Cherubs report without speaking

BY SHAINA COOGAN

People rushed across the Evanston intersection. But one man moved more slowly than others.

Katie Wells noticed his limp right away.

He stood out to the cherub from Arlington Heights, Ill., but only because she was trained to search for details as part of a descriptive writing piece. The assignment challenged cherubs like Wells at the National High School Institute to watch a person and write a story without speaking to them.

Instructor John Kupetz gave cherubs several pieces of advice for the assignment: get details, show and don’t tell, avoid adverbs and use action verbs.

At first, Libby Henning, of Cincinnati, didn’t think the story would be very difficult.

“When I write fiction, I like describing people,” she said. “It made me realize how hard it is to make an accurate portrayal without adverbs.”

Shirley Gao jots down the details.
 

Henning said the assignment taught her how effective description could be in news writing.

“It’s never bad to describe what people were doing or what they were wearing,” Henning said.

Rebecca Cohen, of Seattle, said the assignment made her realize how little attention she paid to the people she saw.

“It forced me to hone my observational skills,” Cohen said.

But picking the right subject also presented its challenges for the cherubs. Jeneen Garchow, of Rockford, Mich., wrote about a person watching television.

“My instructor hated it,” Garchow said. “She said I should have watched someone who wasn’t watching TV.”

Wells enjoyed the descriptive license the story gave to her. She said that it offered her insight on how to improve articles in her school newspaper.

“I wanted to make the articles more interesting while still remaining concise and journalistic,” Wells said. “Instead of using a million adjectives, you can use short sentences to describe something just as well.”