Olivia and I met again on Friday, March 29. She's been sending me her stories via email, so I can look over them and give her suggestions. After reading through several of her stories, what sticks out most t me is that many of them read like school reports, and not feature stories--they don't quite have the cosmic elements or attention-grabbing leads that we've been studying.
A our meeting, we talked about how to improve leads. She had been writing a story about the new firehouse in Durham that's been debated at town meetings. I suggested to her what we learned in class last semester: don't write the story with the main event being that a meeting occurred, but write the story using someone's passion about the topic as a jumping-off point. She said that there were a few speakers there who seemed to have strong opinions about the firehouse location, so I suggested she look into leading with those.
Olivia has definitely made progress from her first story to her latest ones, so I hope that my comments about how to write leads can give her stories the element that they've been missing.
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