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1. Evaluation
In this project I looked at several different styles of writing, observed and
learnt the traits they each had and recreated them in pieces of my own. At the end of
the project I was able to choose one of the pieces I had written and design the
spread for it to go into a magazine, tabloid or similar publication.
Fanzine
For the Fanzine I gathered information and got a feel for the style of writing by
reading other Fanzine’s and making note of them. The style is very clear, but is one
that I at first struggled with and my first draft was far too formal and did not fit the
Fanzine style at all and would not have been appropriate for the audience.
For example the opening paragraph for my first draft read as follows; “The American
Dream, an ideological driving force behind a whole nation that has no better shining
example of success than that of the Atl Twins.” This sentence would fit better in a
newspaper or some other more formal publication but fanzines are often written how
someone would speak and are very discussion based with lots of devices such as
rhetorical questions and slang words used.
In my second draft I used less formal words and toned down the writing style. I
changed the whole piece and am now much more satisfied that it fits in to the
Fanzine style.
The Second draft opens; “Right. I am sick of People hating on The ATL twins
because they don’t know anything about them or are just plain jealous!” Using things
such as the one word sentence is quite informal and gives the feeling that the piece
could have been spoken and the words written down, it has the ranting, highly
defensive style that the first draft lacked.
As I mentioned before I found it hard to write in a style that would fit the style of a
fanzine and would be appreciated by the readers of them. Because of this it did take
me a while to produce something I was pleased with. After finishing my first draft I
reviewed it and decided it was too formal and re-wrote the whole thing achieving a
much better piece of writing. This did not take me too long once I got into the right
frame of mind to write this style. I completed the second draft quickly and was not put
behind because of it so my time management was good.
I think the content I included in my fanzine was always appropriate but I just initially
wrote about it in the wrong way. I discussed the “hate” the twins got over the Internet
and then aggressively shut down these rumors and allegations as the existing
fanzines I had looked at did.
I believe my technical competence was quite good with my second draft. The first
draft was not good for a fanzine piece, as I was not used to writing like this, but once
I reviewed and again looked at some existing pieces of work I was able to write with
the correct tone.
Obituary
I think the formal tone that obituaries must be written in suited my writing style much
more than the Fanzine and so I found this much easier as I could just write rather
than having to get myself in to a certain frame of mind before starting to write.

2. When I sent my first draft to my tutor I listened to the feedback I was given and took
out the first two opening paragraphs. The reason for this decision was that the
paragraphs read more like a newspaper report than an obituary. After getting the
feedback and referring back to a few existing obituaries and looking at some
newspaper reports I realised that taking the two paragraphs out would improve my
piece greatly.
I reviewed my work as I went on, but it did take my tutor pointing out the similarities
between the first two paragraphs and a newspaper report for me to realise this and
take them out.
Separate from this I believe I continually reviewed my work quite well and kept
referring back to existing obituaries to become familiar with the tone of writing and
different sentences that seemed to occur in all the obituaries. One of these were they
would usually end with something like “he/she is survived through their…” and list the
persons children or partner. After realising this trait, I researched to double check
that the twins did not have any children or a wife but after finding out they did not I
left this sentence out.
One reoccurring sentence I did include to round off my obituary however was “Sidney
and Thurman Sewell, both born on the same day in 1988; died on the same day, 18th
June 2014.” This sentence is a good finish to an obituary giving the necessary
information to end the piece. Unfortunately I could not find the age or birth date of the
twins anywhere and had to guess it by an online article I found that was published in
2013 (http://miista.com/two-bodies-one-person/) that stated “these 25 year olds”.
From this piece of information I guessed the twins were born in 1988 but could not
find a birthday anywhere and so just left it as the birth year in the obituary.
I think my time management with this project was good and there was only a few
small improvements to make to my first draft until I was happy with it. Because of this
there was no delays and I was able to keep up to speed and keep with the schedule
we had. This allowed me to move on to the next piece of work with plenty of time and
allowed me to work to the best of my ability without rushing.
I think I was able to be relatively creative with my obituary and although the subject
was pretty morbid, I think I came up with a believable and probable outcome for the
death of the twins coming from what I’ve found about them in my research. The
Twins on more than one occasion talk about the fact that if one of them died, the
other would take his own life to be reunited with his brother, so in my obituary I made
this claim reality.
My obituary was appropriate for its audience I believe. It had to be formal and
informative as it is a somber report, and I think I executed this style well. It delivers all
the necessary facts such as the twins’ great achievements and some details about
their deaths and a small statement from their family. The content I have included is
all things that are written about in all the other obituaries I read before starting my
own.
Interview
To complete the interview task I had to write a number of questions about my chosen
celebrities on Survey monkey in the form of a questionnaire and then send the link to
my questionnaire out to people in the hope that they would complete it. I posted the
link on YouTube videos of the twins, Facebook fan pages and on twitter, as well as
asking my brother to fill it out.
After leaving the link out on the internet for a week I reviewed my progress and
unfortunately had had no responses, so I thought of more places I could put it and
spread it about some more. I also emailed a owner of a Facebook fan page to post it
on his wall but he would not do so unless I paid him, so I was unable to get him to do
this for me.

3. After these further attempts at getting my questionnaire on to the Internet I was able
to get a few people who answered them. As they were typing their responses and
with my brothers he was speaking as I copied what he said down, their answers were
very brief in comparison to his.
I think that the questions I asked were technically good, aiming to attain qualitative
data that I could analyse and use to fill up a page for a published interview. The
People who answered them however were reluctant to take they time to write a lot
and so unfortunately the only really good information I attained was from my brother.
I think if I were to undertake this task again I would do a lot more one on one
interview that would be discussion based while I copy down what they say. This
would allow me to gain a lot more data. The trouble with this task was my brother
was the only other person I knew who liked the ATL Twins and was able to answer
questions about them and so I could not set up a 1 on 1 interview with anyone else.
Press Release
The press release was quite enjoyable as I was able to use my creativity in making
up something the twins would do to require one. I chose to make it so the twins had
released a collaborated clothing line with the head designer of clothing label Hood By
Air. The twins often wear cloths from this brand and have been seen with Shayne
Oliver at New York fashion week in real life and so I thought that the press release
was plausible and made sense.
I followed the template that most press releases giving the most important, breaking
news that I want the article to be written about at the start, followed by more basic
information about the twins that can be used to bulk out the article. These things
include things like where they grew up, their jobs etc. The idea of a press release is
that someone who knows little or nothing about the Twins could pick the press
release up and write an article about them. I think my press release fits this purpose
well, providing dates and information primarily about the clothing line but then about
the twins’ life and how the collaboration with Oliver came about.
Tabloid
To prepare for writing the tabloid piece I read a number of tabloid articles, reading
papers such as The Sun and The Metro on the train to and from college. This
allowed me to get a feel of how tabloid articles are written and made it much easier
for me to adopt this style in my own work.
I had plenty of time to complete this work and so was able to take my time and
review it as I was working. After finding out that one of the Twins was once arrested
on a drink driving charge I researched it and used this as the subject for my article.
This allowed me to use a little creativity to talk about the things that occurred
surrounding the event. I think that I wrote so that my piece was interesting but still
believable, being a newspaper article it had to be true and so I had to make sure
what I said could be seen as true and believable.