When writing a story, one of the first things to consider is the target audience. Is it for the general public or is it for a specific group of readers? If you are writing for the readers of a lifestyle magazine or for the lifestyle section in the newspaper, for example, should you consider whether to write from a third or second person perspective?
Most reports are written in the third person. The exceptions where the second person is used are when the story is about “what you should get,” for example, for an occasion or a holiday season. It is rarely the first person used to write articles, except when the author is narrating his or her own experience.
Take, for example, the first paragraph of an article on entrepreneurship written in the third person:
- John lost his job two years ago due to the economic downturn. Believing that he is only temporary, he actively seeks employment while upgrading his skills through short-term courses. Today, he is still unemployed. Now, at the age of 41, he is forced to consider self-employment and entrepreneurship, but he doubts it because he has been an employee his entire working life.
If this first paragraph were written in the second person, it would say:
- You have been an employee all your working life. Two years ago, he lost his job due to the economic downturn. Believing that the recession is only temporary, he actively seeks employment while upgrading his skills through short-term courses. Today you are still unemployed.
As you can read from both approaches, the third person voice draws readers into the story better than the second because there is no need to get personally involved in the story unless it is a call to action. It works well to use the second person if you’re writing for a lifestyle magazine featuring commercial products, but not quite so well for a news story intended to convey a message containing facts and advice.
When writing for a news article, there are four components to consider: anecdotes, quotes, facts, Y topic statements.
Year anecdote in a journalistic report it must be written by a third person as the narrator. The purpose of this is to use ‘pull’ content to draw readers into the feeling of reading a novel or storybook. For a report to be successful, at least one anecdote must be included to help readers visualize the ‘reality’ of a situation or the life of the person being told in the anecdote.
A feature should also include facts and quotes from human interest angles. facts it can be a research finding that quantifies the content of the story, official statistical figures, or actual events witnessed by people:
- According to official figures from the department of manpower, unemployment is now 4.5 percent.
Quotes they are real accounts of events by witnesses or spoken comments from people interviewed. Contributions can be direct or indirect. For a report to be credible and interesting, both direct and indirect citations are needed.
A direct quote is the actual words spoken by the people interviewed:
- “I’ve been an employee my entire working life,” said John Doe, 41, a retired worker.
An indirect quote is a paraphrased or restated writing of actual words spoken by interviewees:
- John Doe, 41, said he has been an employee his entire working life.
topic statements they are sentences that link the original theme of the story with various parts of the performance. This is especially useful when there are multiple sections or story points that need to be expanded on in different areas of the feature. The goal of theme statements is to draw readers into the main theme of the story.
The main story is usually written with each paragraph pushing readers forward to read to the point of closure or a conclusion or instructions to continue. It is customary to end the story by drawing readers’ attention to the points made in the lead paragraph, but with additional insight into the topic.
