Closest Thing To A Slice-Of-Life Story.

I scoured the Register Guard. I searched the Oregonian. I got desperate, so I even googled and yahooed the words “slice of life” and “newspaper”. Nothing. Not even Wikipedia had a smattering of a trail to follow. Then I started aimlessly blog hopping, starting with random Oregonian writers. Technically… I don’t know if what I found fits into the guidelines for a slice story, but it is the closest thing I’ve found and so I decided something was better than nothing.
Brooklyn Tweed posted a blog about shelter, a specific kind of yarn and how it is dyed. It’s a very specific article, on just the dying process which would typically be boring, except for the fantastic photos. Tweed gives good analogies, such as “the process is like mixing paint colors,” and “wool confetti.” The lede was not as interesting as it could have been, but the photo that followed acted as part of the lede (since the nut graf was hidden on the computer screen until I scrolled down). When I saw the photo I understood that the author was talking about: yarn! The following paragraph then explains exactly what shelter is. Typically, this doesn’t follow the “fly on the wall” stance that traditional stories follow (the article is first person), and it does border on the line of a “how to”, but at least it’s not a profile piece, nor take the issue much larger. It stays well honed, and offers room for future related articles.

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