In Writing with Power, Elbow explains how modern news stories commonly deviate from the traditional four W's--Who, What, When, Where--by beginning with a piece of collage writing, e.g. a narrative, a brief portrait of an individual, or a dialogue. When you are reading, notice how many other writers use this writing technique to attract their reader's interest and to support their ideas. 

Here is an excerpt from Writing with Power in which Elbow explains the loop writing process and its connection to the collage essay.

The loop writing process is an ideal way to produce material for a collage essay: something that fulfills the function of an essay but is made up almost entirely of passages in which you try to give your reader an experience of what you are saying rather than an explanation of it. 

1)  Vary the Personas - adopt different personas or voices and role play with the different biases surrounding your topic.

2)  Vary the Audience - pretend that you are writing for a very specific audience who has a definite group bias. Varying the audience helps you see your topic from a perspective other than your own.

3)  Vary the Time - write to an audience in the past, in the future. Put yourself in the past or the future and write about your topic. Put your topic in the past or in the future.

4)  Dialogues - create a dialogue between two different viewpoints connected to your topic. You might even want to try more than two.

5)  Stories (Narrative) - write about real or create possible incidents connected to your topic.

6)  Scenes - these are similar to stories, but with scenes you focus on more specific moments. Elbow suggests you consider and write about the "places, moments, sounds, or moods" connected to your topic.

7)  Portraits - use a written portrait about person(s) connected to your topic to convey your message.


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Adapted from Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power and A Community of Writers..