Below are some observations about putting together a story that’s more than just a “hard news” just-the-facts report.

• Readability is a measurement of such things as the number of words in a sentence, the number of syllables in a word and the number of ideas in a sentence. In general, the more of them there are, the harder a sentence is to understand.
• Writing to inform and entertain is as important for journalists as it is for novelists.
• Good writing begins with good reporting. You can settle for a dry police report, or you can go to the scene and gather details.
• Good writing is accurate because it is built on concrete details. When you use language to communicate those details precisely, you inform and entertain your readers.

In general:

• Use concrete examples
• Show, don’t just tell
• Translate numbers
• Use words precisely

Tools of narration

• Scenes
• Dialogue
• Anecdotes
• Foreshadowing
• Coherence
• Decide on the order of elements
• Select the proper sentence structure (simple, compound, complex)
• Use precise conjunction
• Use transitions
• Parallelism

Writing Clearly

• Keep sentences short
• Limit each sentence to one idea
• Favor subject-verb-object sentences
• Avoid using more than three prepositional phrases in one sentence
• Avoid using more than three number in one sentence
• Use plain and simple words instead of jargon, journalese, or clichés

Aim for Conciseness

• Eliminate some subject areas
• Eliminate redundancies
• Challenge intensive and qualify adverbs

Train yourself to value brevity

• Keep it simple
• Use correct of effective language
• Take advantage of figures of speech
• Careful word choice: precision means using the conditional mood (could, might, should, would)
• Use bias free language
• Correct Grammar and punctuation