paragraph. Take up each point separately and treat it
fully before you leave it--then begin a new paragraph for the next item.

* * * * *

To take a hypothetical case, suppose that misfortune visits the home of
John H. Jones, who lives at 79 Liberty Street. A defective flue sets his
house on fire and it burns to the ground. By inquiry we find that the
house is worth about $4,000 and is fully insured.

There is nothing particularly striking about the story. We are sorry for
Mr. Jones, but many houses worth $4,000 are set on fire by poor
chimneys and many more houses burn down. No one was hurt, no one was
killed; the most striking part of it all is that there was a fire. We
would begin with the word "Fire." Perhaps our readers would be most
interested in the cause of the fire and we shall tell them that first.
Then we shall tell them what burned, when it burned, and where it stood.
There is nothing else that a casual reader would want to know and the
lead would read:

| Fire starting in a defective chimney |
|destroyed the residence of John H. Jones, |
|79 Liberty street, at midnight last |
|night, causing a loss of $4,000, covered |
|by insurance. |

Our casual reader is satisfied. For the reader who wishes to know more
about the fire we add a paragraph or two of detail. First, we may tell
him who discovered the fire; then how the Jones family managed to
escape; and after that how the fire was extinguished, and we might slip
in a paragraph explaining just what trouble in the chimney made a fire
possible. The editor may chop off any number of paragraphs or cut the
story down to the lead, and yet our readers will get the facts and know
just exactly what was the reason for the fire bell and the red sky at
midnight last night.

VI

THE FEATURE FIRE STORY

A fire story without a feature begins with "Fire" because there is
nothing in the story more interesting than the fact that there has been
a fire. Such was the case in the burning of John Jones's house in the
last chapter. But just as soon as any part of the story becomes more
interesting than the fact that there was a fire, the story is no longer
featureless--it is a fire story with a feature, or, for the purposes of
our study, _a feature fire story_. This feature may be related to the
story in one of two ways.