I grew up next to, and a couple years younger than, someone who is now a famous novelist and singer-songwriter. In our childhood, he was renowned in the neighborhood as a dungeon master. He rode the theater of the mind as far is it would take him.
The advice in the magazine reminds me of the inverted pyramid structure of classic reporting. Most important first, assume that the reader could stop reading after any sentence, so make the most of each phrase.
I think they are the same thing, the magazine just put it in fun language so the reader would be more interested.
This structure is why I don't like those ridiculous interviews where it starts with "the actor sits in his home with [long description of furniture], wearing [long description of clothes], he sips coffee from a [long description of mug]". I just want the interview, I understand that the actor is living somewhere and wearing something, it does not matter.
> This structure is why I don't like those ridiculous interviews where it starts with "the actor sits in his home with [long description of furniture], wearing [long description of clothes], he sips coffee from a [long description of mug]". I just want the interview, I understand that the actor is living somewhere and wearing something, it does not matter.
While I agree with you that I find this style of writing commonly found in the entertainment section of a weekend piece to be very grating, I would argue that this still follows the bottom line up front. For the audience that these pieces are geared towards, the important part is whether the actor passes the vibe check or not. The latter part of the interview itself is not too important because it is mainly promoting whatever the actor wants to promote in the piece.
For instance, "the actor sits in his home with [long description of furniture]" describes how they keep their home's interior stylistically. What the actor wears shows how good their fashion sense is. Sipping coffee from a fancy mug shows how wealthy they are and/or shows the morning vibe they would exude on a good day.
That's true. The interesting thing is how D&D creates branching trees of inverted periods, scene by scene and character by character.
In great fiction, IMO, there's usually something big that you are not certain of yet that makes it propulsive. Sometimes it's "which hard choice will the character make in a given scene?" D&D offloads that decision to the players.
With journalism and I guess alt text, you have one big inverted pyramid, and then a recipe for sentence structure that attempts to pack all the relevant facts in for each node. It's actually trying to front-load how it eliminates the unknowns.
Why are you reading a lifestyle interview with <entertainment celebrity> if you don't care about their life and how they live? What content in this interview do you care about?
The advice in the magazine reminds me of the inverted pyramid structure of classic reporting. Most important first, assume that the reader could stop reading after any sentence, so make the most of each phrase.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism...