W11- Writing Techniques

Response to Death by Buffet, Life in Mama’s House, The right stuff: The Angels

To be a journalist is always not an easy task for ordinary writer, it might have to be someone who has extremely tough personalities and compressive abilities to dealing with the stress from different potential difficulties. Form these three readings, Death by Buffet by Harley is definitely the most remarkable one and also my favorite one to keep me read through all of them. Reading Harley’s piece is just like watching a documentary. From his description, I saw some part of history of India, and I could sense the scenes and emotions that he tried to convey vividly as he was totally broken into my mind with his words so clear. To be honest, I was going up and down with his words. I laughed when he found the exaggerated norms and courteous manners from every single “Thank you, Sir,” “Yes, Sir” in India, where people always served him as “Sahib.” On the other hand, I could also realize the real and actual desperation that a journalist might have been through when he decided to leave his girlfriend, Sarah, for his journalism career, when he lost the key soundtrack for his first big story in Orissa before the deadline. Not mentioned to the experience from the cultural differences when he was living in India. In addition, he has got the sense of humor to describe every little “trouble” that he met with the cleanser, the cook or the “washbasin,” which made it a really interesting story.

Another story, Life in Mama’s House, was actually opened up the extraordinary perspectives of serving in Sing Sing Prison, a totally “unique” experience that no one would never ever thought about it. I remember that in Harley’s article, he described that Peter said” It is a city of money and madness…”in New Delhi, but for me, maybe the hierarchal system is so obvious in India whereas it is not that much in Sing Sing prison. From the description, I saw the inmates were described as different nicknames and personalities without clarifying their convictions with a regular life in this small society. And Mama Cradle, one of the leader, was devoting most of her lifetime being serving these people who have previous convictions (but we don’t see any in the article). While practicing the volunteer work, he saw through the humanity and described the characters as everyone was equal and trying to get some dignity and respect especially for him. Similar with the Harley’s story, I feel like it is too detailed to be a script and that is how a descriptive story could be imagined with pictures in my mind.   

Although the last one is the shortest one, but I was so into the sadness of Jean and I feel like it shouldn’t be finished like that, I feel like I haven’t get the whole story yet and it went to the end straight away. In a word, I found that the most difficult part for me to do the descriptive story is a lack of vocabularies, so I couldn’t think about any colorful words to improve my story content. That’s way I found the hard news is easier than soft news, whereas soft news is much easier than feature story at the moment!