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Inverted pyramid news story template

The inverted pyramid puts the whole story in the first sentence or two and everything else after it, in order of importance. A reader who stops after the first paragraph still has the news, and an editor can cut from the bottom without losing anything that matters.

News pages taper from the essential event at the top to removable incidental details at the bottom.

When to use it

  • You are writing news, a press release, or an announcement.
  • Your reader will skim. The first paragraph has to stand on its own.
  • Your piece may be cut to fit, and you want the cuts to come from the end.

It suited newspapers that cut stories from the bottom to fit the page, and has outlasted the paper.

The 6 sections at 800 words

The marks assume 800 words, because a short news story runs 400 to 1,000 words. Each chapter starts at an even share of the whole; yours will run longer or shorter. The story structure calculator works them out for any length.

  1. What Happened The whole story in a sentence or two. A reader who stops here still knows it.
  2. Why It Matters The reason this is news now, and to whom.
  3. The Detail The specifics: numbers, names, sequence.
  4. Background What a reader needs to know to make sense of it.
  5. What People Say Quotes and reaction, from the people it lands on.
  6. What Happens Next What is still unresolved, and when it will be.

A worked example

A water main breaks under the high street on a market day.

  1. What Happened. A water main burst under the high street at 7 a.m. Saturday, flooding the market and closing the road until Monday.
  2. Why It Matters. Forty stalls lost a trading day, and two hundred homes are on bottled water.
  3. The Detail. The pipe was laid in 1911; crews shut it off at 9:40 a.m.
  4. Background. The council deferred replacing it in 2023 to fund road repairs.
  5. What People Say. A fruit seller says she lost six hundred dollars of stock. The council says repairs are its priority.
  6. What Happens Next. Engineers inspect the rest of the line on Tuesday, and the council meets Thursday.

Open this template in Tabularia

Start a new project, choose Article, and pick the Inverted Pyramid shape. Each section arrives with its heading and its note beside it.

Open in Tabularia

Or take it away

The Word file has every section with its note and mark, a line under each for your own plan, and the example above. It opens in Word, Google Docs, Pages, and LibreOffice.

Download for Word