Backstage Pass

Ok, if you haven't read this article, then you really should. I worked pretty hard on it, and you'll be lost for the rest of this post if you don't. I'm just saying.

I'm giving you an inside look at how I wrote the story, "It's time for dance."

First off, let me give you some back story:

I attend Indiana Wesleyan University. Good school. Great school actually, you should check it out. But like all schools: it ain't perfect. However, some of the flaws (as I would call them) at IWU are a bit... different. I'll just spit it out. The simple way to put it is to say that until recently, IWU did not allow dancing on campus.

Yeah.

That particular rule was the butt of many Indiana Wesleyan related jokes, and still is really. However, it was not as cut and dry as just: no dancing. However there were many, many "flaming hoops" people would have to jump through, and restrictions they would have to follow to be able to move their feet. So we just said we couldn't dance.

We danced anyway, but we said we couldn't.

Just about the time that IWU changed the restrictions on dancing a little bit (and how much is still being debated), something crazy happened: the university approved a dance team.

From what I've seen, students at IWU have gone crazy for the team. It's another step in the direction of ceasing to be a punchline school.

This week, I wrote an article about the dance team, named IWU Remix, and its first performance. Here's how:

I got the assignment. No, I took the assignment; I wanted it. This is, after all, big news on campus. So I jumped at the chance to write about it. First things first, I emailed the leaders of the team and arranged to sit in on a practice to get an inside look at the team, and also get some pictures for the story.

After that night, I went to their opening performance, obviously. I was with the team as they got ready before halftime, and was just feet away from them on the court as they danced their hearts out. I walked off the stage with them and I was in the room when they wrapped it up for the day, and gave me the last line of my story.

Bottom line: I immersed myself in the team, I became a dancer myself. I saw things from the perspective of IWU Remix, and learned things that not many others got a chance to see.

And then I wrote the story. But I didn't just write the story. I told the story. I included things that I couldn't have known if it weren't for my extensive research. And then, I tried to get quotes that showed how passionate those girls are about dance, really pulling the reader in.

That's a very brief overview of how I wrote the story. Very brief. I can not even begin to describe everything that went into it. There's no room to tell of all the times I backspaced my intro and restructured my nutgraph. This is a process that I've been through countless times, but never like this.