This week I got a chance to write a life story. Today I got this story done, but it was not edited. Because it is my first time to a life story, I am not familiar with how to write it. Therefore, I read some excellent life stories done by my classmates. I found some similarities between them.
First, the ledes of those stories are generally interesting issues or summaries of their lives. Therefore, when doing the interviews, I asked Floy’s family members many examples, like the most impressive moment with her, and some questions like what do you think of your mom. These questions can give me good points that may become ledes.
Second, there are not so many quotes. Quotes can show people’s opinions directly, but overuse of them can make story not fluent. Therefore, reporters tend to use narrative or paraphrases instead of using quotes all the time to make the flow of the story more fluent.
By and large, there are lots of creative ways to write life stories with no strict rules. I still don’t know how my story will go. I hope it could be a good story.
Update: It turns out that the story is really good and I learn a new way to write the summary — a teaser. Julia read my story and said it was really sweet and well-written! And although I didn’t put the most interesting part at the beginning of the story, readers may read the whole story in order to read that part! It is an incredible result! Thanks for Julia’s recognition!! It means a lot to me!
Larissa Gao 