I used to wonder what it takes to write a strange news story and now I know that there is nothing strange about how to write an outline on how to succeed. Kidding aside it shouldn't be more difficult than writing a guideline on how to write an advice column or a review of a book. What are needed are organization, concentration and knowing where to look for input. The story may be on a bizarre discovery, relationship, criminal case or something, which does not have to centre only on human activity.
A story is strange insofar as the news is out of the ordinary. One can be dealing with the same people that make up a regular news story but these same people may be involved in different circumstances. If one wants to take on a photojournalistic approach than taking film footage of weird animal behaviour will often provide the writer with sufficient material to summarize his strange tale.
A story may have some far-fetched slant like a connection of an animal disappearance to the presence of extraterrestrials. Here one would want to get witness accounts of how those animals were seen to have disappeared on some majestic spacecraft. There will always be a readership for the implausible.
Once the type of incident has been defined, one can go about describing how the subject handles himself differently then when he would be under normal circumstances. In a recent story on a couple that collected benefits from health insurance company after eating glass, that ingestion is uncommon. The victims did not avoid further ingestion risking harm, instead they continued making this a weird masochistic money making scheme. What is further uncommon is how the couple managed to dupe the hospital staff into believing that they were victims of involuntary glass ingestion. The couple then escaped hospital after hospitals in a series of consecutive treatments until eventually someone was able to tie some loose ends together and capture them. After all how many hospitals did this couple intend to visit before suspicions would be raised?
One would have to contact hospitals for information on abnormal admittances in order to write similar stories. One can also attempt to dig into hospital records for other bizarre money making schemes. Obviously the subject matter can vary. What is strange here is the couple's ability to dupe the hospital staff, and their choice of how to make money. Remember the guy who would eat nuts and bolts? I wonder how his oesophagus and stomach have held up. All this comes close to some daredevil act that draws the curious voyeur.
So the author can look into any incident that is uncommon yet attracts attention because it is bizarre. The discovery of naïve hospital personnel unable to piece the voluntary glass eating incidents makes the story even more appealing. A strange news story can instead be done on weird animal behaviour, which has its advantages in that one does not have to worry about people interviews. The author may have to do some research to be sure that the story has not been written up before, unless he can offer an additional slant and he may want to interview his subject to get a first hand account.
