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Topic: Finding topics for FOB pieces
| Author | Message |
| futureeditor | Posted – 8/25/2008 4:41:57 PM | show profile I'm in a total rut at the moment. On top of the usual rejections, I've just gotten four straight rejections from an online publication that took several features from me in the past year, but recently switched several editorial staff members. I guess I'm just not clicking with the new guy. Anyhow, I've been trying to break into print for a while, and I always see that shorter/FOB pieces are the easiest ways to break in. How do you go about finding topics and ideas that are succinct enough to fit into 50-200 words? My head is always coming up with new ideas, but they're almost always researched features. Guess that is the old college essay mindset. Any tips on thinking smaller? |
| futureeditor | Posted – 8/26/2008 4:07:42 PM | show profile Hello? |
| abqwriter | Posted – 8/26/2008 4:52:07 PM | show profile | email poster I read the post, just don't have an answer. Either you read something, see something, or talk with someone else about something that turns on a lightbulb or you don't. Perhaps you'll get something more useful than that from someone else, but I don't think there are any specific directions for coming up with good pitches. They come to me everywhere - when a lady passing out flowers tells me how she got into business, when the Italian immigrant tailor yells at my husband while measuring him for suit alterations, and even when I do research to figure out why in the heck my own kid can figure out that a drunk driver is dangerous all the time but a texting driver is only dangerous while texting yet he can't write a full sentence. That's how I come up with ideas; I have no idea what will work for you. |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 8/26/2008 6:02:05 PM | show profile I've been assigned front of the book topics that could just have been 2,000 words instead of 150 words. Much of the time it's not that "the size" of the topic is inherently smaller but that the editor is not interested enough in the topic to make it a full feature. I once worked for a health magazine where I wrote and edited the front section of tidbits (a job everyone hated to do). The stories could have easily been parts of long features. |
| Thabit | Posted – 8/27/2008 9:01:32 AM | show profile Agree with other posters, almost anything that's worth doing can be expanded if you've got space.... Also, you don't say exactly what sort of pubs you're pitching, but generally I look at local newspapers/blogs for things like quirky restaurant/shop openings, changes to local attractions etc. that might interest on a larger scale. So the process is taking small items from one outlet and pitching them to a larger outlet that probably hasn't heard of it yet -- putting it into context briefly if it's part of a local trend or something that has a reason to be happening in a certain place -- like a hot designer for gay-friendly wedding attire in California or something... hth |
