By MICHAEL QUINTANILLA
Fashion Writer, Los Angeles Times
Synopsis by MINERVA CANTO
Think of every story as a first date, a blind date with your readers. How far you get on your date depends on how good you are at seducing the reader.
Michael Quintanilla uses this approach in writing features for the Los Angeles Times. And he used it in his presentation that ended the National Writers Workshop.
He played disco music.
He donned a black bouffant wig.
And he wrapped his mother’s retro-style scarf around his neck.
He wasn’t shy, and he sure wasn’t afraid to seem silly during his presentation. He showed the audience that he’s a writer who’s not afraid to break the rules. He believes that getting close to a source allows a reporter to write that person’s story accurately and, most importantly, with passion.
Among the unique approaches Michael has taken:
- He showed up wearing silk P.J.s and robe at the Playboy Mansion to interview Hugh Hefner, who was wearing his silk jammies and robe.
- In the mid-1980s, he posed as a high school student for two months to do a nine-part series on drugs in the schools. He attended school full-time, turned in homework assignments, and befriended the “druggies.”
- He has lived with families along the Texas-Mexico border for stories about their lives: children who beg on the bridge, families living in cardboard shacks in colonias, maids who clean the homes of rich people.
Some words of advice on seducing your readers:
- Be ready to document the precious moments in people’s lives. People invite us into their lives and often tell us some incredible things. Relate what our sources tell us not just on a factual level but also on an emotional level.
- Think of an interview as an inner view. Reinvent and redefine the traditional interview to glean some new insights from your sources. For a story on the effects of Proposition 187 on elementary-school children, Michael hung out with the children and their families. He made it a point to know their philosophies, their ways of life.
- Hang out. This is a “skill” that probably wouldn’t qualify for a job anywhere else, but done right can provide telling details for our stories. Watch out for unexpected voices and stories that our readers will relate to or learn from.
- Approach your work not just by what is expected of us but by reaching beyond.
- And of course, break the rules. Don’t play it safe. Exploit the craft of writing. Remember that we can make 20 seconds last forever. Write a story as you would a poem or a diary. Elicit a writing style that’s all your own by listening to your mind and your heart.
- Writing with voice is about getting a reaction from readers. The best reporters are not the best talkers but the best listeners. Writing with voice is about knowing questions to ask that will elicit the details you need for the story.
- It’s okay to feel passion for what you do as a reporter. There is a value in caring and feeling as a reporter. Remember that every story we touch also touches the readers.
An excerpt from “Sharing the Sorrow: Five Small Graves on a Knoll at Calvary Cemetery Have Brought a Group of Strangers Together:”:
Kneeling on her little girl’s grave, Monica Fagoaga pours water over the marble slate and wipes it clean with her palm.
A few steps away, Guadalupe Rios picks up paper scraps near her daughter’s marker. And, as she has done every Saturday for two years, Isabel Almada sweeps the curb in front of the five little graves on a knoll in Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.
“”I feel in my heart a lot of joy, sweeping and cleaning,”” Almada says, “”because this is like my son”s house now. This is where our children are sleeping.””
She looks pensively at the other women.
“”We all have experienced the greatest loss a mother will ever have: the death of a child.””
That bond has turned a group of strangers into a family of friends.
Together, they cry.
Together, they celebrate.
Most often, they reminisce about their “”little angels””: girls who walked around in their mothers” high heels. Boys who tumbled in piles of leaves. Kids who loved to eat Happy Meals at McDonald”s.
The families join together to decorate the graves every holiday.
This Christmas, snow-flocked firs are adorned with toys the kids will never play with and gingerbread cookies they will never eat.
They do all this, the families say, to make sure their children do not feel abandoned. And because these communal remembrances help ease the pain and loneliness of losing a child.
Michael is currently a fashion writer at the Los Angeles Times, where he has worked since 1989. He says he realizes that some might think of the fashion beat as full of fluff stories, but says he attacks his work just like any reporter on any story because he believes that every story has the opportunity to touch a reader.
He got his start in the journalism business in 1976 as a night cops reporter at the San Antonio Express-News, where he lied about three things to get the job: that he had a car, a driver’s license and insurance. Once he got the job, his mother helped get him to crime scenes. He says she would be ready with car keys in hand for his call each night. She got so good at assisting him that eventually she helped lead him to crime witnesses.
