My mantra: What was, what’s new, what’s now®

Back in 2011, I came up with an easy way to teach my college students a weird-sounding writing trick. The “trick” is called a nut graf. It’s a key storytelling tool for journalists that’s actually useful for anyone. But it was hard to explain for a bunch of reasons, starting with its name. My solution for dealing with the nut graf was to create a catchy mantra that can change our lives.

This is the mantra: What was, what’s new, what’s now.

For the past 13 years, my mantra has helped students and professional journalists sort through the huge piles of info that go into creating a story. The mantra simplifies the process of identifying the nut graf, which is a paragraph that shows up at the beginning of an article. This paragraph – or graf, for short – needs to summarize what the story is about.

To break it down, the nut graf (sometimes spelled nut graph), should explain:

• What’s the new thing that’s just happened (what’s new), which made us want to write the article.
• How the new thing creates a situation that’s different from what went on in the past (what was).
• What’s going on now because of these changes? And how will the future change (what’s now).

The nut graf’s power comes from its ability to break out the three dimensions of time: past, present, future. If we can analyze a story, topic or situation in 3-D, we can walk all the way around the issue and get a fuller picture. When we can see what’s going on, we can think more clearly, thoroughly and creatively.

How the mantra can help solve personal problems

Once I created the mantra, I found myself thinking through my problems in terms of:

• What was going on all this time?
• What’s the new thing that’s changes the status quo?
• How do these changes open up new options – both positive and negative?

I discovered such calm and perspective from using the nut graf mantra. I’ve even taken it into my work as a holistic life & career coach, which is what I do now. It’s so helpful for clients to see the past in one bucket, change in another bucket – and then, the big, open bucket that sits in front of them now.

What was :)

I loved the nut graf and my mantra so much that on April 6, 2011, I published What is a nut graf (or, nut graph? on this blog. I’m proud to say that my old post still shows up sometimes on the second page of the typical google search.

In 2014, I trademarked what was, what’s new, what’s now® and consider it central for even more than my coaching. It’s at the core of creating a movement of journalARTists. We are the people who use journalism skills as our core skills for the art of living. These skills help us get the lives an careers we really want.

If you’d like to learn more about journalism skills for non-journalists, please check out my e-book, 9 Steps for Writing like a Journalist: What was, what’s new, what’s now!