Essential English
Page 15
We have gone back to the beginning of the action, both for Meyer and Puhl. We have explained how Meyer and Puhl got where they did and have given an anticipatory explanation of Puhl’s fluent German. Everything now follows the way it happened, told as much as possible in the words of the actors:
Puhl, rifle in hand, climbed to a second-storey window overlooking the Wall and saw Meyer being held by two uniformed East Germans who started to drag him away.
‘I pointed my rifle at them and shouted in German: “Let the boy go”,’ Puhl said. ‘When they ignored me I threw a tear-gas bomb. It landed only a yard from them and they let go of Meyer.
‘Two civilians lifted me up and I leaned against the top of the Wall with my hands resting on it. I held my pistol loaded but cocked. I saw Meyer lying there and told him in German: “Stay there while we cut the wire (barbed wire on top of the Wall)”.’
Three East German guards in a trench 100 yards away began firing at Puhl, an easy target in his white MP’s hat: ‘Shots hit the top of the Wall and debris was flying all round me’.
Two West Berliners cut through the barbed wire fencing topping the seven-foot Wall and firemen helped to drag the fence down. Then they threw a rope down to Meyer. All the while bullets were flying in both directions over the Wall, hitting houses on the West Berlin side and damaging furniture in the flats. Meyer fastened a loop of the rope under his arms and was pulled up. On top of the Wall he collapsed and was dragged across by his clothes.
A woman eyewitness in a house by the Wall said: ‘It was a terrible scene. The boy never uttered a sound. I could see he was hit and he never screamed. It was eerie’.
This ends the action. Note that quotes are introduced to provide variety and directness; how little use is made of the continuation word ‘then’ – too many ‘thens’ make it sound like a police report; and that we have now substantiated the lead without using the same words: ‘bullets were flying in both directions’ is better than repeating the intro phrase ‘hail of bullets’.
So much for the action. We can now add non-action background and assessment, which has no part in the chronology (and which could all be cut under pressure of space).
Puhl said he had been entitled to fire at the East German guards as he was allowed to shoot in defence, but he had not done so.
Yesterday’s incident occurred within half a mile of a memorial at the Wall to Peter Fechter, the 18-year-old East German boy left to bleed to death at the foot of the Wall in 1962. ‘The action by our MP evens the score for Peter Fechter’, said one American officer.
It was the longest battle since the Wall went up and the most serious in that it was the first time a US soldier had gone into action to save a refugee.
This then should be the normal construction in action stories:
1. Intro and/or news lead: the most dramatic incident(s), the human result(s) of the activity
2. Development in chronological narrative
3. Background and assessment if any
Here is the story of an award for a pit rescue, with my comments on the right:
Colliery overman Mr John Hodgson, aged 50, of Silksworth, turned himself into a human pit prop when a fall of stones threatened to crush a trapped man at Silksworth mine. For his gallantry he was last night awarded the British Empire Medal – and was amazed by it.
Intro: the most dramatic presentation – and the conclusion in two sentences: first the rescue, then the medal, and his reaction.
It was a night shift at the Silksworth Mine on January 12, says the London Gazette citation. Three men were working on withdrawing waste edge supports. There was a sudden fall of stone from the roof and one of them was trapped. He was pinned in a sitting position behind a conveyor belt drum box, under a fallen roofbar and partly buried by rock.
‘Overman Hodgson quickly arrived on the scene and immediately took charge of the operations. Realising that great slabs of stone which were hanging over the trapped man would fall if orthodox methods of support were tried, he directed two men to steady them on each side while he himself, sprawled across the drum box, supported the centre.
‘Hodgson instructed the others to jump to safety and then he released his hold and scrambled back over the conveyor belt in a working height of only 4ft 6in.
‘The whole roof above the place where the man had been trapped immediately collapsed, filling the space where the men had been working to rescue him.’
Mr Hodgson’s two colleagues, Mr Walter Appleby, of 50 Potts Street, Sunderland, and Mr Harry Cooper, of 32 Ashdown Road, Sunderland, were both awarded the Queen’s Medal for Brave Conduct.
The action has ended. Supplementary details can now be added.
Mr Hodgson, a miner for 30 years, was amazed to hear of his award last night. He recalled being questioned by a mines inspector, but added: ‘They seemed to be harping on about it and I thought there might be an inquiry’.
Backing up intro again.
The man trapped by the fall, Mr Ernest King (52), of Holborn Road, Hilton Lane, said last night: ‘I have had other lucky escapes since I started at Silks-worth in 1937 but I have never been trapped like this.
‘It’s a queer feeling just lying there with tons of stones likely to fall’.
It would not matter to the construction if these paragraphs were higher, say before the mention of the Queen’s Medal. The essential is to tell the action chronologically, substantiating the intro before bothering about other details.
A Good News Narrative
Barry Bearak, of the New York Times, was in Macedonia in the spring of 1999 to report on the refugees from Kosovo. He gives us a brilliant example of the story-telling technique. The italics are mine and my comments are on the right.
BLACE, Macedonia, April 29 – When they came upon the mine-field in the rugged mountains near the border, the 64 Kosovo Albanian refugees were warned to stay in single file and not stray from the narrow path or stumble on a branch or rock in the predawn gloom.
First, the structure. He opens the story not at the beginning of the action but at mid-point. There are other action points where the story might open, but this opening is suspenseful without being aggravating in keeping the suspense for too long.
Twenty people trod through the mud without a problem, and that is perhaps what made the tired old farmer, Osman Jezerci, less wary.
Characterisation of farmer makes his fate sadder.
‘Osman, don’t go so far over there,’ someone called out to him.
Mr. Jezerci looked over his shoulder, possibly to see who was speaking. And that is when he drifted a few more feet to the left, those near him said. The explosion lifted his body off his legs. The man beside him died, too. So did a young woman, Selvete Kukaj.
Italicised words in these opening paragraphs are good verbs and nouns, evoking the atmosphere. A less good observer would just have reported that the farmer ‘died’ or ‘was killed’.
Within an hour of the blast on Wednesday, two others died from their wounds. These two – a 12-year-old girl named Zyjnete Avdiu and an 18-year-old woman, Miradije Kukaj – were buried here today in a solemn ceremony attended by a large crowd of people who did not know them.
Arresting thought that they were buried by ‘people who did not know them’.
This has become the habit in Blace, a Macedonian border village of 100 homes. In the last five weeks, since NATO began bombing and throngs of Kosovo Albanians started fleeing, people from here have laid 12 strangers to rest in their cemetery.
The opening news lead having been completed, we flash back to the origins of the journey, i.e. what occurred in the first place to get them into a minefield.
Liman Jashari, the village hohxa, or holy man, said the ritual Muslim prayers in Arabic and then switched to Albanian to soothe the mourners at the funeral.
‘Before us, we see two bodies,’ he said. ‘It is fate that they died close to our homes before proceeding to heaven. We must remember that everything that comes before us is the
will of God.’
A less skilled reporter would have left it at ‘the hohxa said ritual prayers’ but Bearak noted the simple eloquence of what he said.
He surely believed this, though it did not stop him from weeping as the bodies were taken from coffins and laid into the earth. The two young women wore white sheets as they were lowered into the ground. Their heads were placed on pillows of sod.
Each day, Macedonia awakens to a new tale of refugee misery as if this part of the world were keen to outdo itself with affliction. The day before, a 10-year-old boy, near death with a bullet wound and two open leg fractures, had been brought across the border in a wheelbarrow. Then came the horror of a mine-field on a moonlit night.
‘Each day, Macedonia awakens …’ is not only a neat way to join the second part of the story, it also gives a sense of time, of a village beginning to stir. The ‘moonlit night’ is a link, though the criticism might be made that ‘moonlit’ is not quite right as an identifier since the night was not so described earlier on.
‘Fear made us leave our homes, fear of the Serbs,’ said Ibrahim Avdiu, 39, Zyjnete’s father. ‘My whole life has been turned upside down with fear.’
As with most stories told by the ethnic Albanian refugees, Mr. Avdiu’s starts with being ordered by Serbs to leave Kosovo. His family’s home was in Kacenik, a small city only 10 miles from Macedonia. Fighting has been fierce there between Serbian forces and the rebels of the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army. Some put the death toll at more than 100 in the last month.
Link passage. To have had this any earlier would have delayed the emotional pull of the funeral and the necessary scene-setting.
Mr. Avdiu, a day laborer, took his wife and four children to the nearby village of Llanishte. From there, they could see some goings-on through binoculars. Bulldozers, he said, were pushing bodies into mass graves. He and hundreds of others plotted their escapes.
People set out for the border in various groups. The journey, while short, was hard. The welcome cover of darkness was accompanied by the unwelcome distress of frost. Gullies had to be crossed, rocks had to be climbed. Very early on Wednesday, Mr. Avdiu led a horse through the heavily wooded terrain. Clutching the saddle was his invalid mother-in-law.
The group had accepted guidance from six members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. These were the men who cautioned them about the minefield and pointed the way up the narrow path.
When the mine exploded, the blast shook the ground and turned dirt and stones into projectiles. People were wailing, unsure whether to run or stand still. They wiped their faces with their hands and smelled their fingers, trying to determine if the wetness was sweat or blood.
Observation of reaction. From this point the story can be carried forward chronologically.
Arsim Kukaj, 20, was the only son in a family with five daughters. Two of his sisters had been walking at his side, trying to protect the sole male heir by standing in the sight line of any snipers the family might encounter.
‘My sisters were afraid I would be shot, but instead of getting in the way of a bullet they died because of the shrapnel,’ he said, bereft, unable to say much more.
‘Ibrahim Avdiu’s wife and sister were injured. As he tended to them, he said, he could hear 12-year-old Zyjnete, his oldest child, crying out, “Daddy, I’m dying.”
“Daddy, I’m dying …” would have made a moving moment for an intro to the story, but it would have required more recapitulation to explain how we got to this point.
Mr. Avdiu’s younger brother, Izet Asutiqi, scooped the girl up and draped her over his back. He began running. ‘I did not know where I was going, but I just started down a road and hoped it would lead somewhere,’ he said.
He carried her for two hours, though she was dead long before that, he said. His shoulders and back ached from the weight. Finally, he put her on the ground and looked for land-marks to remember. He continued down the road.
In Blace, Mr. Asutiqi staggered into a small grocery. He drew a map on the ground with a stick. Villagers then risked Macedonian border guards and Serbian troops to search for the body across the border. They carried both dead girls up and down the trails in shifts. They did not chance more time to locate the other dead.
This morning, the hoxha did the ritual cleaning of the bodies. The girls’ bloody clothes were replaced by the white sheets. The village men prayed in the mosque and then passed the coffins hand to hand down a road and then up a hill to the cemetery. Three mules grazed among the tombstones as the mourners went past in the early afternoon.
Note the quality of observation. Concrete nouns, active voice verbs.
Once in the ground, the bodies were covered with wood planks and then dirt. With six men at work with spades, it took less than two minutes to fill the graves.
Except for the dead, only men attended the ceremony, as is the custom. But as the funeral ended, one of Miradije Kukaj’s older sisters wandered in a daze toward the mound. She collapsed and kissed the dirt, laying her cheek against the grave as if listening for a pulse. When men lifted her up, she searched about for flowers, but found only a single violet blossom. It was wilted and she threw it down in despair and bawled.
A poetic passage – listening for a pulse, a single violet blossom. And then the brutal realism of the despair.
‘Don’t cry,’ people said, attempting comfort. ‘Crying will not awaken your sister.’
As the villagers of Blace returned to their homes, several pointed to smoke not too far off in the mountains. The Serbs had set fire to the village of Gorance, the hoxha said, just as they had set a place called Rozhance ablaze the day before.
More refugees would soon be coming through the mountains.
The story does not just taper off. It takes us back to the opening scene and reminds us that this is just one day in a series of horrible days.
Now let us imagine Bearak’s story rendered into ordinary straight news. My rewrite is adequate for that purpose – but it is nothing like as engrossing as Bearak’s narrative.
Blace, Macedonia, April 29. Five Kosovo Albanians in a party of 64 were killed when they stepped on mines in mountains near the border.
Three died at once, a farmer named Osman Jezerci, an unnamed man, and a young woman, Selvete Kukaj.
Within an hour of the blast, two more died – a 12-year-old girl named Zyjnete Avdiu, and an 18-year-old woman Miradije Kukaj.
They were buried today in Blace, Macedonia, in a solemn ceremony attended by a large crowd of people who did not know them.
This has become the habit in this Macedonian border village of 100 homes. In the past five weeks, since NATO began bombing and throngs of Kosovo Albanians started fleeing, people from here have laid 12 strangers to rest in their ceremony …
Statement – Opinion Stories
News values determine the structure of statement – opinion stories. The beginnings of speeches or documents or interrelated series of verbal exchanges do not begin the news story unless they provide the most important news. Importance, not chronology, is the art of this treatment. The action story requires the most dramatic points in the news lead, with some detail; the statement – opinion story requires the most important points in the news lead, with some detail. The art of the news lead, in both types of story, is in picking out all the highlights with just the right amount of detail. That means enough detail to excite but not to confuse.
This is a subtle matter. What we shall call the generalised news lead indicates the highlights of the story without giving the details. The absence of detail keeps the lead reasonably short; the strength of the generalised lead lies in being comprehensive and intelligible. Its weakness is vagueness. The specific news lead gives details at once. Its strength is precision. Its weakness is that if it is to remain brief it cannot indicate all the highlights of the story; and if it tries to do that it can become too long and hard to take in quickly.
Ideally, in the longer stories there should be a news lead which
in three or four sentences/paragraphs summarises every news point with some of the detailed identification. It is not enough, in 100 words of news lead, to give the news points in a wholly generalised way. By the time readers have read three or four paragraphs they should have begun to find the generalised news points clothed in precise detail. All the points in the headlines should have been covered by this time.
Let us examine a statement – opinion story as it was treated in a number of different newspapers, and consider the ideal blending of the general and the particular in the news lead and deployment of the secondary news points. The story was that the Minister of Technology, at that time Mr Tony Benn, had attacked the American Westinghouse Corporation for trying to tempt away a team of British atomic scientists. The scientists had been working on two advanced atomic power reactors and in an appeal to the scientists to stay, Mr Benn disclosed that Westinghouse had previously made a ‘completely inadequate’ offer for a licence to manufacture the reactor.