TIPA Rules
FEATURE WRITING
Writing deadline is one hour.
Contestants may witness or attend a situation, activity or event, or be given a general topic to develop. Access to sources will be available or may be reporter’s responsibility. Supporting materials will be provided.
Criteria: Reader interest in lead colorful, interesting, logical flow (transition from one part to the next), readability, human interest, color, avoids trite and contrived clichés, interpretive but not editorializing, effective use of quotes, effective ending, length, spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, etc.
Materials needed : Writing contests may be on either computer (laptop or portable computer with USB) or hand written in blue or black ink. Contestants may use tape recorders with earphones only. Contestants must provide note pad and writing instrument for taking notes. AP Stylebooks, thesaurus and dictionaries may be used.
TIPS
In this competition, you will be given several hours to find a story and write it. Feature writing is all about the narrative and the theme. It takes time and skill to quickly find someone with an interesting story and then convince them to spend enough time with you so you can extract that story. Once you have your interview(s), it takes more time to organize and start drafting. Use all of the time given to you.
Example
In this winning (Third place, TIPA 09) entry, Devon Tincknell frames the story of a "visonary" mentally ill man within the image of the Indian Shaman which comprises part of the subject's personal mythology.
Feature Writing, TIPA On-Site, Third Place, Devon Tincknell
TIPA 2009 Winning Entries
1st Place
Feature Writing
By Ashley Austin
Kilgore College
“As the Titanic was sinking, I jumped ship and swam to the shore to live off of the coconuts,” explains hot dog vendor John Van Horn as he scoops a spoonful of bright green relish onto a steaming hot dog. As he hands the hot dog over to a young businesswoman, Van Horn smiles and laughs at his very own recession joke.
Working a hot dog stand at the corner of Ross and North Harwood is definitely not the dream job of this jolly, middle-aged man raising a family of five in Arlington.
“I had a six-figure income after working 20 years in the auto industry,” Van Horn says. “I
didn’t just wake up one day and decide to sell hot dogs.”
According to a report from the Cable News Network, approximately 3.6 million American workers have lost their jobs since the beginning of 2008 due to the economic recession.
“You know, I don’t think I believe in the bailout,” Van Horn says. “I’m here because of
the job cuts my company made regardless of the bailout.”
Even though it’s not his top career choice, he’s making the best of it. One woman apologizes for making Van Horn walk around his three-foot by six-foot cart in search of a bag of Doritos. Van Horn laughs and mocks, “I need the exercise.”
Van Horn admits that he likes to chat with his customers and get to know them a bit, but
only when he has the time. “I’m a people person, but around noon there’s a line 15 feet down the block and I’m all business,” he says.
Even at 2 p.m. in the middle of a hot and humid April day, Van Horn manages to keep his spirits high while keeping picky customers at bay.
One woman has an issue with the four hot dogs she ordered, complaining that they are burnt. Without missing a beat, Van Horn makes her four brand new hot dogs and moves right along to the next customer.
Van Horn’s mantra? “You just have to do it,” he says with a wink and a smile.
Van Horn’s particular stand has only recently been moved to it’s current location in the middle of several busy office buildings.
“It’s like an R.V. with hot and cold running water, a mini fridge and hot storage,” explains Van Horn.
The cart is delivered every morning and picked up every night to be housed at a central
location.
“We work the stand about 250 days a year and just pray we don’t have a day below freezing,” says Van Horn. “You don’t sell many hot dogs when it’s 25 degrees out,” he adds in a matter of fact tone.
Van Horn is currently in a financial position that many Americans can relate to.
“My oldest daughter is a freshman at Texas Christian University this year,” he says, “We
pay about half of her $42,000 per year tuition.”
Van Horn is thankful for the financial aid and scholarships his daughter receives. “I just hope to be this lucky when my boys go off to school,” he says.
Despite his own financial situation, Van Horn doesn’t see a reason not to help others that are less fortunate that himself.
“I always feed the homeless. That’s just all there is to it,” explains Van Horn compassionately.
The six-foot tall man wearing a bright yellow polo and an even brighter smile has a hopeful outlook on life. He jokes with a man from out of town that he “must be from up North” because of his accent and helps a woman juggling a baby and a hot dog to open her bottled water.
Without asking, one would never guess that this man is a product of the economic recession.
“I just live my life and hope for the best,” says Van Horn, “In the meantime, I’m having a blast with my hot dogs.”
2nd Place
Feature Writing
By Denni Gonsoulin
Tyler Junior College
Robert Wagner easily blends in to the crowd of hasty pedestrians zooming back and forth along the sidewalks in Downtown Dallas. But Wagner is in no hurry to get anywhere in particular.
Since his home in New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina’s deadly path, he has become a citizen of the streets, devoid of a home, job or possessions other than the clothes on his back.
Lucky enough to have vacated to safety before the flood waters trapped him inside the city he once called home, Wagner retreated to Dallas. Even luckier, he was able to secure a spot at the Sheraton Hotel, where he stayed free of charge for six months.
“It was a pretty great deal for me. I was blessed to have been able to find shelter in such a nice place,” Wagner said.
Although Wagner was fortunate to find shelter after losing his residence, he suffered much greater losses than a place to call home. Several months after seeking refuge in Dallas, he received word that his mother, brother and sister were all killed in the storm.
“Losing my family was by a mile the worst part of this whole thing. That’s something that no amount of time or money can replace,” Wagner said.
But stranded in a foreign city without a familiar face, Wagner quickly made new friends. After being a hotel guest for half of a year, other evacuees and the hotel staff become his second family. He closely befriended the Head of Security.
However, good things usually must come to an end, and Wagner in time had to leave the Sheraton and seek refuge at the Salvation Army. While a far cry from luxury hotel accommodations, the shelter still had a cost of 3 dollars per night. For a man with no source of income, this wasn’t feasible without help. Wagner’s new best friend, the hotel’s Head of Security, was able to pay his first few months’ stay at the shelter.
But eventually Wagner had to find his own way to finance his housing. With his limited means, he turned to asking help from passersby on the streets. Most days he patrols the sidewalks around the Sheraton Hotel, in search of the generosity of total strangers.
“I don’t want to be in this position. This isn’t how I would choose to be living. I’m in a hard spot,” Wagner said.
Often times the street-begging lifestyle can turn dangerous. Though Wagner maintains the appearance of a clean-cut, well-taken-care-of man, when he lifts back his collar, the deep scars that cover his chest and shoulders reveal a hardness he has experienced since he began street-begging. Not long after he started, Wagner was violently stabbed by a mugger who stole what little cash he was carrying at the time.
But Wagner looks at the attack as one of the experiences that made him the man he is.
“It was just another thing I survived. I’m still here after all of it and I think there’s a reason for that,” Wagner said.
While many people feel anger towards the way the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina were handled by the government organizations in charge of relief and recovery, Wagner feels no such animosity.
“Things happen. There’s no use in pointing fingers. The point is it happened and now all
there is to do is to try and start over with what I’ve got,” Wagner said.
After the massive turn his life took when his was torn from his home and everything he new by a catastrophic storm, Wagner still finds a way to maintain a remarkably positive outlook.
“Dallas is my home now. Nothing about this is at all how I planned, but it’s home.
This is where I’m starting over.”
3rd Place
Feature Writing
By Devon Tincknell
Austin Community College
In Native American cultures, those that heard voices were given a special role in society. They were shamans, witch doctors, and priests, sought after for their advice and guidance. Hearing voices was considered a blessing, a sign that the gods had shown favor on you and given you access to the world of spirits. In modern times, we give those that hear voices a different label. We call them schizophrenics.
Christopher Lynn Good was born in 1962 in the small automotive town of Fremont, Ohio, about hundred miles from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Like most of the men in town, Christopher's father Daniel E. Good worked for Town Lincoln Mercury and was veteran of World War II, or as Christopher remembers it, "the one where they fought the Nazis." The Good family were Catholic and Christopher started school at St. Joseph's, learning his fundamentals from the nuns. When he was in 4th grade his father suffered his first heart attack. A few months later Christopher had what he describes as his "fall from grace."
Christopher and a friend from class, a boy named Tony Sheets, got into a fight over something that Christopher can't remember. Tony Sheets stabbed Christopher in the hand with a pencil, embedding a chunk of lead that can still be seen to this day, and both boys were expelled from St. Joseph's. Christopher ended up attending a nearby vocational school, and it was there that he had the experience that changed him forever.
"My mind used to be sealed," Christopher says, "but then I blew out of myself, and now, my head is dead." Christopher was on a field trip when he ate what he calls, "the seed of life." He isn't sure what is was, gypsum weed perhaps, but at the encouragement of his fellow classmates he consumed a handful of it. "I felt dizzy, things were spinning. Something happened and I woke up in a chair." Each time he tells the story, the details change, some minor, some major. In one rendition there was an electrical storm, in another he saw an invisible Indian massacre. Each version ends the same however; Christopher wakes up several days later as a different person, a person he can't recognize, a person that hears voices.
Christopher Good is almost fifty, and his skin looks like wrinkled rose petals, permanently sun burnt from prolonged exposure to the Texas elements. His facial hair is thick, the color and consistency of pale yellow straw, but it thins as it reaches up towards the crown of his head. Most of the things he carries with him; a battered baseball cap, a dingy grey thermal shirt, a worn L.L. Bean backpack, he proudly proclaims as having salvaged from the trash. The only thing on his person that is not obviously trash picked is the white medical bracelet around his wrist. Without a moment's notice Christopher splays his arms outward into a classic scarecrow pose, and demonstrates the unusual muscle shapes he has in his forearms. Nodding at them proudly, he calls them his "artifice," or his "grasshoppers." These unusual muscles are where most of the voices Christopher fights come from.
As Christopher talks, he repeats certain things, and it becomes obvious that he has difficulty constructing the linear narrative of his life. He calls himself a "hand be down," and admits that while he flunked out of his classes, if you show him how to do something, he can repeat it and do it till it's done. "I used to work, I stole before, I'd crawl through people's houses and takes things," he says. He laughs for a minute and looks away. "My father used to tell me when I was a boy, 'Your last name may be Good, but there is no doubt you're bad.'"
Christopher has been diagnosed with schizophrenic paranoia, or as he says, "I'm a paranoid defective, I've lost my powers." He fights the voices constantly and there are moments in conversation where he pauses, looking you dead in the eye, and you can seem him struggle with it. "At this point, I've learned what to say; to my mom, to the law, to the people or whoever. No one is going to treat you right if you tell them you hear voices." In addition to his battles with his internal demons, Christopher has struggled against crack-cocaine addiction for the last twenty years.
"Crack-cocaine is like when you love something, and you do something everyday, that thing breaks your heart." During a recent schizophrenic episode, which was caused in part by heavy crack use, Christopher ran into the streets and was begging cars to help him. "Nobody loves me," he says, "and whether or not it's love, you still have to have somebody to touch." The police were called and Christopher spent almost three weeks in Dallas' Timberlawn Mental Health Center.
In his own personal mythology, Indians play a pivotal role. Many of the times he retells his "seed of life" story, he ends up going into a prolonged rant about the Commanchees, the Apache, and the natives from Africa- a different kind of Indian.
He points up at the sky and explains, "That's my blue blood up there. The sky is really auburn. It's Apache land. The Indians are all the same, except they're different tribes that broke apart from the Earth's crust. And even though I got blue eyes and blonde hair, I'm one of them."
In many ways, Christopher is right, he is one of them. The Native Americans of today exist as a shattered and displaced people, struggling for existence in poverty stricken reservations. The old traditions disappear quicker with each generation, and the great-grandchildren of once powerful shamans fight against a different sort of evil spirit, alcohol. In Christopher's life, there are many evil spirits to fight; the law, crack addiction, drug dealers, and any others who wish him harm. But in the end, he knows that the real enemy is within himself. His eyes are wet with tears when he says, "I don't like me when me messes with me."
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