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Tom Hallman Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, and a staff member at The Oregonian, recently began playing guitar again after a long hiatus. He got thinking about how the process of learning and practising scales can be applied to narrative storytelling.

In this post published by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), he outlines three lessons that can help you "create [stories] with purpose".

He advises adding variation to your writing if you always end up using the same introduction format or structure for your stories, by asking questions about what you want the audience to feel when reading them. Hallman Jr. also suggests focusing on one aspect at a time, such as the opening, because experimenting with its different elements, including quotes and voice, will help you "move beyond the familiar story pattern".

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