important as
what you are reading, as negative discovery holds the same
importance as positive discovery.
● Identify what you think you should be reading and form an idea
based on that.
● This is of particular importance for sports journalists who must
range beyond games to write features.

17. Session No. 2
● Read Widely II
● And don’t forget about books such as novels.
● The interior lives of the characters expressed in the works of
fiction can trigger a sense of curiosity about real people who
may find themselves in an unusual situation.
● For example, Faulkner explores a bi-racial character in Light I
August. What are the experiences of bi-racial people in the
present moment? Are they similar?

18. Session No. 2
● Think About Personal Issues
● Thinking of two problems you may be confronting.
● You are probably not alone, so that means there is a story there.
■ One feature idea from that: Learning through Zoom. Follow a
student during a day or week of classes on Zoom and see how that
impacts the process.
■ What about the cancellation of organized sports? What does an
athlete do? That can be a story of triumph or tragedy.

19. Session No. 2
● Find Behind-the-Scenes People
● Sports journalists are watching the WNBA, NBA, Major League
Baseball, the NHL, PGA and LPGA tours competing in a bubble.
● What about the people, family members of technical crew, say, who
are living outside the bubble.
● Of course, the people inside the bubble are worthy of a story but
may be hard to observe in their present circumstances.

20. Session No. 2
● Trending Social Media Topics
● Monitor Twitter and other social media feeds to see what’s
happening in terms of trends but get to the idea before someone
else does.
● Also, note trends that you may personally detect.
● Some writers found their friends (in some cases family members,
too) started sharing conspiracy theories on social media. The
stories that followed explored why that happened.

21. Session No. 2
● Trending Social Media Topics
● Join Nextdoor app groups to see what people in specific
neighborhoods are talking about and try to spot trends.
● One example: many people post messages and photos about wild
animals such as coyotes and bears in their neighborhoods.
● The feature story? The urban-wildlife interface.

22. Session No. 2
● Trending Topics
Here’s another feature
idea drawn from the
Nextdoor app: what
happens to wildlife
during a storm?

23. Session No. 2
● Trending Topics
Apps such as Nextdoor
also show what people
are curious about. And
their curiosity and your
curiousity may match, as
we have discussed.

24. Session No. 2
● Personal Dreams & Aspirations
● Think if you had all the time and money in the world to do whatever
you want. Now ask yourself what else would you like to know about
them.
● In sports, think what it’s like to be athlete who has all the time
and money.

25. Session No. 2
● Amazon.com
● Browse Amazon.com books to see the latest works on topics that
interest you and see what’s on best seller lists.
● That can work to validate an original idea that is already emerging
on the topic.

26. Session No. 2
● Read Data
● The federal government and sports organizations are data-generating
machines.
● Identify the signal in the noise of all that data and humanize it
into an idea.

27. Session No. 2
● Be the Present
● Incessantly, obsessively, crazily, think of everything and everybody
as a potential feature story or piece of narrative journalism.
● That thinking will reveal stories that no one else would consider.
● I once produced a documentary on a building. But it wasn’t about a
building. Why do a story on bricks and concrete, critics asked before
a screening. They understood after watching. What they saw as a
building, I saw as something else. Be Like Water, ss Bruce Lee said.

28. Session No. 2
● Trust the Process

29. Session No. 2 - Story Creation Trajectory
Idea Reporting Writing Revising