Quarantine Life Changes

Features are usually written from the perspective of someone whos is observing someone else or an event that is being taken place. In this case, the BuzzFeed article that discusses five parents and their daily routine since the quarantine was put in place is written by the parents themselves. Usually, with features, the writer tends to be very descriptive when it comes to their surroundings. In this case, the parents writing about their day are descriptive but not as much as they could be. Reading these post it feels more like I am reading a list of all the things they do throughout the day. I felt like I was not put into their home, the words they chose should make me feel like I can see what they are talking about even though I’m not there. Another concept that stood out to me was the emotion throughout the five stories. Especially the one about the mom who can’t hold her baby because she could have the virus. Usually, with the features I have written, there was little emotional pull to the story but all these stories center around the emotions of stress and sadness.

Throughout this article, it contained five different voices sharing five different stories. Each person gets to write a little paragraph to talk about the basic information including their job, and the dynamic of their family. Then there are pictures from their day and then a breakdown of the time of day and the task or activity they do during that time. Each person has different photos and times based on their life. It is very interesting to read stories with similar but also different outlooks on this pandemic. Some of them are trying to stay positive throughout the hard times while others admit defeat and feeling lost. Feel free to check out their stories by clicking the link here.

Now concerning the interview process with these stories, I would think that the interviews would have been taken place through email or over the phone. Depending on which form of interviewing the author used impacts the story greatly. When you interview in person, there are aspects that a writer can’t get without face to face interaction. For example, body language the person being interviewed could say something in a positive tone of voice but their body expresses there is a sense of sadness to what they said. There is a lack of “intimacy” in the writing, the reader has no connection to the story minus the fact that quarantine is affecting them too. Readers want to feel part of the story and in this case, that’s not present.