“You choose what you want to have in the sculpture you are carving out,” Jamal said, while explaining how long-form writing was about selection and not compression.

Jamal — who has worked with many media houses including Reuters, The Economic Times, Mint and The Hindu — took the class through everything from how to pitch a long-form story to the things a journalist should keep in mind while structuring it.

He also talked about the relevance of revealing something new in a long piece rather than merely focusing on the back story. He mentioned how having a significant ‘what’ and ‘so what’ made a long-form story more compelling.

Jamal, who most recently worked with CapTable, used the real estate beat to take the class through the stages of writing a long-form story including the identification of a central theme, selection of sub-categories and development of questions tied to those categories. He also discussed the vast amount of research and reporting that goes into it.