Date: Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007
Time: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Location: 688 Xizang Nan Lu, 1-602. (Will move to conference room if necessary.)

Cost: Free for Trombly Ltd. freelancers and staff, 50 RMB for guests. Includes drinks and pizza.
Contact: Anna Zhang at anna.zhang@tromblyltd.com or 6345-9219

There's a formula to writing business feature stories for US business magazines. There's a formula about who to talk to, what questions to ask, and how to organize the story.

Without knowing the formula, writing your first business feature can seem overwhelming, and the advice from editors doesn't always make sense.

Many experienced writers and editors don't even know what the formula is -- instead, they have a gut feeling about what a good business story should look like, based on years of experience. Sometimes, talking to them can make you feel like a total idiot.

But the formula is not difficult to learn, and it guarantees that the story will be usable. It won't guarantee that the story will be great -- that's up to the writer. But it will satisfy the minimum requirements of most trade business publications in the United States, and will exceed the minimums in most other countries.

We're going to be holding a seminar on Wednesday, at 5 p.m., about how to write a standard three-part trend feature story, and its most common variations.

If you're interested in attending, please contact Anna Zhang at anna.zhang@tromblyltd.com or 6345-9219. We need to know how many people are coming so we can reserve a conference room and order pizza. We had about a dozen people come to our last workshop, on pitching stories.