... Is the title of Virginia Fage's winning article which appeared in this April's Sport Diver magazine. Virginia attended the writer's workshop I ran last year in the Philippines and this is what Sport Diver had to say about the course and how they chose the winner:
"Writers' Workshop Winner
Students enrolled on a photo-journalism course in the Philippines had the incentive of possible seeing their work published in Sport Diver.
Sport Diver teamed up with occasional contributor Brendan O'Brien, who was running a photo-journalism course in the Philippines with underwater photographer Michael Aw (Brendan handled the writing side of things, Michael the shooting bit). We supplied a commissioning letter to those taking part to get them to focus on what was needed in an article for a mainstream diving magazine, and as an added incentive, we agreed that the best finished product (text and images) would appear in print. Virginia Fage emerged as the winner after impressing the judges with her photographs and writing style.
How we chose our winner
Mark Evans on the decision process he went through
Congratulations to Virginia Fage, who was chosen to have her debut scuba-diving article published within the pages of Sport Diver. The judges liked the style of her article, which immediately threw the reader into the midst of an exciting dive, and her photographs were consistently good, both macro and wide-angle.
Runners up David Kittos and Robert Yee both did well - we liked David's writing style, but there were too few underwater photographs; and Robert had some great shots, but this article didn't capture our attention."
Hopefully this will give you some idea as to what editors are looking for, it's not just about the writing, but the complete package. I know that much of what Virginia prepared in terms of box outs didn't get published, but that's the way it is in the magazine world, it's all down to space and the balance between editorial and advertising.
Congratulations again to Virginia and I hope this isn't the last we see of her efforts to get published.
For Bob and David, I believe their articles will go online on the Sport Diver website soon. I'll publish the link as soon as they do.
Keep Writing...
Brendan
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