Writing my DPS Article

Instead of beginning with layouts for my DPS, I've chosen to write the article first because it's the main element to this part of my magazine. I used my research into individual articles and my summary to write a conventional interview, and hopefully my style of writing is professional enough. However, writing my own was slightly different to those in my research, as I'd only analysed those of bands not any solo artists, so I just adapted conventions accordingly to suit my article.


Because I didn't know quite where to start, I used various sources for inspiration. I used the Kaiser Chiefs interview for quite a lot of my writing techniques and to get the balance between chatter and music info right. I wanted to keep my answers very realistic, so I used the biography on P!nk's website to capture the essence, as I think had I just imagined stuff up, it might of got a bit too far fetched and ruined any professionality.

I'd already decided on a Q&A style as it's better for many reasons, as I predicted and then proved by my questionnaire. But on re-reading some DPS using that format, I noticed not all the questions were actually questions. Some were just statements the artist responded to, so I'll do this to add humour and stop the over-questioning feel which may seem a bit juvenile.

I started with conventional scene setting, which gave me a good foundation to start my actual questions. I gave the location, set the mood, some background information about the artist and a fairly random chattery topic (hatred of Ugg boots) which lead me onto the questions smoothly. I dropped in some popular culture language, like Uggs and Starbucks, which hopefully settled the reader into the article as they're good signifiers of current hegemonic interests at the moment.

After lingering around this light topic, I moved onto some talk about her new album, to represent that musical information side. I included a philosophical metaphor about the name of her new album, which hopefully isn't too deep but I'm hoping it'll help with personal identity and teach some readers a value, and won't have the aberrant reading of showing P!nk to be really weird. Risky though.

I asked some more music questions, combined with personal information, then veered to the social chatter side again with a sarcastic comment. I want to give the impression the article is longer and carries on, so I'll finish here for my double page spread.

I think I've managed to continue my house style in the writing, that blunt humour as used on my cover and contents, and it's helped by the statments, as I begin with the statement "Nice tee." in reference to P!nk's bold t-shirt. Also in class today, we did an exercise about carrying on house style in the DPS, and as my work was used as an example, I learned that the humour was part of my house style. I think I'll naturally make sure the look of my DPS incorporates my house style, obviously with the colours and a slightly unconventional layout, as I've had for my cover and contents.

I'll post my final article in my next post.