write a feature article story

How to Write a Feature Story: Step-By-Step

This article gives a step-by-step process that can be used when writing feature articles. Read more and learn how to write a feature story effectively.

Feature stories are long-form non-fiction news articles that go into detail on a given topic. The most common type of feature stories are human interest stories, interviews and news features.

All of the best feature writers know that their articles live and die on the information that is detailed within the story. However, it requires more than just quality research to create a strong feature article.

You also need to understand how to get the reader’s attention from the first paragraph, as well as how to format the body of the article, and how to write a strong conclusion. It also helps if you have a flair for creative writing, as the style involved isn’t as rigid as traditional news stories.

If all this sounds complex, then don’t fret. There is a step-by-step process that can be used when writing feature articles.

Before we share that template, let us first take a quick look at a few of the different genres of this type of story format.

1. Human Interest

2. news features, 3. lifestyle features, 4. seasonal features, 5. interview pieces, 6. color stories, 7. profile features, 8. behind the scenes, 9. travel features, 10. instructional features, something completely different, steps for writing a feature writing, 1. evaluate your story ideas, 2. do your research, 3. decide the type of feature you want to write, 4. select an appropriate writing style, 5. craft a compelling headline, 6. open with interest, 7. don’t be afraid to be creative, writing a feature story: the last word, 10 different types of feature articles.

As the title suggests, when writing human interest stories, the focus is on people. There is usually a strong emphasis on emotion within these stories.

These feature stories can involve a personal goal, achievement, or a dramatic event within someone’s (or a group of people’s) life.

It can also just be a general story about the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

Examples: ‘The leather jacket I bought in my 20s represents a different woman. I just can’t let it go’, ‘I wish I had Rami Malek as a role model growing up – I was stuck with the Mummy’.

News features are probably the most common type of feature article. Within these, there is a strong emphasis on a current event, with the story explaining the reasons behind these events.

They may also go on to examine the implications behind the news stories.

Examples: ‘Eastern Europe’s business schools rise to meet western counterparts’, MBA by numbers: Mobility of UK graduates’.

Lifestyle features usually centre around life and how it can be lived better. For instance, an example of a lifestyle feature would be ‘Six Workouts You Have to Try This Summer’, or ‘Why You Need To Try Meditation’.

Lifestyle features are common within magazines.

Example: Six ways with Asian greens: ‘They’re almost like a cross between spinach and broccoli’ .

These feature articles are specific to certain times of year.

If you work within a newsroom, it is likely that they will have a calendar that schedules the times when certain types of features are due to be written.

One of of the advantages of these types of features is that you can plan them in a way you can’t with typical news stories.

Examples: ‘ 5 Ways to Celebrate the Holidays With The New York Times ’, The Start of Summer .

Interview features have commonalities with other types of features, but are set apart as they are centred around a single interview.

A good way to strengthen this type of article is to share background information within the it. This information can be either on the interviewee, or the subject that is being discussed.

Examples: Mark Rylance on ‘Jerusalem’ and the Golf Comedy ‘Phantom of the Open’ , ‘I Deserve to Be Here’: Riding His First Professional Gig to Broadway

This is a feature that breaks down the feel and atmosphere of a hard news story.

They often accompany news writing.

Good feature writing here will help the reader imagine what it was like to be a at a certain event, or help them gain further understanding of the issues and implications involved of a story.

Examples: ‘ Why the Central African Republic adopted Bitcoin ’, ‘Admissions teams innovate to find ideal candidates’ .

A profile feature is like a mini-biography.

It tries to paint a picture of a person by revealing not only facts relating to their life, but also elements of their personality.

It can be framed around a certain time, or event within a person’s life, It can also simply be a profile detailing a person’s journey through life.

Examples: Why Ray Liotta was so much more than Goodfellas , Sabotage and pistols – was Ellen Willmott gardening’s ‘bad girl’?

These are features that give readers the inside track on what is happening.

They are particularly popular with entertainment journalists, but are used by feature writers within every sphere.

Examples: ‘‘You Just Have to Accept That Wes Is Right’: The French Dispatch crew explains how it pulled off the movie’s quietly impossible long shot ’. ‘The Diamond Desk, Surveillance Shots, and 7 Other Stories About Making Severance’.

As you probably guessed, a travel feature often features a narrator who is writing about a place that the reader has an interest in.

It is the job of the writer to inform their audience of the experiences, sights and sounds that they can also experience if they ever visit this destination.

Examples: ‘ Palau’s world-first ‘good traveller’ incentive ’, ‘An icy mystery deep in Arctic Canada’.

‘How to’ features will always have their place and have become even more popular with the advent of the internet phenomenon known as ‘life hacks’. There is now a subsection of these features, where writers try out ‘how to’ instructional content and let the reader know how useful it actually is.

Interestingly, you don’t have to go far to find an instructional feature article. You are actually reading one at the moment.

Example: The article you are reading right now.

Of course, the above is just an overview of some of the types of features that exist. You shouldn’t get bogged down by the idea that some feature types interlope with others.

Feature writing is a dynamic area that is constantly evolving and so are the topics and styles associated with this type of writing.

If you have an idea for something completely different, don’t be afraid to try it.

Now we covered some of the main types, let’s take a look at the steps you should take when planning to write a feature article.

It sounds obvious, but the first step on the path to a good feature article is to have a strong idea. If you are struggling for inspiration, then it may be worth your while checking out popular feature sections within newspapers or websites.

For instance, the New York Times is renowned for its wonderful ‘Trending’ section , as is The Guardian , for its features. Of course, these sites should be used only for education and inspiration.

In an instructional feature article, online learning platform MasterClass gives a good overview of the type of research that needs to be done for this type of article.

It states: “Feature stories need more than straight facts and sensory details—they need evidence. Quotes, anecdotes, and interviews are all useful when gathering information for (a) feature story.”

The article also gives an overview of why research is important. It reads: “Hearing the viewpoints or recollections of witnesses, family members, or anyone else… can help (the article) feel more three-dimensional, allowing you to craft a more vivid and interesting story.”

Feature articles may involve creative writing, but they are still based on facts. That is why research should be a tenet of any article you produce in this area.

Shortly after starting your research, you will be posed the question of ‘what type of feature do I want to write?’.

The answer to this question may even change from when you had your initial idea.

For example, you may have decided that you want to do a lifestyle feature on the physical fitness plan of your local sports team. However, during research, you realized that there is a far more interesting interview piece on one of the athletes who turned their physical health around by joining the team.

Of course, that is a fictional scenario, but anyone who has ever worked within a newsroom knows how story ideas can evolve and change based on the reporting that’s done for them.

The next step is to consider the language you will be using while writing the article. As you become more experienced, this will be second nature to you. However, for now, below are a few tips.

When writing a feature, you should do so with your own unique style. Unlike straight news stories, you can insert your personality and use emotive language.

However, you should avoid too many adjectives and adverbs and other overused words . You should generally refer to the audience as ‘you’ too.

To learn more, check out our article about the best style guides .

As you can tell from the examples listed above, a good feature usually has a good headline/ header. If you are lucky enough to work in a newsroom with a good subeditor, then they will work with you to decide an eye-catching headline.

However, most of you will have to pick your features’ header on your own. Thus, it’s worth giving some time to consider this stage of the process.

It is handy to take a look at Matrix Education’s tips for creating a catchy headline.

They are as follows:

• Use emotive language.
• Keep it short and snappy.
• Directly address the reader.
• Use adjectives / adverbs.
• Tell readers what your content is about.
• Ask a question.
• Give an imperative.

These are, of course, only options and they all shouldn’t be utilized at once.

Another suggestion that can be added to the list is grabbing an intriguing quote from the story and using that within the header.

Your opening paragraph should draw the reader in. It is important that you can hook them here; if you can grab them at the start, they are far more likely to go deeper into the article.

Methods of doing this include the building of tension, the posing of a rhetorical question, making an outlandish statement that is proven true later in the article, or working your way back from a monumental event that the reader is already familiar with.

Whichever you use, the primary goal should be to catch the reader’s interest and to make them want to read on.

If you need help, start with writing a five-paragraph essay .

Jean-Luc Godard said that “a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”.

That statement can be somewhat applied to feature articles. However, don’t be afraid to take risks with your writing. Of course, it is important to share the information you need to share, but a feature article does offer far more room for creativity than the writing of a traditional news story.

8. Leave With A Bang

All the best feature writer leave a little something for the reader who reaches the end of the article. Whether that is a storming conclusion, or something that ties it all together, it is important that there is some sort of conclusion.

It gives your audience a feeling of satisfaction upon reading the article and will make this is the element that will make them look out for the articles that you will write in the future.

The above steps don’t necessarily need to be followed in the order they are written. However, if you are new to this type of writing, they should give you a good starting point as when creating feature articles.

When writing feature articles, you will find a style and a voice that suits you. This is a type of journalistic writing where you can embrace that creative side and run with it.

• What is a feature story example?

Jennifer Senior won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for an article entitled ‘What Bobby McIlVaine Left Behind’, an article about the human aftermath of grief after 9/11. It is an excellent example of a quality feature article.

• What is the difference between a feature story and a news story?

There are several differences between a feature article and a news story.

Firstly, news articles are time-sensitive, whereas there is more flexibility when a feature can be published as it will still be of interest to the public.

Secondly, feature stories are usually more long-form than news stories, with differences in style employed in both. For instance, news writing often employs the inverted pyramid, where the most important information is at the start. Whereas, feature writing has a tendency to tease out the information throughout the article.

Lastly, the ending of a news story usually happens when all the relevant and available details are shared. On the other hand, a feature story usually ends with the writer tying up the loose-ends that exist with an overall conclusion.

Bryan Collins is the owner of Become a Writer Today. He's an author from Ireland who helps writers build authority and earn a living from their creative work. He's also a former Forbes columnist and his work has appeared in publications like Lifehacker and Fast Company.

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How to Write a Feature Article: A Step-by-Step Guide

Feature stories are one of the most crucial forms of writing these days, we can find feature articles and examples in many news websites, blog websites, etc.  While writing a feature article a lot of things should be kept in mind as well. Feature stories are a powerful form of journalism, allowing writers to delve deeper into subjects and explore the human element behind the headlines. Whether you’re a budding journalist or an aspiring storyteller, mastering the art of feature story writing is essential for engaging your readers and conveying meaningful narratives. In this blog, you’ll find the process of writing a feature article, feature article writing tips, feature article elements, etc. The process of writing a compelling feature story, offering valuable tips, real-world examples, and a solid structure to help you craft stories that captivate and resonate with your audience.

Read Also: Top 5 Strategies for Long-Term Success in Journalism Careers

Table of Contents

Understanding the Essence of a Feature Story

Before we dive into the practical aspects, let’s clarify what a feature story is and what sets it apart from news reporting. While news articles focus on delivering facts and information concisely, feature stories are all about storytelling. They go beyond the “who, what, when, where, and why” to explore the “how” and “why” in depth. Feature stories aim to engage readers emotionally, making them care about the subject, and often, they offer a unique perspective or angle on a topic.

Tips and tricks for writing a Feature article

 In the beginning, many people can find difficulty in writing a feature, but here we have especially discussed some special tips and tricks for writing a feature article. So here are some Feature article writing tips and tricks: –

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1. Choose an Interesting Angle:

The first step in feature story writing is selecting a unique and compelling angle or theme for your story. Look for an aspect of the topic that hasn’t been explored widely, or find a fresh perspective that can pique readers’ curiosity.

2. Conduct Thorough Research:

Solid research is the foundation of any feature story. Dive deep into your subject matter, interview relevant sources, and gather as much information as possible. Understand your subject inside out to present a comprehensive and accurate portrayal.

3. Humanize Your Story:

Feature stories often revolve around people, their experiences, and their emotions. Humanize your narrative by introducing relatable characters and sharing their stories, struggles, and triumphs.

4. Create a Strong Lead:

Your opening paragraph, or lead, should be attention-grabbing and set the tone for the entire story. Engage your readers from the start with an anecdote, a thought-provoking question, or a vivid description.

5. Structure Your Story:

Feature stories typically follow a narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning introduces the topic and engages the reader, the middle explores the depth of the subject, and the end provides closure or leaves readers with something to ponder.

6. Use Descriptive Language:

Paint a vivid picture with your words. Utilize descriptive language and sensory details to transport your readers into the world you’re depicting.

7. Incorporate Quotes and Anecdotes:

Quotes from interviews and anecdotes from your research can breathe life into your story. They add authenticity and provide insights from real people.

8. Engage Emotionally:

Feature stories should evoke emotions. Whether it’s empathy, curiosity, joy, or sadness, aim to connect with your readers on a personal level.

Read Also: The Ever-Evolving World Of Journalism: Unveiling Truths and Shaping Perspectives

Examples of Feature Stories

Here we are describing some of the feature articles examples which are as follows:-

“Finding Beauty Amidst Chaos: The Life of a Street Artist”

This feature story delves into the world of a street artist who uses urban decay as his canvas, turning neglected spaces into works of art. It explores his journey, motivations, and the impact of his art on the community.

“The Healing Power of Music: A Veteran’s Journey to Recovery”

This story follows a military veteran battling post-traumatic stress disorder and how his passion for music became a lifeline for healing. It intertwines personal anecdotes, interviews, and the therapeutic role of music.

“Wildlife Conservation Heroes: Rescuing Endangered Species, One Baby Animal at a Time”

In this feature story, readers are introduced to a group of dedicated individuals working tirelessly to rescue and rehabilitate endangered baby animals. It showcases their passion, challenges, and heartwarming success stories.

What should be the feature a Feature article structure?

Read Also: What is The Difference Between A Journalist and A Reporter?

Structure of a Feature Story

A well-structured feature story typically follows this format:

Headline: A catchy and concise title that captures the essence of the story. This is always written at the top of the story.

Lead: A captivating opening paragraph that hooks the reader. The first 3 sentences of any story that explains 5sW & 1H are known as lead.

Introduction : Provides context and introduces the subject. Lead is also a part of the introduction itself.

Body : The main narrative section that explores the topic in depth, including interviews, anecdotes, and background information.

Conclusion: Wraps up the story, offers insights, or leaves the reader with something to ponder.

Additional Information: This may include additional resources, author information, or references.

Read Also: Benefits and Jobs After a MAJMC Degree

Writing a feature article is a blend of journalistic skills and storytelling artistry. By choosing a compelling angle, conducting thorough research, and structuring your story effectively, you can create feature stories that captivate and resonate with your readers. AAFT also provides many courses related to journalism and mass communication which grooms a person to write new articles, and news and learn new skills as well. Remember that practice is key to honing your feature story writing skills, so don’t be discouraged if it takes time to perfect your craft. With dedication and creativity, you’ll be able to craft feature stories that leave a lasting impact on your audience.

What are the characteristics of a good feature article?

A good feature article is well-written, engaging, and informative. It should tell a story that is interesting to the reader and that sheds light on an important issue.

Why is it important to write feature articles?

Feature articles can inform and entertain readers. They can also help to shed light on important issues and to promote understanding and empathy.

What are the challenges of writing a feature article?

The challenges of writing a feature article can vary depending on the topic and the audience. However, some common challenges include finding a good angle for the story, gathering accurate information, and writing in a clear and concise style.

Aaditya Kanchan is a skilled Content Writer and Digital Marketer with experience of 5+ years and a focus on diverse subjects and content like Journalism, Digital Marketing, Law and sports etc. He also has a special interest in photography, videography, and retention marketing. Aaditya writes in simple language where complex information can be delivered to the audience in a creative way.

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• How to Write a Feature Article
• Step-by-Step Guide
• Write a Feature Article

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How to Write a Feature Article

Last Updated: March 11, 2024 Approved

This article was co-authored by Mary Erickson, PhD . Mary Erickson is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Western Washington University. Mary received her PhD in Communication and Society from the University of Oregon in 2011. She is a member of the Modern Language Association, the National Communication Association, and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article has 41 testimonials from our readers, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 1,461,226 times.

Writing a feature article involves using creativity and research to give a detailed and interesting take on a subject. These types of articles are different from typical news stories in that they often are written in a different style and give much more details and description rather than only stating objective facts. This gives the reader a chance to more fully understand some interesting part of the article's subject. While writing a feature article takes lots of planning, research, and work, doing it well is a great way to creatively write about a topic you are passionate about and is a perfect chance to explore different ways to write.

Choosing a Topic

• Human Interest : Many feature stories focus on an issue as it impacts people. They often focus on one person or a group of people.
• Profile : This feature type focuses on a specific individual’s character or lifestyle. This type is intended to help the reader feel like they’ve gotten a window into someone’s life. Often, these features are written about celebrities or other public figures.
• Instructional : How-to feature articles teach readers how to do something. Oftentimes, the writer will write about their own journey to learn a task, such as how to make a wedding cake.
• Historical : Features that honor historical events or developments are quite common. They are also useful in juxtaposing the past and the present, helping to root the reader in a shared history.
• Seasonal : Some features are perfect for writing about in certain times of year, such as the beginning of summer vacation or at the winter holidays.
• Behind the Scenes : These features give readers insight into an unusual process, issue or event. It can introduce them to something that is typically not open to the public or publicized.

Interviewing Subjects

• Schedule about 30-45 minutes with this person. Be respectful of their time and don’t take up their whole day. Be sure to confirm the date and time a couple of days ahead of the scheduled interview to make sure the time still works for the interviewee.
• If your interviewee needs to reschedule, be flexible. Remember, they are being generous with their time and allowing you to talk with them, so be generous with your responses as well. Never make an interviewee feel guilty about needing to reschedule.
• If you want to observe them doing a job, ask if they can bring you to their workplace. Asking if your interviewee will teach you a short lesson about what they do can also be excellent, as it will give you some knowledge of the experience to use when you write.

• Be sure to ask your interviewee if it’s okay to audio-record the interview. If you plan to use the audio for any purpose other than for your own purposes writing up the article (such as a podcast that might accompany the feature article), you must tell them and get their consent.
• Don't pressure the interviewee if they decline audio recording.

• Another good option is a question that begins Tell me about a time when.... This allows the interviewee to tell you the story that's important to them, and can often produce rich information for your article.

Preparing to Write the Article

• Start by describing a dramatic moment and then uncover the history that led up to that moment.
• Use a story-within-a-story format, which relies on a narrator to tell the story of someone else.
• Start the story with an ordinary moment and trace how the story became unusual.

• Check with your editor to see how long they would like your article to be.

• Consider what you absolutely must have in the story and what can be cut. If you are writing a 500-word article, for example, you will likely need to be very selective about what you include, whereas you have a lot more space to write in a 2,500 word article.

Writing the Article

• Start with an interesting fact, a quote, or an anecdote for a good hook.
• Your opening paragraph should only be about 2-3 sentences.

• Be flexible, however. Sometimes when you write, the flow makes sense in a way that is different from your outline. Be ready to change the direction of your piece if it seems to read better that way.

Finalizing the Article

• You can choose to incorporate or not incorporate their suggestions.

• Consult "The Associated Press Stylebook" for style guidelines, such as how to format numbers, dates, street names, and so on. [7] X Research source

• If you want to convey slightly more information, write a sub-headline, which is a secondary sentence that builds on the headline.

How Do You Come Up With an Interesting Angle For an Article?

Sample Feature Article

Community Q&A

• Ask to see a proof of your article before it gets published. This is a chance for you to give one final review of the article and double-check details for accuracy. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Be sure to represent your subjects fairly and accurately. Feature articles can be problematic if they are telling only one side of a story. If your interviewee makes claims against a person or company, make sure you talk with that person or company. If you print claims against someone, even if it’s your interviewee, you might risk being sued for defamation. [9] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ http://morrisjournalismacademy.com/how-to-write-a-feature-article/
• ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/writing/voices.html
• ↑ http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/view-article.html?id=20007483
• ↑ http://faculty.washington.edu/heagerty/Courses/b572/public/StrunkWhite.pdf
• ↑ https://www.apstylebook.com/
• ↑ http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/166662
• ↑ http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/libel-vs-slander-different-types-defamation.html

About This Article

To write a feature article, start with a 2-3 sentence paragraph that draws your reader into the story. The second paragraph needs to explain why the story is important so the reader keeps reading, and the rest of the piece needs to follow your outline so you can make sure everything flows together how you intended. Try to avoid excessive quotes, complex language, and opinion, and instead focus on appealing to the reader’s senses so they can immerse themselves in the story. Read on for advice from our Communications reviewer on how to conduct an interview! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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7 examples of engaging feature stories

Kimberlee Meier — Contributing Writer

There are two dominant trends in content on the web today.

The first is that content is getting shorter. With the rise of TikTok and the ongoing importance of other social media platforms, brands need to be adept at producing shortform content.

But the second dominant trend — forgive the contradiction — is that content outside of social media is actually getting longer. As we explain in our guide to longform content , media and marketing teams are increasingly investing in longer, professionally produced content to capture and keep their reader's attention.

The main type of longform content they are investing in is the feature article or feature story. Following the lead of major news publications, these teams are creating truly engaging and immersive multimedia content. 

Take, for example, Los fogones de la Kitchen . This illustrated news story from El Periódico covers an illegal operation to spy on a Spanish politician. With animations triggered by the scroll of the reader, it is an interactive and powerful example of modern feature storytelling. 

What do the BBC, Tripadvisor, and Penguin have in common? They craft stunning, interactive web content with Shorthand. And so can you! Publish your first story for free — no code or web design skills required. Sign up now.

In this guide, we're going to run through 7 examples of feature stories to inspire your own content strategy. These examples are informative, entertaining, and visually appealing—just what a brand needs to keep people’s attention. 

We'll also cover what goes into creating a great feature story, and how to learn from those who are doing them well. 

Ready to learn how to create captivating feature stories of your own? Let's get started.

What is a feature story?

A feature story is a piece of longform non-fiction content that covers a single topic in detail. Examples of feature stories include news features, in-depth profiles, human interest stories, science communication , data storytelling , and more. 

Feature stories are a common type of content for news organisations, particularly those who invest in longform journalism . 

Increasingly, brands are also investing in producing their own high-quality feature stories. One example comes from analytics company RELX, who published a powerful overview of the purpose behind their Eyewitness to Atrocities app.

How are feature stories changing?

A decade ago, most feature stories on the web were visually uninteresting. Usually, they would be digital versions of print articles, with the same images and copy. 

With recent improvements in internet speed and browsers — coupled with the rise of more advanced content creation platforms — we're seeing a dramatic increase in visually immersive multimedia feature articles.

These stories use a combination of high-resolution, full-bleed images, video, illustrations, and scrollytelling to sustain the attention of digital readers. Often, these stories are created with digital storytelling platforms , which are empowering feature writers to create stunning interactive content without writing a line of code.

Now, let's dive into our examples👇

7 examples of stunning feature stories

1 Arab News

When Arab News decided to showcase Saudi Arabia's UNESCO's World Heritage sites, a standard longform article wasn’t going to cut it. 

So, the news agency decided to tell it as a feature story powered by digital elements like maps, video, historical pictures, and illustrations. 

Each of the five UNESCO sites located in Saudi Arabia is given its own section. This room allowed Arab News the room to explain, in detail, the history of each site and what it looks like today. 

Although the piece is long, it does give the UNESCO sites the space and in-depth reporting to turn this into a stunning example of a feature story.

In the 1930s, America's Federal Government enacted redlining policies that segregated Black and white citizens with homeownership. 

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in 1948 that racial bias in deed restrictions was illegal, Detroit remains one of the most segregated cities in the country. To tell this important story, NBC News created an immersive and interactive feature story out of images and video to showcase the issue of segregation in modern Detroit.

The mix of data, visuals, video, and interviews with citizens who grew up in segregated neighborhoods make this feature story a compelling read.

3 Pioneers Post 

In the race to combat climate change, the citizens of Gambia—one of Africa's smallest countries—realised that the clock is ticking. 

So, the locals and family farmers living on the north bank of the Gambia river took matters into their own hands and created plans to reforest an 8,000km stretch of land. 

Not only does this Pioneers Post feature story do a fantastic job at highlighting the plight of the villagers and their project to revive the environment, but it also explains the impact of global warming on their area with maps and visuals.

4 Hoover Institute 

As a society, we are fascinated by each other's cultures. And more often than not, governments are involved in telling stories about what those cultures look like. 

Women in Chinese Propaganda by the Hoover Institute takes a deeper look at how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) depicted women in the early days of its regime. Using a mix of illustrations, history, and interactive features, the reader is plunged into the story the regime told the world about how its women lived in the 1950s. 

The feature story also talks about the ties the propaganda has to cultural products, like plays and operas, as well as how marriage was depicted in the early days of the CCP.

Join the BBC, Unicef, and Penguin. Publish stunning, interactive web content with Shorthand. Publish your first story for free — no code or web design skills required. Get started.

5 BBC 

When an apartment building in La Villeneuve, France, caught fire in 2020, two children were trapped in the inferno. 

As villagers watched on, the scene grew desperate—until a group of local citizens came up with a solution: the children would jump, and the citizens would catch them.

The BBC detailed the events of that day and accounts of the hero citizens who saved the children's lives in their interactive feature story, The Catch .

Using a mix of illustrations, photographs, and interviews from people involved in the life-saving rescue, the feature story succeeds in putting the reader inside the events that unfolded. 

The story paints an uncomfortable truth: just ten days after the French President called for some foreign-born residents to be stripped of their citizenship—immigrants were rescuing children.

6 WaterAid 

Another feature story focusing on climate change, WaterAid tells the story of people facing harsh environmental conditions in Malawi, Africa. 

The story digs deep—using full-screen photographs, statistics, and quotes from climate change scientists about the changing environment for the people living there. WaterAid is using this piece to encourage people to fight climate change. So, it's fitting that the piece ends with a simple ask: Join #OurClimateFight . 

7 Sky News 

The final feature story on our list is Sky News' celebration of WNBA's 25th season. 

The story, From ‘We Got Next’ to ‘Next Steps' , has a tonne of embedded items to keep the reader interested. Sky News uses a mix of embedded Tweets, photographs, and videos to showcase WNBA's history from those who have been part of it.

And like the Water Aid feature story, Sky News wraps its piece up by adding a call-to-action, encouraging readers to follow the WNBA's progress on its YouTube and cable television channels.

Ready to start creating your own amazing feature stories?

Content creators and news agencies have stepped up their storytelling game and are going above and beyond to capture (and keep) their audience's attention. 

Slapping a 3000-word story into WordPress isn't enough to keep your reader engaged anymore (no matter how interesting the topic is.) Thanks to the rise of social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, users now expect feature stories to be more engaging and capture their imagination. 

The good news is that creating these stories no longer means you have to learn how to code or hire an (expensive) developer. Content creators can build exciting, in-depth feature stories that embed elements like images, data illustrations, videos, and social media feeds using a tool like Shorthand. 

So, what are you waiting for—are you ready to start creating stories that will take your readers on a journey?

Kimberlee Meier  is a B2B/SaaS Content Writer who also helps start-ups fuel their growth through quality, evergreen content.

Publish your first story free with Shorthand

Craft sumptuous content at speed. No code required.

Anthony Cockerill

| Writing | The written word | Teaching English |

The indispensable guide to what makes a great feature story

The feature story is a potent and vital form of literary non-fiction. here, anthony cockerill charts its evolution through the years..

Of all the different ways to tell stories, the feature article is one of the most compelling, especially when it’s in the right hands. It’s a mainstay of contemporary journalism: a set-piece at the core of a periodical amidst the recurring content, opinion columns and advertisements. A good feature story is authentic, without artifice or illusion, even though it can be as immersive as any great novel.

The feature article has more in common with the essay than traditional reportage, but unlike most essays, it is more akin to narrative. It makes productive use of story-telling strategies usually found in fiction. It is grounded in places and people. It offers an in-depth exploration. It’s a useful vehicle for the investigative journalist, but not all features are necessarily investigative in nature — a feature story might profile a noted person, or it might find a particular angle which illuminates a bigger issue. Like all great stories, a great feature exploits the reader’s pleasure in delayed gratification, as they engage willingly in the pleasure of being the passive participant of the narrative.

Antecedents

The essay is perhaps the earliest antecedent for the feature article, but the essay resists easy definition. Most people associate the form with the academic assignment — a means of assessing someone’s understanding of their studies — or perhaps the scholarly essay, published in disciplinary journals. But an essay — exploratory in both purpose and tone — can be critical, persuasive or personal in scope and all of these have influenced the evolution of the feature article.

When we read accomplished essayists such as Michel de Montagine, George Orwell and Clive James, we’re aware of a strong sense of subjectivity and enquiry. The essay writing process goes hand in hand with the process of developing thinking, which surely reflects the emergence of the form — the essais — as a way ascertaining and articulating opinion in an age when editing and redrafting was more difficult.

If the essay was a literary forebear, the advent of printing took the form to the masses. Printing by mechanical, moveable type spread knowledge and ideas in forms such as the tract, the pamphlet and in time, the newspaper and increased the franchise of literacy throughout Europe.

The daily newspaper is the taproot of modern journalism. Dailies mainly date to the eighteen-thirties, the decade in which the word ‘journalism’ was coined, meaning daily reporting, the  jour  in journalism. Jill Lepour, ‘Does Journalism Have A Future?’, The New Yorker

The Daily Courant, edited by Elizabeth Mallet, was Britain’s first daily newspaper, first published in 1702. Mallet claimed to provide only facts, to let the reader make up their own minds about events, demanding her authors ‘…relate only matter of fact; supposing other people to have sense enough to make reflections for themselves.’ This approach characterised news reportage throughout the 17th century, when contributions to newspapers were largely supplied by correspondents.

For the 18th century, it is possible to speak of a ‘literary’ journalism… the news was (no longer) at the centre of their activity, but rather its incorporation into larger narratives or extensive arguments. Jürgen Wilk e, Professor of Journalism, Johannes Gutenberg University

Jürgen Wilke, Professor of Journalism at Johannes Gutenberg University, has argued that the emergence of opinion journalism — the point where essay meets newspaper article — occurred in the 18th century. Newspapers became what he calls ‘organs of public opinion’. Wilke attributes this change to the failure of the Commons to renew the Printing Act in 1695, which had a direct impact on the freedom of the press. At this time ‘…the printer was responsible for the news… whereas the authors themselves oversaw the essay section and other sundry contributions. They… could also publish critical articles and voice their own opinion.’ As well as the daily newspaper, the period saw the gestation of the magazine — a monthly digest of news, review and commentary for the educated public. Although by no means the first, The Gentleman’s Magazine , first published in London in 1731, was the first periodical to use the enduring generic term. The ‘magazine’ evoked the idea of the armoury: a storehouse of powerful ideas and knowledge.

‘Many authors in the 18th century tried to gain a foothold in the booming sector of journal publishing,’ says Professor Wilke, ‘often writ[ing] other types of journalistic articles, for instance, essays and literary contributions to weeklies, which described themselves in their titles as journals.’

In the United Kingdom, compulsory education and the expansion of the electoral franchise in the 19th century led to growing literacy amongst the population. The repeal of the stamp tax in 1855 and the advent of the rotary press, combined with the availability of cheaper paper, facilitated a huge growth in the popularity and reach of both newspapers and magazines. Typical of the newly popular mass circulation magazine was Tit-Bits , published by George Newness, a miscellany of material gathered from a variety of sources and short fiction. The 19th century was also the age when scholarly journals expanded and the critical review emerged, in forms such as The Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review . Charles Lamb’s  Essays  first appeared in The London Magazine , which was first published in 1820.

The content of periodicals at this time was essentially a combination of essay and exposition. A scholarly tone dominated and there was little sense of narrative. The editorial voice of The Spectator , founded in 1828, was expressed using the third-person personal pronoun ‘we’, implying an authority and collective understanding in line with the Enlightenment values of the time. This was evident as late as 1903: ‘We note with no little satisfaction that the feeling against Mr. Chamberlain’s proposals for taxing the food of the people is increasing every day.’ But by the following decade, the third-person pronoun — the editorial ‘we’ — had fallen out of style.

Casting an approving eye across the Atlantic in 1886, The Spector noted that Harper’s Monthly Magazine , established in 1850, ‘continue[d] to be worthy of [its] high reputation. Mr. Blackmore’s new story, ‘Springhaven,’ which… depicts the England that successfully resisted the first Napoleon, promises to be as good as anything that has recently come from the same pen. Under the title of ‘Their Pilgrimage,’ Mr. Dudley Warner gives a very lively account, slightly tinged, perhaps, with caricature, of American summer jauntings. ‘The New York Exchange’… tak[es] us behind the scenes of commercial life on the other side of the Atlantic for which this magazine is noted.’

First edited by James Russell Lowell, The Atlantic Monthly was founded in 1857. ‘Our Birds, And Their Ways’, published during that inaugural year, gives an interesting account of the habits of birds native to America. ‘Among our summer birds,’ begins the article, ‘the vast majority are but transient visitors, born and bred far to the northward and returning thither every year.’ The article occasionally makes use of the first-person style (‘I have seen crows in the neighbourhood of Boston every week of the year…’) and on occasion, direct speech (‘My friend the ornithologist said to me last winter, “You will see that they will be off as soon as the ground is well covered in snow…”‘) But these stylistic choices are rare. There is very little to discern by way of the influence of fiction.

Investigative journalism and social commentary

If the rule of the 19th century periodical feature was scholarly exposition, one notable exception was Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens’ own journalism is notable for blending, stylistically at least, fiction and non-fiction. The critic Michael Dirda has written that while ‘there is a good deal of fancy in Dickens’ reportage, the second half of Sketches by ‘Boz’ consists of what are, in fact, out-and-out short stories.’ In these vignettes, Dickens created a particularly literary form of journalism which gave him an opportunity to craft the characteristic social commentary which was, of course, was similarly conspicuous in his fiction. This wasn’t to everyone’s taste. In 1853, The Spectator published a scathing review of Dickens’ Bleak House , accusing him of ‘amusing the idle hours of the greatest number of readers; not, we may hope, without improvement to their hearts, but certainly without profoundly affecting their intellects or deeply stirring their emotions.’ This scathing indictment perhaps illustrates the division between the intellectualism of the established society periodicals and the nascent ‘populism’ emerging at the time, pioneered in British journalism by William Thomas Stead.

As the editor of The Pall Mall Gazette , editor and social reformer Stead paved the way for the investigative journalism which remains, to some degree, part of the feature article as we know it: eye-catching headlines, subheadings and visuals. Even more importantly, Stead influenced the tropes of this journalism, pioneering the newspaper interview and the subjective presence of the writer within the text, such as in his reportage of the famous Eliza Armstrong case, an important example of a journalist creating news to write about, rather than merely reporting events. In the USA, the sensationalism of Stead was paralleled in the journalism published by William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Journal , and Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York World . These developments prompted a visceral response from some critics, notably Matthew Arnold, who pejoratively called Stead’s output ‘New Journalism’. This was more than simple grumbling: the emergence of the popular press instigated a debate about the value of journalistic objectivity.

Adolph Ochs, who bought the New York Times in 1896, must have been a man from the same school of thought as Matthew Arnold: he banned comic strips and gossip columns from the newspaper, and in doing so, focused the publication’s efforts on objective journalism, raising the profile of the newspaper and establishing its international reputation. That same year, The New York Times Magazine was first printed under the auspices of Ochs, establishing the magazine as an outlet for photo-journalism and features.

People and their stories

At a time when Freud was developing his theories of the unconscious and painters like Picasso were experimenting with Cubism, journalists were also developing a greater recognition of human subjectivity. Walter Dean, American Press Institute

Despite inroads into a more literary style of journalism made by the likes of Dickens, as a whole, literary influences in the form continued to feel restrained. The tone of ‘Golf’, a feature in The Atlantic Monthly in 1902, feels predominantly like an essay rather than a story. Although there is a strong sense of authorship and a slight sense of irony (‘Empire, trusts, and golf — these are the new things in American life…’) and although structured like an essay that ranges around its subject, narrative is largely absent.

Writing in Nordicom Review on the featurisation of journalism, Steen Steensen, Professor of Journalism at Oslo Metropolitan University, has argued that the feature article as we understand it in its modern form is a creation of the 20th century. It certainly seems to be the early years of the 1900s in which we can begin to discern an approach to the feature article that emphasises people and their experiences. The Atlantic Monthly printed a polemical essay about animal experimentation from John Dewey in September 1926. ‘In Jerusalem a great Jewish university is being slowly developed,’ wrote Henry W Nevison in the same publication in May 1927. There is a sense that the stories and the pursuits of people were beginning to take centre stage.

National Geographic Magazine was a scholarly journal until 1905, when it became known for what it continues to do well — extensive pictorial content and photojournalism — under the editorial control of Gilbert H Grosvenor. In 1905, the magazine published a feature article called ‘The Purple Veil’, subtitled ‘A Romance of the Sea.’ Clearly, there are the beginnings of a narrative approach. The ‘purple veil’ of the title, as the article later reveals, is the egg mass of Lophius piscatorius , or the goose-fish. ‘Off the New England coast,’ begins the article, ‘a curious object is often found floating on the water, somewhat resembling a lady’s veil of gigantic size and of a violet or purple colour. The fishermen allude to it generally as “the purple veil,” and many have been the speculations concerning its nature and origin.’ There is a pleasing sense of immersion, a sort of ‘cold open’ that is unabashedly designed to hook the reader.

In ‘The Date Gardens of the Jerid’, written by Thomas H Kearney and published in National Geographic Magazine in 1910, the author begins with the immersive, sense of place opening that the magazine is known for: ‘With its feet in the water and its head in the fire, as the Arab proverb has it, the date palm is at home in the vast deserts that stretch from Morocco to the borders of India.’ After this initial scene setting, the author segues into exposition, telling us: ‘Some years ago, I visited these oases in order to obtain palms for the date orchards which the National Department of Agriculture has established in Arizona and in the Colorado Desert of California.’ This juxtaposition of vibrant image and elucidation continues to be a key structural technique in feature stories today.

Brazenly literary in style, lyrically crafted and undoubtedly novelistic, Florence Craig Albrecht begins ‘Channel Ports – And Some Others’ in 1915 by describing a maritime voyage:

‘The sturdy old vessel is coming into port after an eventless voyage. Seven days of ceaseless plowing through a shimmering sea, under a great round dome, now radiant light, now dusky velvet, star-sprinkled. The Scillys have floated by, foam-washed, mist wrapped, fairly islands in a magic world all cloud and water.’ ‘Channel Ports – And Some Others’, Florence Craig Albrecht

Albrecht has embraced a literary narrative and established a strong sense of place. There is also a clear omniscient point-of-view at work here that evokes the establishing shot of a film in style. This embrace of immediacy in the story-telling — and of movement — feels very much inspired by moving image.

Morris Markey wrote ‘Gangs’ in The Atlantic Monthly in March 1928. Again, the sense of people and place is palpable:

‘On a pleasant evening, not many weeks ago,’ writes Markey in his opening paragraph, ‘a young man bearing the rather picturesque name of Little Augie was standing with a friend on the street corner in New York’s lower East Side. The friend was facing toward the curb, and suddenly, he gave a cry of warning. Little Augie swung about in time to see an automobile charge down upon him.’ ‘Gangs’, Morris Markey

From this evocative opening scene, Markey goes on to explore the backstory; to fill in some of the detail behind Little Augie’s death. The writing is composed of scenes and exposition which are woven together. Furthermore, these scenes and expository components are structured together in longer narrative sequences, divided by Roman numerals. Clearly, there is an emerging sense of the fictional form and its associated stylistics exerting a strong influence in the composition of the text.

Just as Dickens’ journalism had been characterised by aspects of narrative befitting a novelist, in the early decades of the 20th Century, Ernest Hemingway also began his writing career in the newsroom. Hemingway’s experiences writing journalism famously influenced his fiction. Taking the nod from the style guide at the Kansas City Star , where he worked as a reporter after leaving high school, his fiction became known for its objective narrative perspective and lucid sentences. Conversely, Hemingway’s reportage had always been literary. It had sketches, descriptions, characters and a sense of narrative which set the inverted pyramid of the news story the right way up. In his article ‘At the End of the Ambulance Run’, a newspaper article for the  Kansas City Star from 1918, Hemingway begins his copy with the ominous action of a short story:

The night ambulance attendants shuffled down the long, dark corridors at the General Hospital with an inert burden on the stretcher. They turned in at the receiving ward and lifted the unconscious man to the operating table. His hands were calloused and he was unkempt and ragged, a victim of a street brawl near the city market. No one knew who he was, but a receipt, bearing the name of George Anderson, for $10 paid on a home out in a little Nebraska town served to identify him. ‘At the End of the Ambulance Run’, Ernest Hemingway

This is an approach to storytelling usually found in fiction, where the writer lures the reader, leaves them to work out what is or isn’t fundamentally crucial, then builds to a climax. It is essentially the structural and stylistic opposite of the classic inverted pyramid, which condenses news, summarises and foregrounds the most important part of the story.

In 1933, by this time established as a writer of fiction, Hemingway was made an offer he couldn’t refuse by Arnold Gingrich, who had founded Esquire that same year. ‘[He sent Hemingway] a blue sports shirt and a leather jacket, promising to pay him $250 each for articles about marlin-fishing in Cuba, lion-shooting in Tanganyika, bullfighting in Spain, and other manly subjects,’ said Carlos Baker, writing in The New York Times in 1967.

Hemingway has been seen as a profound influence on what was to be called ‘New Journalism’, and although he was undoubtedly a totemic figure, something was happening that was bigger than one person: an undercurrent of fictional stylistics gathering strength in literary journalism, the stylistics of which itself was influenced by cinema, as is evident in Stewart H Holbrook’s ‘Life of a Pullman Porter’ , published in Esquire in 1939:

One October evening in 1937 a stunning blonde of about thirty took a Pullman compartment on a Great Northern train leaving Portland, Oregon for Seattle. She was a tall, graceful woman, modishly dressed in dark blue, right up to her earrings, and the porter who was on her car still thinks she was the handsomest woman he has ever seen. An hour or so later, as the train was leaving Longview, Washington, the lady rang for the porter and handed him a letter in a pale blue envelope. “I want you to be sure,” she said with emphasis, “to mail this at Aberdeen and nowhere else.” She gave him a quarter Stewart H Holbrook, ‘Life of a Pullman Porter’

Alongside feature journalism, in the 1930s Esquire ran short-stories in abundance, as well as ‘semi-fiction’ – an interesting idea that involved real stories, fictionalised for publication. The influence of moving image in writing in this period can be felt palpably. The introduction to Laura Marcus’s essay, ‘Cinema and Modernism’, notes that modernism was ‘concerned with everyday life, perception, time and the kaleidoscopic and fractured experience of urban space. Cinema, with its techniques of close-up, panning, flashbacks and montage played a major role in shaping experimental works.’ As authors of fiction embraced the possibilities of the new medium, their stylistic influences were felt keenly in the work of feature journalists of the era.

‘Movies were already by then a part of the culture… motion was a part of the new vocabulary… for the first time in conventional reporting people began to move. They had a journalistic existence on either side of the event,’ wrote Michael J Arlen in The Atlantic Monthly in 1972. It is impossible to overestimate the influence of the cinema on literary non-fiction, just as the cinema profoundly influenced Modernist fiction during those years.

The influence of ‘New Journalism’

‘ Joe Louis at Fifty’ wasn’t like a magazine article at all. It was like a short story. It began with a scene, an intimate confrontation between Louis and his third wife. Tom Wolfe, Bulletin of the American Society Newspaper Editors , 1970

Matthew Arnold had disparagingly used the phrase ‘New Journalism’ to describe the evolving journalism of the 19th Century that was characterised by a different more sensational discourse and subject matter. In the 1960s, the American journalist Tom Wolfe used the appellation to describe his perception of a shift in the style and framing of the journalism of a cluster of writers in the period who would work in a much more literary style, espousing ‘truth’ over ‘facts’. Unlike Arnold, however, Wolfe certainly wasn’t being disparaging. In fact, there was an element of braggadocio at play. ‘New Journalism’ in Wolfe’s opinion was revolutionary, and Wolfe was one of its biggest proponents.

‘Wolfe wrote that his first acquaintance with a new style of reporting came in a 1962 Esquire article about Joe Louis by Gay Talese,’ wrote James E Murphy in The New Journalism: A Critical Perspective . For Wolfe, Talese was the first to apply fiction techniques to his reporting. But Dickens had done so, as had Hemingway and many others. Experimenting with personal narrative and the blurring of fact and fiction was hardly new. If we were to take Tom Wolfe to task for over-egging the contribution of the New Journalists, we wouldn’t be the first. To argue that New Journalism isn’t exactly new is what Michael J Arlen has called ‘a favourite put down’. In The Atlantic in 1972, he argued that ‘there’s been a vein of personal journalism in English and American writing for a very long time.’

I wonder if what happened wasn’t more like this… that despite the periodic appearance of an Addison, or Defoe, or Twain, standard newspaper journalism remained a considerably restricted branch of writing, both in England and America, well into the nineteen twenties… then, after the First World War, especially the literary resurgence in the nineteen twenties — the  writers’  world of Paris, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc. — into the relatively straitlaced, rectilinear, dutiful world of conventional journalism appeared an assortment of young men who wanted to do it differently.… Michael J Arlen, ‘Notes on the New Journalism’, The Atlantic Monthly , May 1972

Once Tom Wolfe graduated, argues Arlen, ‘burdened like the rest of his generation with the obligation to write a novel’, he made an important discovery: ‘the time of the novel was past… [a] fairly profound change was already taking place in the nation’s reading habits… most magazines, which had been preponderantly devoted to fiction, were now increasingly devoted to nonfiction.’

Gay Talese’s article, ‘Frank Sinatra Has A Cold’, published in Esquire in April 1966, is, quite rightfully, a staple of journalism students’ reading lists. Denied the opportunity to talk to Sinatra, Esquire editor Harold T. P. Hayes nevertheless kept Talese on the job. Talese ‘bounc[ed] from hope to despair to paranoia and back as he work[ed] furiously to deliver the goods by shadowing the notoriously controlling Sinatra and talking to everyone who might be able to shed light on the entertainer without setting off any alarms,’ wrote Frank Digiacomo in Vanity Fair in 2006. The distance between Talese and Sinatra became the story itself, and offered Talese an angle on Sinatra’s volatile temper and fragile ego. Scenes from Talese’s time observing Sinatra are adroitly rendered:

Frank Sinatra, leaning against the stool, sniffling a bit from his cold, could not take his eyes off the Game Warden boots. Once, after gazing at them for a few moments, he turned away; but now he was focused on them again. The owner of the boots, who was just standing in them watching the pool game, was named Harlan Ellison, a writer who had just completed work on a screenplay,  The Oscar. Finally Sinatra could not contain himself. ‘Hey,’ he yelled in his slightly harsh voice that still had a soft, sharp edge. ‘Those Italian boots?’ ‘No,’ Ellison said. ‘Spanish?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are they English boots?’ ‘Look, I donno, man,’ Ellison shot back, frowning at Sinatra, then turning away again. Gay Talese, ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold’

Stylistics of contemporary feature stories

…feature journalism is best understood as a family of genres that has traditionally shared a set of discourses: a literary discourse, a discourse of intimacy and a discourse of adventure. Steen Steensen, Professor of Journalism, Oslo Metropolitan University

The ubiquity of the overtly literary feature article and the associated stylistic choices has waned since the New Journalists’ heyday. Today’s feature stories feel less self-consciously ‘fictional’ than some of those New Journalism classics. They are lighter on direct speech and tend toward more reported speech. Dialogue tags are usually in present tense, which conveys immediacy but which loses some of the fictional notes that resonate soundly in Gay Talese’s writing. Despite this, the methods of story-telling associated with New Journalism continues to exert a powerful influence on the feature story, especially in terms of narrative structure and style.

The scene is at the heart of the feature story, and these scenes are clustered into sequences, a legacy of the influence of cinema. We can see the legacy of this in the discourse of contemporary feature writing: the narrative structure, the sequences of scenes, the evocation of people and places, the importance of the story in moving the writing forward.

Lee Gutkind has explored the structure of the feature story in detail in his 2012 book You Can’t Make This Stuff Up . The structure of the feature story builds to a sense of climax — this could perhaps be a revelatory moment of insight. Gutkind makes the case for the importance of the scene ‘to communicate ideas and information as compellingly as possible,’ to keep the reader engaged through powerful story-telling, around which exposition can be arranged.

Writing for GQ , Jonathan Heaf begins his profile of Harrison Ford prior to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens , with a brutal, in-media-res opening paragraph:

‘I don’t want all this to take all  f * ing  day.’ The words Harrison Ford, 73, not so much spoke as snarled at me yesterday afternoon while discussing our lunch plans are still, 24 hours later, smarting like refined sugar hitting an exposed tooth cavity. Jonathan Heaf, ‘Harrison Ford on his change of heart about Han Solo’, GQ , January 2015

This appears to confirm some uncomfortable truths about Ford that Heaf — and by extension, we as readers — might have expected: Ford is invariably grumpy; Ford is an ungenerous interviewee; Ford is a formidable challenge. But by the end of the profile, having woven the narrative (his meeting with Ford, a ride in his Tesla Model S, lunch) with interview and exposition, Heaf describes telling Ford how much he’s looking forward to watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens :

He smiles. I turn to walk back to my rental and that’s when I hear it. “Me too, kid.” I very nearly glance back. Kid. He called me kid. For the first time all day, a flicker. One word, that’s all I needed. That ‘kid’, uttered in that tone, in his voice, fires my memory banks like a proton torpedo fired into a thermal exhaust port. Jonathan Heaf, ‘Harrison Ford on his change of heart about Han Solo’, GQ , January 2015

The centrality of the writer creates a kinship with a reader who has grown up with the same cultural tropes and shared, mimetic reference points. The structure of the writing allows Heaf to demonstrate the journey toward intimacy alluded to by Steensen. The Observer Magazine publishes around three features a week. Some are essentially pieces of investigative journalism into topics such as healing crystals (‘The New Stone Age’ by Eva Wiseman, June 2019) and Britain’s big cats, (‘Here, Kitty?’ by Mark Wilding, April 2019). Many, however, tell us something bigger about society in general: Eva Wiseman explores the well-being industry (‘Feel Better Now?’, March 2019). Joanna Moorhead learns about art therapy in prisons (‘Brushes With The Law’, May 2019). Alex Moshakis probes the big business of house plants (‘The Bloom Economy’, June 2019).

Some recount authentic, personal experiences — of sexuality (‘What My Queer Journey Taught Me About Love’, Amelia Abraham, May 2019) or of racing pigeons (‘Home to Roost’, Jon Day, June 2019). Other stories are contrived, for example, Emma Beddington transforms her dog into an Instagram star (‘Meet The World’s Most Unlikely Insta Star’, July 2019). There are often profiles of notable individuals, such as comedian Sara Pascoe (‘I wanted To Be Prime Minister’, Rebecca Nicholson, August 2019) and crossword writer Anna Schectman (‘Why It’s Hip To Be Square’ by Alex Moshakis).

Some tell really interesting stories — the fashion historian who solves crimes (‘Call The Fashion Police’, Eva Wiseman, March 2019). Others are about trends: the television box set (‘Why Box Sets Suck Us In’ by Will Storr, April 2019) and the male wellness sector (‘The Evolution of Man’ by Alex Moshakis, March 2019). Within each of these stories is really engaging content, things we can identify with, references we can share with the writer. The feature article has an important role, bringing people’s stories into play to lead us toward bigger truths and illuminating aspects of our culture and society.

If these features adopt Steensen’s ‘discourse of intimacy’, perhaps the travel feature best exemplifies the ‘discourse of adventure’. The writer Dan Richards, who specialises in travel and adventure, visited Finland’s Pellinge archipelago for 1843 (December 2019/January 2020) to explore the landscape that inspired Tove Jansson, author of the Moomin children’s books. Richards writes compellingly about the outdoors (his contribution to Holloway , which he co-authored with Robert Macfarlane, is lucid and lyrical) and here, he evokes the sparse beauty of the archipelago in his search for the places where Jansson lived and worked. The notion of a ‘search’, a sense of discovery at the heart of the narrative, is a crucial element of the ‘discourse of adventure’, even if for Richards, the island which inspired the Sommarboken [The Summer Book] remains elusive. Just as with Gay Talese’s search for Sinatra, here the adventure is the momentum of the narrative, even if the sought-after moment must be deferred.

Where are we now?

The turn of the twentieth century was marked by one of the most important cultural thresholds in society: the advent of the motion picture. Michael J Arlen is surely right when he argues that this was the significant moment when the feature article began to take on a sense of movement; when showing, rather than telling, came to the fore. It was only natural that writers should turn to fictional narrative as the toolkit. The importance of human subjectivity as central to aesthetic experience was a profound sea change that reflected wider socio-cultural changes: the decline of trust in authority, the erosion of the Enlightenment meta-narrative.

The essay, that long-established form of literary non-fiction, remains a crucial, vibrant form in its own right that can often be found in the package of the published ‘feature’. But the codes and conventions of narrative story-telling have become synonymous with the feature story, what Lee Gutkind prefers to call ‘creative non-fiction’.

Just as the influence of cinema was keenly felt, no doubt the influence of the web and the convergent device will begin to influence the adaptation of the feature story. The modus operandi of the ‘Mojo’ — the mobile journalist — asks the question of what the role of the feature article in today’s fast paced world might be — and the extent to which it can compete with the immediacy of images, video and the flow of social media feeds.

But just because we like our news reportage raw doesn’t mean we’re turned off to the payload of a great story. Steen Steensen has argued that feature journalism is transforming traditional ‘hard news’ in a process he calls the ‘featurization of journalism’ — the increasing dominance of feature-style journalism in newspapers. This, he writes, is often viewed by academics as an erosion of the social function of the press, ‘divert[ing] journalism towards what might interest the public instead of what is in the public’s interest, hence weakening the role of the news media in a democracy’. However, Steensen goes on to argue that in fact, the traditional genres of hard news and feature journalism have become entwined to some degree, in terms of discourse and social function, bringing ‘enlightenment and insight into complex and quintessential matters of culture and society.’

Steensen goes on to caution that the general transformation of news into something more ‘consumer-oriented, intimate and fiction-inspired’ might create a conflict of ‘intentions and expectations’. This is a judicious caveat in our post-truth culture. The feature story continues to feel like an urgent, exciting and relevant way to tell the stories of the people and places in our world. It will continue to stand as an important social function if we adhere to Lee Gutkind’s injunction to ‘be true to your story, true to your characters, true to yourself.’

Further Reading

Gutkind, Lee (2012) You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, Boston: Da Capo Press.

Harrington, H.F. (1912) Essentials in Journalism: A Manual in Newspaper Making for College Classes , Boston: The Athenaeum Press.

Arlen, Michael J (1972) ‘Notes on the New Journalism’, The Atlantic Monthly .

Hellmann, John (1977) ‘Fables of Fact: New Journalism Reconsidered’, The Centennial Review Vol. 21, No. 4.

Lepore, Jill (2019) ‘Does Journalism Have A Future? The New Yorker .

Murphy, James E (1974) ‘The New Journalism: A Critical Perspective’, Journalism Monographs , No. 34.

Steensen, Steen (2011) ‘The Featurization of Journalism’, Nordicom Review .

Wilke, Jürgen (1987) ‘Newspapers and their reporting – a long-term international comparison’ in Deutsche Presseforschung Bremen [German Press Research Bremen] (ed.): Presse und Geschichte [The press and its history], Munich 1987, vol. 2: Neue Beiträge zur historischen Kommunikationsforschung [New contributions to research on historical communication].

Wolfe, Tom (1970) ‘The New Journalism’, Bulletin [of the American Society of Newspaper Editors].

Dean, Walter ‘The lost meaning of “objectivity”‘, American Press Institute.

Marcus, Laura (2016) ‘Cinema and modernism’, The British Library.

Featured image by  Annie Spratt  on  Unsplash

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How to build a feature story

By cristiana bedei sep 22, 2022 in journalism basics.

A feature is an exploration. It informs, inspires and entertains readers by going beyond hard facts and quotes, answering their questions about what is happening around the world.

While it was mostly seen as an article published in newspapers and magazines 10 or 20 years ago, finding a precise definition is more difficult today. Mary Hogarth , a media specialist, educator, and author of Writing Feature Articles: Print, Digital And Online , says that a strong feature should combine multimedia elements that will enhance the audience's experience and offer a 360-degree perspective of a topic: "It is critical to ensure that content not only has value but that it engages print/digital and online audiences."

Many freelancers choose feature writing also because it typically pays more. "The more words an editor commissions the more you'll earn. Research takes time, so try to get several stories out of one topic by tailoring the angle to several non-competing publications," said journalism coach and lecturer Susan Grossman . That may mean reframing and reselling your story elements at different times, for different audiences, and with different quotes.

The job doesn't come without its challenges, however. The most common one is developing relevant and viable ideas. "It's not just finding a topic that's hard, but finding a topic that lends itself to a full feature and finding sources that are accessible," said Ottavia Spaggiari , an independent journalist who writes long-forms for The New Yorker and The Guardian, among others.

Grossman noted the problem with generic ideas: "An editor is looking for something that has some time-sensitive element to it, particularly, that looks forward. You have to think of something to hang the story on, and I would say that a news item is an essential component of a feature."

This brand of journalism requires research and creativity, but you can learn all the skills you need. "The best stories are those you are passionate about. Your job is to build in the answers to any questions your reader may have," Grossman explained. 

As you develop a meaningful narrative, keep your topic and audience in mind. You can use these tips from the three experts to get you started.

Research first

Knowing all your material will make writing an excellent in-depth story easier. "It's very much juggling the different bits of information, the quotes and the data after you found it all,” said Grossman. “I suggest you don't start writing until you've got all your research together.”

Spaggiari added: "I read all the interview transcripts first, underlining not just the quotes, but also the storylines emerging." Next, she creates a grid with a list of all her sources. After every interview, she notes her main findings.

Don't start at the beginning

Grossman compares writing a feature to creating a painting. "You don't start from the top of the frame and paint all the way through," she said. "With a feature, I would just put all the different components of the story into a draft, develop them, think about them, research them, address statistics, add your quotes, then look at the whole and think: what is the publication that I intend this story to be for? And then model it in the same style." 

The formula is already there in the media outlet you want to target, so you don't have to do a lot of creative thinking. Just mirror their style.

Know your target audience

It's all about what the audience wants and needs to know.

"First, it is imperative to know your market," said Hogarth. "Secondly, I recommend thoroughly researching a target publication by reading several back issues and trawling through the socials to gain an in-depth perspective of its core editorial themes or pillars, and the audience." 

Writing concise, well-structured features that reflect the house style of your target publication is also critical. "I always advise taking a show-not-tell approach when pitching to editors by including a headline and stand-first to demonstrate you can adopt the tone and style of the magazine or newspaper," Hogarth added.

Build a timeline

When working on longer, more resource-intensive pieces, you might have so much material that it's hard to figure out what your original angle or story was in the first place. Spaggiari, who has worked on different narrative and investigative features, suggests building a timeline – on a document or a spreadsheet. 

"I like using [spreadsheets]. For example, I write the date in a cell, and then the event next to it," she explained. "The timeline is the guiding light when writing a long-form piece." 

If you're dealing with complex issues it helps to retrace a story and build a narrative arc. "It allows you to understand the topic well and not miss any passage in the story — and also to explain it to your readers," Spaggiari added.

Question your struggle

“If you're struggling to write a feature story, you need to ask yourself: does it need to be written? What is the outcome of you writing the story? Who will be interested or affected by it?” said Grossman. 

If you can't identify why it's important or what it is you want to say, she added, then your struggle is that you're not sure about whether this feature is worth writing. It's almost as if, until you can feel enough passion and energy, it's not ready. “You might have an idea, put it to one side, and then wait and see if something happening in the news is about the issue in your feature,” Grossman suggested. 

Think about what's happening in the public eye that can make your story timely and relevant. “I've had plenty of students and clients who've had really great stories accepted by a newspaper, perhaps, but not published. And then the editor on one occasion came back and said: ‘Ah, this just happened, this week is a perfect time for your story!’” said Grossman. “But really, it's your job to do that.”

Photo via Pexels by Ron Lach.

Read more articles by

Cristiana Bedei

Cristiana Bedei  is an Italian freelance journalist with international experience.

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5 Key Ingredients for Great Feature Stories

Use These Elements to Bring Your Features to Life

Paul Bradbury/Caiaimage / Getty Images

• Writing Essays
• Writing Research Papers
• English Grammar
• M.S., Journalism, Columbia University
• B.A., Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Hard-news stories are typically an assemblage of facts. Some are better-written than others, but they all exist to fulfill a simple purpose—to convey information.

Feature stories convey facts as well, but they also tell the stories of people's lives. To do that, they must incorporate facets of writing often not found in news stories , ones often associated with fiction writing.

A Great Lede

A feature lede can set a scene, describe a place or tell a story. Whatever approach is used, the lede must grab the reader's attention and pull them into the story.

Here's a lede from a New York Times story about former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his meetings with a prostitute in a posh Washington hotel:

It was after 9 on the night before Valentine’s Day when she finally arrived, a young brunette named Kristen. She was 5-foot-5, 105 pounds. Pretty and petite. This was at the Mayflower, one of Washington’s choicer hotels. Her client for the evening, a return customer, had booked Room 871. The money he had promised to pay would cover all expenses: the room, the minibar, room service should they order it, the train ticket that had brought her from New York and, naturally, her time. A 47-page affidavit from an F.B.I. agent investigating a prostitution ring described the man at the hotel as “Client 9” and included considerable detail about him, the prostitute and his payment methods. But a law enforcement official and another person briefed on the case have identified Client 9 as Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York.

Note how the details—the 5-foot-5 brunette, the room number, the minibar—build a sense of anticipation about the rest of the story. You're compelled to read more.

Description

The description sets the scene for the story and brings the people and places in it to life. A good description prompts a reader to create mental images in their mind. Any time you accomplish that, you're engaging the reader in your story.

Read this description from a St. Petersburg Times story by Lane DeGregory about a neglected little girl, found in a roach-infested room:

She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was slung over her face; her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes, and sores pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked—except for a swollen diaper.

Note the specifics: matted hair, skin pocked with sores, the moldy mattress. The description is both heartbreaking and repulsive, but necessary to convey the horrific conditions the girl endured.

While good quotes are vital for news stories, they are imperative for features. Ideally, a feature story should include only the most colorful and interesting quotes. Everything else should be paraphrased.

Look at this example from a New York Times story about the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. In the story, reporter Rick Bragg describes the rubble and the reactions of the firefighters and rescue crews responding to the scene:

People could not stop looking at it, particularly the second floor, where a child care center had been. "A whole floor," said Randy Woods, a firefighter with Engine No. 7. "A whole floor of innocents. Grown-ups, you know, they deserve a lot of the stuff they get. But why the children? What did the children ever do to anybody."

Anecdotes are nothing more than very short stories. But in features, they can be incredibly effective in illustrating key points or in bringing people and incidents to life, and they're often used to construct feature ledes .

Here's a good example of an anecdote from a Los Angeles Times story about the skyrocketing cost of fighting wildfires:

On the morning of July 4, 2007, ranch hands were fixing a water pipe on private land in a narrow canyon off the road to Zaca Lake, about 15 miles north of Solvang. The temperature was headed toward 100 degrees. Rainfall the previous winter had been among the lowest on record in Southern California. Sparks from a metal grinder jumped into some dry grass. Soon flames were rushing through the brush toward Zaca Ridge. By the next day, nearly 1,000 firefighters were trying to box the fire into a small area. But late that afternoon, the Zaca made a run, moving east into Los Padres National Forest. By July 7, Forest Service officials realized they were facing a potential monster.

Note how the writers, Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart, quickly and effectively summarize the genesis of a fire that plays a central role in their story.

Background Information

Background information sounds like something you'd find in a news story, but it's equally important in features. All the well-written description and colorful quotes in the world won't suffice if you don't have solid information to back up the point your feature is trying to make.

Here's a good example of solid backgrounding from the same Los Angeles Times story about wildfires mentioned above:

Wildfire costs are busting the Forest Service budget. A decade ago, the agency spent $307 million on fire suppression. Last year, it spent $1.37 billion. Fire is chewing through so much Forest Service money that Congress is considering a separate federal account to cover the cost of catastrophic blazes. In California, state wildfire spending has shot up 150% in the last decade, to more than $1 billion a year.

Note how the writers marshal their facts to clearly and unequivocally make their point: The cost of fighting wildfires is rising dramatically.

• How to Write Feature Stories
• Learn What a Feature Story Is
• How to Write Great Ledes for Feature Stories
• Types of Feature Stories for Journalists
• How Feature Writers Use Delayed Ledes
• Writing a Lead or Lede to an Article
• How Reporters Can Write Great Follow-up News Stories
• Five Great Feature Ideas for Writers
• What Is a Story Angle?
• 15 News Writing Rules for Beginning Journalism Students
• Learn to Write News Stories
• Use Verbs and Adjectives to Brighten up Your News Stories
• Basic Fire Fighting Tools Used by Wildland Firefighters
• Constructing News Stories with the Inverted Pyramid
• What Makes a Story Newsworthy
• Avoid the Common Mistakes That Beginning Reporters Make

How To Write a Feature Article: A Step-by-Step Guide

Have you dreamt of becoming a famous feature article writer do you acquire your muse from writers like maya angelou, ketaki desai , rishab raj, shivani vig, and other popular feature writers have you ever felt writing as a tool for reflection then, this article will teach you the fundamentals of what makes a good feature article and how to write one.  it is better to learn more about feature articles before learning the strategies on how to write a feature article. so, here we go.

What is a Feature Article?

A feature article, according to Dictionary.com, is a daily or fortnightly article or report about a person, event, frontage of a major event, or the like. This writing adds a personal touch, and quite often, it is written in a discrete style. It can be a news story, the main or most prominent story in a magazine.   A feature article is no doubt an article inscribed to give a piece of in-depth knowledge to events, people issues, or news. A proficient person or a journalist can write a feature article. Their writings will provide background information on a significant or a noteworthy topic, and the article will include the writer’s angle or his/her experience. 

Difference between News Article and Feature Article

It is not a news item or advertisement. It is a common fact that people get confused with news articles and feature articles. We get confused with news and features and always think of the dos and don’ts of writing a feature article. All are aware of feature articles in Sunday newspapers, but where does the difference lie?

News  is always instant information, and this needs to reach the mass as breaking news without wasting time. A news article should be concise and clear and finally, the writer should stick to the point directly. A news story offers information about an event, idea, or situation. 

The article should cover all the “W” (who, what, when, why, where) and “H” questions, which any reader would like to know. News items generally do not add much spice or any additional information to entice the reader. Readers are spared with extra material or statistics, and as far as possible a writer will use adjectives sparingly. In a nutshell, the introduction will summarise the story for the benefit of the reader.

The source and slant of the writer can include slight variations but should not cover more than one approach. The news writer or a journalist can use an inverted pyramid structure. The writer prefers to present the most important information as an introduction or they can be considered as a conclusion as well. This will help a writer exemplify how the news can be prioritized and structured.

A feature writer adds depth, wisdom, and color to the story and may entertain or instruct. In short, writing a feature article can be like adding jaggery to gulp bitter gourd. It can be like a stimulant or a catalyst. A feature article is a longer article compared to the news. It is all about lettering a human-interest story to match the target audience. A feature article is written after an event. So, naturally, they try to provide more and more information about the event, or else they give a different perception or a changed viewpoint. 

The main aim of a feature writer will be to analyze, broaden the understanding, and give different approaches to a reader. Remember to note that a feature article is a non-fiction piece of writing. 

Where do we find feature articles? 

A feature article is published in newspapers, magazines, and online blogs , and they add an emotional touch. They are more personal. As a writer, when you write a feature article, it is good to make it more narrative and more appealing for the readers.

If you want to become a professional blogger, then learn from the experts with the Best Online Content Writing Course

Different Types of Feature Articles:

Before starting to write a feature article, different articles and their characteristics will give you the insight to decide, which type to choose before you pen your thoughts to words. Every article should be the voice of a writer and the other characters or places or incidents. Now start thinking of writing a feature article and understand the different types before you shake your thoughts into words.

Types of feature stories : Each article has a divergent focus, and the motive also changes.

⮚      Human interest stories:  In this kind of feature article, the emphasis is given to a person or a set of people. Such an article emphasizes a dramatic incident. Normally, the focal point will be emotion first and later on the information.

⮚      Colour Stories : Describe a location using life and blood, so that the reader can visualize the same in this kind of feature article. A news story can be written in this form to transport the feel.

⮚      News Feature: This is the m ost popular kind of feature article in the newspapers. It conveys news, motives and implications, and consequences.

⮚      Informative Feature:  For this article, the writer conducts an interview, research, data compilation for data, and of course, relies on personal observation. The writer tries to add human stories and give information and education. It offers interesting information and guides the reader.

⮚      Historical Feature:  This type of feature article is for those, who are good at dates, chronology, turning points in history. The main motive of this feature article is to rekindle memory to invoke interest. 

⮚      Lifestyle Feature:   The most widespread feature articles people look for. How to live healthily? How to grow vegetables?

⮚      Scientific Feature : As the name suggests, this feature article voices on science policy and topics related to current topics.

⮚      Interpretative Features:  Political, social, and economic problems could be touched upon, while writing this feature article. Interpretative feature articles provide details, direct, and shed light on the context of specific issues.

⮚      Review:  Review of books, film, and music, etc. This article should highlight why a particular genre is good or extremely good and the specific reason for this extraordinary or ordinary nature.

⮚      Behind the scenes:  This article gives a reader a revelation about the backdrop scenes, or the reader can pry into the behind scenes.

Now you are familiar with different types of feature articles and the next step is to progress a set of skills required to write, organize and edit a feature article before writing a feature article and get set to write a feature article.

Why do you write a feature article ? It is either to instruct, persuade or entertain the readers. Do not miss the fact that feature articles are longer pieces of writing that range from opinions, issues, experiences, and ideas. 

How to Choose and Tempt the Audience When You Write a Feature Article?

It is a common fact that there are thousands of newspapers, magazines, and print media in the market flooding articles with online material. It can be considered as an uphill task to pitch the right audience and to get noticed in this market.  

How to break this discord and attract the audience is to offer the target audience a noteworthy article that is of interest which speaks a lot. Once the target audience is decided, think of their age, status, attitude, culture, and lifestyle. As a writer, you have to know their thought process, language, and vocabulary. 

As a next step, you have to analyze the topics of interest for that selected audience. Technology, travel, health, home travel are striking topics for features since they can be used in specific sections of newspapers or weekend magazines. Feature stories are frequently published in trade publications, usually as special supplements.

Steps to writing a feature article to keep the reader on tenterhooks

● The first point is to  choose the right topic  and the word limit of the feature article. Is the topic relevant and of interest or can this topic hold the breath of the audience until the last word? Do not exceed the word limit (minimum 1500 and maximum 4000 words). 

Briefly, discover a topic of existing importance. Further to that, think of a topic that sells and start forming great ideas that are exclusive.  The brainstorming  technique will help you bring out the best, and this technique will ensure you have a free flow of ideas. Understand the purpose of writing that can take you to the next step of writing.

●        Research the topic  and it all depends on your research. Find out what strikes and how well you can produce it. Read, read, research all aspects and perspectives of the topic, and give an edifying stance. 

Mind mapping techniques will allow you to channelize your ideas and thoughts. How do you do that? After your research and free flow of your ideas or overflow of ideas, create a central theme that will allow you to write. Of course, you can branch your central idea with different color codes and keywords, and colorful images to start with a bang and get inspired. 

More and more branches will make you more confident and with an organized flow of thoughts. Establish your principle and remember that is the meat of your article.

●        Narrow down your plan : Think of the target audience and what type of attitude do they like and what is your attitude towards that topic? Start thinking of all the  Ws and H  (who, why, what, when) and find out the answers for these common elements. Your battle is half won if the major reason for writing this article or the drive to write this feature article can answer all these questions.

●        Structure your astute ideas : Sequence them logically and according to the level of significance.

Now you are ready to start painless writing. Your writing process is also complete, and now time to start writing a feature article of your choice, your passion, and your ideas at your fingertips. Before you put words into life, it is better to know the language used to write a feature article.

Linguistic or language usage in feature articles:

● Use semi-formal language (not formal and not informal) with a human touch 

● Sprinkle sentiments, emotions, and feelings

● Use second person singular when you address the audience

● Adjectives and adverbs can be used sparingly but use action verbs

● Do not forget to use statistics, facts

● Quotes give a better edge or slight superiority to your writing

● Write in active voice

● Use literary techniques to create a special effect for a deeper meaning. This divulges the authors’ motivation.

● Rhetorical questions can invoke interest and allow the reader to think and increase certain insight.

● Anecdotes, imagery, and certain jargon are other language techniques that you can try.

Now you are ready to start writing with  more tips  to chisel and delve deep into writing.

How will you structure and organize a feature article?

• Headline:  A good introduction is the root of your writing. The publicity of your article lies in those first lines. Grab the attention of your reader with a catchy introduction or try to hook the reader’s interest. In the introductory lines, the main point is emphasized or highlighted.
• Subheading : Expresses a perspective or point of view of the author and it is also called a  deck . This is the second attempt of the author to tempt the reader. The gist of the article inscribed will allow a reader to be hooked on your article. 
• By-line : You can express your identity using a by-line and introduce the persons who helped you for an interview or a survey.
• Hook -: An intriguing initial sentence that will hook readers’ attention and keep them reading. It could be done by using an example, a metaphor, a rhetorical question exactly like how Barak Obama grabs the attention with his rhetorical questions. This paragraph develops on the hook and sets the tone of your article.
• Introductory paragraph 

This paragraph develops the hook and sets the tone for the rest of the article and defines the tone and focus of the article. The opening paragraph opens with a scheming, plot, or intrigue. You can win the heart of the reader and make them hold their attention with this paragraph. Do not forget to set the section and bring life into those words.

●        Paragraph two of the body: the first main topic . A description of how this person or problem has benefited society. In the author’s own words, this should be an interpretation of events or how to stick to the genre you have selected. Show and try not to speak.

●        From paragraph three onwards , more major points are offered to clarify to inform about vital events or accomplishments about the person/issue. The reader is more clear with more details using facts, evidence, and quotations. 

These pose difficult questions to the reader and include their responses. Paragraphs, photographs, tables, diagrams, and graphs are frequently used to present information in feature articles to present facts or proof to back up the content or support the author’s interpretation and explanation of the text person/issue/events.

●        Summary:   Now you are ready to summarise the article. The final paragraph should create a lasting impression by reminding the reader, the article’s core point and suggesting a suitable course of action, and promoting a shift in standpoint or attitude. 

This should prompt the reader to take a feat or encourage taking a deed. The reader should be able to confirm that the article is ready for a conclusion. Now, you have gulped the capsule to set and write a feature article.

●        Reread and Edit:  This is the most important step of the writing process before you write a feature article.                                                  

Revision and editing are important processes of writing. Editing suggests the chance to see a clear picture, evidence, specifics, fix the language glitches, and polish the article. 

Editing will help you to find out grammatical errors, typos, repetitions, and even dull writing the bugs in writing. This is sure to guide and bucket the thoughts to give a long-lasting impression of the feature article. Final editing and polishing will help you to find out whether you have put in your ideas succinctly and impactfully and whether you were able to connect the dots.

Learn about editing and proofreading here.

4 Personalities of Writing to Reduce Writer’s Block .

Madman, architect, carpenter, and madman. .

A madman creates ideas exactly like a madman. The architect gives the writing structure by moving paragraphs around and looking at the plot. The sentences, phrases, and word choices are being crafted by the carpenter. The judge removes elements of the document that aren’t required. This article will remove the block and help you to write a feature article.

Here are additional tips to become an ace before you write a feature article: 

▪ Be relaxed and conversational

▪ Keep it simple

▪ Short sentences and vary sentence length

▪ Paint a picture

▪ Spice up your writing

▪ Voice your opinion

▪ Smooth your writing by using transitions

▪ Don’t judge the first draft

▪ Always rely on peer editing

▪ Don’t write in the same tone

▪ Don’t put all the interesting facts at one go

▪ Harness the power of comma and punctuation

▪ Don’t dump information

Now you have the style, grace, and power of expressing your thoughts clearly and enlivening your writing with vivid images. It is an inborn talent that requires a knack and relevant guidelines to convert your thoughts into words that become a reader’s delight. This article is to reinstate the writing process and try to refresh your memory and change your writing blocks and procrastination habits to write a feature article.

Now you are ready to start your dream job or have a go. Good luck and best wishes!

Scope of Feature Article Writing:

Newspapers, magazines, and social media are employing freelancers and regular columnists. Print and online media depend on freelancers for making their publications interesting and noteworthy. 

The work from home concept is gaining momentum. Hence, it is beneficial for a featured columnist to be in their comfort zone and earn at leisure. Any individual with a flair for writing and a good grasp of language and creativity can make a decent living. 

A feature article writer can choose any genre of your choice and if you are consistent and stick to the timeline with utter sincerity, then nothing can pull you behind. Freelancers are in demand and make use of your painless writing techniques.                                                                                             

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is a feature article different from a blog?

Yes, it is different. While feature articles are published digitally and in print, blogs are published only online. 

2. Is feature writing well as a career?

Yes. With the present changes in the world, it has got ample scope. If your writing style is exclusive, then you have more possibility to be popular. 

3. What are the basic steps for new writers?

✔ Include all the fundamentals of writing (who, what, where why, when, and how)

✔ Plan and organize your writing

✔ Include your viewpoint

It is a fact that writing entails basic principles. It is good to master the rules. This will help you make your foundation before you venture into different kinds of writing. As stated before, writing a feature article is more than facts and includes interesting facts, and recall the points stated in this article before you write a feature article. 

It is of paramount importance to add a dimension of human touch and make it more pleasing. This article has guided you through the steps to write a feature article and touch the chords of the readers. 

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Feature writing: Crafting research-based stories with characters, development and a structural arc

Semester-long syllabus that teaches students how to write stories with characters, show development and follow a structural arc.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by The Journalist's Resource, The Journalist's Resource January 22, 2010

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/home/syllabus-feature-writing/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

The best journalism engages as it informs. When articles or scripts succeed at this, they often are cast as what is known as features or contain elements of a story. This course will teach students how to write compelling feature articles, substantive non-fiction stories that look to a corner of the news and illuminate it, often in human terms.

Like news, features are built from facts. Nothing in them is made up or embellished. But in features, these facts are imbedded in or interwoven with scenes and small stories that show rather than simply tell the information that is conveyed. Features are grounded in time, in place and in characters who inhabit both. Often features are framed by the specific experiences of those who drive the news or those who are affected by it. They are no less precise than news. But they are less formal and dispassionate in their structure and delivery. This class will foster a workshop environment in which students can build appreciation and skill sets for this particular journalistic craft.

Course objective

To teach students how to interest readers in significant, research-based subjects by writing about them in the context of non-fiction stories that have characters, show development and follow a structural arc from beginning to end.

Learning objectives

• Explore the qualities of storytelling and how they differ from news.
• Build a vocabulary of storytelling.
• Apply that vocabulary to critiquing the work of top-flight journalists.
• Introduce a writing process that carries a story from concept to publication.
• Introduce tools for finding and framing interesting features.
• Sharpen skills at focusing stories along a single, clearly articulated theme.
• Evaluate the importance of backgrounding in establishing the context, focus and sources of soundly reported stories.
• Analyze the connection between strong information and strong writing.
• Evaluate the varied types of such information in feature writing.
• Introduce and practice skills of interviewing for story as well as fact.
• Explore different models and devices for structuring stories.
• Conceive, report, write and revise several types of feature stories.
• Teach the value of “listening” to the written word.
• Learn to constructively critique and be critiqued.
• Examine markets for journalism and learn how stories are sold.

Suggested reading

• The Art and Craft of Feature Writing , William Blundell, Plume, 1988 (Note: While somewhat dated, this book explicitly frames a strategy for approaching the kinds of research-based, public affairs features this course encourages.)
• Writing as Craft and Magic (second edition), Carl Sessions Stepp, 2007, Oxford University Press.
• On Writing Well (30th anniversary edition), William Zinsser, Harper Paperbacks, 2006.
• The Associated Press Stylebook 2009 , Associated Press, Basic Books, 2009.

Recommended reading

• America’s Best Newspaper Writing , edited by Roy Peter Clark and Christopher Scanlan, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
• Writing for Story , Jon Franklin, Penguin, 1986.
• Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University , edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, Plume, 2007.
• The Journalist and the Murderer , Janet Malcolm, Vintage, 1990.
• Writing for Your Readers , Donald Murray, Globe Pequot, 1992.

Assignments

Students will be asked to write and report only four specific stories this semester, two shorter ones, one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end, and two longer ones, a feature looking behind or beyond a news development, and an institutional or personal profile.

They will, however, be engaged in substantial writing, much of it focused on applying aspects of the writing-process method suggested herein. Throughout the class, assignments and exercises will attempt to show how approaching writing as a process that starts with a story’s inception can lead to sharper story themes, stronger story reporting and more clearly defined story organization. As they report and then revise and redraft the semester’s two longer assignments, students will craft theme or focus statements, write memos that help the class troubleshoot reporting weaknesses, outline, build interior scenes, workshop drafts and workshop revisions. Finally, in an attempt to place at least one of their pieces in a professional publication, an important lesson in audience and outlet, the students will draft query letters.

Methodology

This course proceeds under the assumption that students learn to report and write not only through practice (which is essential), but also by deconstructing and critiquing award-winning professional work and by reading and critiquing the work of classmates.

These workshops work best when certain rules are established:

• Every student will read his or her work aloud to the class at some point during the semester. It is best that these works be distributed in advance of class.
• Every student should respond to the work honestly but constructively. It is best for students to first identify what they like best about a story and then to raise questions and suggestions.
• All work will be revised after it is workshopped.

Weekly schedule and exercises (13-week course)

We encourage faculty to assign students to read on their own at least the first 92 pages of William Zinsser’s On Writing Well before the first class. The book is something of a contemporary gold standard for clear, consistent writing and what Zinsser calls the contract between writer and reader.

The assumption for this syllabus is that the class meets twice weekly.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13

Week 1: What makes feature stories different?

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: News reports versus stories

The words “dispassionate,” “factual” and “front-loaded” might best describe the traditional news story. It is written to convey information quickly to the hurried reader. Features, on the other hand, are structured and told so that readers engage in and experience a story — with a beginning, middle and end — even as they absorb new information. It is features that often are the stories emailed to friends or linked on their Facebook pages. Nothing provides more pleasure than a “good read” a story that goes beyond basic information to transport audiences to another place, to engage an audience in others’ lives, to coax a smile or a tear.

This class will begin with a discussion of the differences in how journalists approach both the reporting and writing of features. In news, for example, reporters quote sources. In features, they describe characters, sometimes capturing their interaction through dialogue instead of through disembodied quotes. Other differences between news and story are summarized eloquently in the essays “Writing to Inform, Writing to Engage” and “Writing with ‘Gold Coins'” on pages 302 to 304 of Clark and Scanlan’s America’s Best Newspaper Writing . These two essays will be incorporated in class discussion.

The second part of the introductory class will focus on writing as a continuum that begins with the inception of an idea. In its cover blurb, William Blundell’s book is described as “a step-by-step guide to reporting and writing as a continuous, interrelated process.”

Notes Blundell: “Before flying out the door, a reporter should consider the range of his story, its central message, the approach that appears to best fit the tale, and even the tone he should take as a storyteller.” Such forethought defines not only how a story will be reported and written but the scope of both. This discussion will emphasize that framing and focusing early allows a reporter to report less broadly and more deeply, assuring a livelier and more authoritative story.

READING (assignments always are for the next class unless otherwise noted):

• Blundell, Chapter 1
• Clark/Scanlan, “The Process of Writing and Reporting,” pages 290-294.

ASSIGNMENT:

Before journalists can capture telling details and create scenes in their feature stories, they need to get these details and scenes in their notebooks. They need, as Blundell says, to be keen observers “of the innocuous.” In reporting news, journalists generally gather specific facts and elucidating quotes from sources. Rarely, however, do they paint a picture of place, or take the time to explore the emotions, the motives and the events that led up to the news. Later this semester, students will discuss and practice interviewing for story. This first assignment is designed to make them more aware of the importance of the senses in feature reporting and, ultimately, writing.

Students should read the lead five paragraphs of Hal Lancaster’s piece on page 56 of Blundell and the lead of Blundell’s own story on page 114. They should come prepared to discuss what each reporter needed to do to cast them, paying close attention to those parts based on pure observation and those based on interviewing.

Finally, they should differentiate between those parts of the lead that likely were based on pure observation and those that required interviewing and research. This can be done in a brief memo.

Class 2: Building observational and listening skills

Writing coach Don Fry, formerly of the Poynter Institute, used the term “gold coins” to describe those shiny nuggets of information or passages within stories that keep readers reading, even through sections based on weighty material. A gold coin can be something as simple as a carefully selected detail that surprises or charms. Or it can be an interior vignette, a small story within a larger story that gives the reader a sense of place or re-engages the reader in the story’s characters.

Given the feature’s propensity to apply the craft of “showing” rather than merely “telling,” reporters need to expand their reporting skill set. They need to become keen observers and listeners, to boil down what they observe to what really matters, and to describe not for description’s sake but to move a story forward. To use all the senses to build a tight, compelling scene takes both practice and restraint. It is neither license to write a prose-poem nor to record everything that’s seen, smelled or heard. Such overwriting serves as a neon exit sign to almost any reader. Yet features that don’t take readers to what Blundell calls “street level” lack vibrancy. They recount events and measure impact in the words of experts instead of in the actions of those either affected by policy, events or discovery of those who propel it.

In this session, students will analyze and then apply the skill sets of the observer, the reporter who takes his place as a fly on the wall to record and recount the scene. First students will discuss the passive observation at the heart of the stories assigned above. Why did the writers select the details they did? Are they the right ones? Why or why not?

Then students will be asked to report for about 30 to 45 minutes, to take a perch someplace — a cafeteria, a pool hall, a skateboard park, a playground, a bus stop — where they can observe and record a small scene that they will be asked to recapture in no more than 150 to 170 words. This vignette should be written in an hour or less and either handed in by the end of class or the following day.

Four fundamental rules apply:

• The student reporters can only write what they observe or hear. They can’t ask questions. They certainly can’t make anything up.
• The students should avoid all opinion. “I” should not be part of this story, either explicitly or implicitly.
• The scene, which may record something as slight as a one-minute exchange, should waste no words. Students should choose words and details that show but to avoid words and details that show off or merely clutter.
• Reporters should bring their lens in tight. They should write, for example, not about a playground but about the jockeying between two boys on its jungle gym.

Reading: Blundell, Chapter 1, Stepp, pages 64 to 67. Students will be assigned to read one or more feature articles built on the context of recently released research or data. The story might be told from the perspective of someone who carried out the research, someone representative of its findings or someone affected by those findings. One Pulitzer Prize-winning example is Matt Richtel’s “Dismissing the Risks of a Deadly Habit,” which began a series for which The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2010. Richtel told of the dangers of cell phones and driving through the experiences of Christopher Hill, a young Oklahoma driver with a clean record who ran a light and killed someone while talking on the phone. Dan Barry’s piece in The Times , “From an Oyster in the Gulf, a Domino Effect,” tells the story of the BP oil spill and its impact from the perspective of one oysterman, placing his livelihood into the context of those who both service and are served by his boat.

• Finish passive observational exercise (see above).
• Applying Blundell’s criteria in Chapter 1 (extrapolation, synthesis, localization and projection), students should write a short memo that establishes what relationship, if any, exists between the features they were assigned to read and the news or research developments that preceded them. They should consider whether the reporter approached the feature from a particular point of view or perspective. If so, whose? If not, how is the story structured? And what is its main theme? Finally, students should try to identify three other ways feature writers might have framed a story based on the same research.

Week 2: The crucial early stages: Conceiving and backgrounding the story

Class 1: Finding fresh ideas

In the first half of class, several students should be asked to read their observed scenes. Writing is meant to be heard, not merely read. After each student reads a piece, the student should be asked what he or she would do to make it better. Then classmates should be encouraged to make constructive suggestions. All students should be given the opportunity to revise.

In the second half of class, students will analyze the origins of the features they were assigned to read. The class might be asked to form teams and to identify other ways of approaching the material thematically by using Blundell’s methods of looking at an issue.

Feature writers, the author writes, are expected to find and frame their own ideas.

“The feature writer who doesn’t have two or three projects bubbling on his own stove is doing only half a job,” he writes.

Conceiving stories, Blundell notes, involves more than clear and original thought. Reporters need idea files and source files. They need to read prolifically in areas about which they know little. They need to look for areas that are under covered by their publications. They need to walk through their communities with the wonderment of tourists who have just landed in a foreign city.

This degree of organization and engagement assures reporters far greater success in applying some of Blundell’s other tools of analysis.

These include:

• Extrapolation — Looking for the “why” or principal cause of a story. After the explosion that killed BP workers and spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico, some feature stories likely told the dramatic, but relatively narrow, story of the night things went bad. Others, based on much weightier investigation, traced the series of bad decisions BP made that ultimately led to catastrophe. Both, in their way, would have been considered backgrounders to the news development.
• Synthesis — Looking for common threads that can broaden a story’s impact. Blundell offers the example of a series of mishaps in the city of San Diego that made the city ripe for a feature on its dubious claim to being the American capital of civic embarrassment.
• Localization — Examining big events or developments in smaller ways — either by taking a national or global event and examining its impact within the writer’s local area or by viewing a broad, thematic problem — post-traumatic stress disorder in the military, for example — through the experiences of an individual whose story represents the more universal experience. (In his book, Writing for Your Readers , Donald Murray writes: “Most good stories say one thing. They tell the story not of a battle, but of a soldier: they talk not about governance, but a deal; they discuss not a socioeconomic group, but reveal a person and a life.” Blundell writes that it is easier for most feature writers to be miniaturists than muralists.)
• Projection — Looking beyond the news development by writing a story that considers how the news affects a person or group of people. In Richtel’s story about the dangers of cell phones and driving, he builds the story around one young man whose life was shaken when he ran a stop light and took a life while talking on the phone.

Conceiving a story is only the first step. The reporter must go deep to report and write the story well. “To me,” Blundell writes, “the most important part of reporting is knowing what you need to make the story go.”

Reading: Blundell Chapter 3 and 4

Assignment: Students should either use materials posted on the Journalist’s Resource web site at the Shorenstein Center or developed at a research center at their university to identify and background a news or research development that can serve as the basis for developing a unique feature angle or approach. This feature should not profile, or tell the story of, either of an institution or an individual. Profiles will be assigned later in the semester. Instead students should look for features that either look behind a news development, such as the BP backgrounders described earlier, or features that look at the impact of a news development on those most directly affected by it or those who would be expected to translate it into policy. Students should keep in mind that they are conceiving and finding a thematic thread for a feature, not reporting a policy story filled with expert voices only. For example, if the Department of Defense releases data showing that suicides have increased in the military, the student might propose a feature like one published on page 1 of The New York Times in July 2010. It told the story of those working on a suicide hotline to keep anguished members of the military alive. The stories that grow out of this assignment should be substantial in their research and be worthy of between 1,300 and 1,500 words. They will be due in four weeks (Class 2 or Week 6).

By the second class of Week 3 students will be expected to have identified a topic and a way of approaching it that allows each to:

• Craft a single-sentence theme statement establishing its focus.
• Identify and obtain research-based material that will provide a specific contextual foundation for the story.
• Provide at least four sources, with their contact information, and an explanation of why the student has chosen them.
• Provide a brief reporting plan.

Class 2: The importance of backgrounding (starting the reporting process)

Too many students mistake reporting for a journalistic version of a police dragnet: They pull in everything they can find and then try to figure out what the story is. Such an approach results in stories riddled with holes and lacking any dominant focus. Reporting always demands lots of legwork. But that legwork must be informed by forethought, which, in turn, is informed by the process of backgrounding. Backgrounding moves a story from the conceptual stage to the point at which a reporter can draw up a well-established working thesis or plan, a focus which, while it might still change, sets the direction of future reporting and writing.

“The good writers I know always do some kind of planning before they report,” writes Blundell.

Part of that planning means to review what’s been written about the topic before, both to find useful information and to see what hasn’t been broached. It means identifying and locating documents to help establish a line of questioning and lend authority to the story. It means identifying different kinds of sources, from the “rabbis,” who point the way but rarely are quoted to “wise men,” who can offer a big picture overview of the landscape; and from authorities who can give the official version of things to what Blundell calls the “street-level” people who live the story and among whom the reporter likely will find a central character.

In this class, students will begin with a discussion of the steps needed to background a story well and then apply those steps to the individual stories they have begun researching. Among the issues that will be discussed are: Where to look for authoritative sources and digital or print documents, how to distinguish between different kinds of sources, and how to use background material to establish a line of questioning, identify potential sources and narrow the story’s focus.

READING/ASSIGNMENT:

• Agree with Blundell’s assessment of the theme of the story as expressed on page 116
• Find that the story stays tightly focused on the thematic Blundell describes. In each case, students should explain why the agree or disagree.
• Continue background work on first feature.

Week 3: Honing the story’s approach

Class 1: Focus or theme statements

Nearly every effective and interesting story is built around a single, dominant theme, using varied types of material to develop it. Writers who fill stories with exhaustive documentation but fail to establish a clear storyline file copy that reads like a government report. Writers who cobble together a series of colorful scenes that are not connected by a clear story spine run the risk of confusing readers to the point at which they will turn away.

The best features engross or entertain readers as they inform them. They offer content, structure and style, or, as Carl Sessions Stepp writes, “typically … share the following three virtues: 1. storyline: a special idea 2. Surprise: compelling material and 3. Stylishness: engaging writing.

To arrive at 2 and 3, the writer must first establish 1, the storyline. “A limited tale well told has more impact and persuasiveness than a sweeping story that can’t be adequately illustrated,” Blundell writes.

It is difficult to write that limited tale, however, unless the reporter sets out on a course to report it. That usually means narrowing and sharpening the story’s concept to the point at which the writer can express it in a clear and specific theme or focus statement. (For example, on page 116, Blundell gives this theme statement for the profile he deconstructs in the same chapter: “My theme statement for this story was simple — the life and work of a real cowboy in an age of cowboy hype.”)

Most serious storytellers would agree with Blundell that writing such a theme sentence must precede the bulk of reporting. This does not suggest the journalist embarks on his reporting with a bias. It suggests he is reporting with purpose. If the reporter finds a better story along the way, he can recast the theme statement. But entering the reporting process without one is like running through brambles instead of along a clearly marked path. The reporter who chooses the brambles may still get to the end, but only with multiple nicks and cuts.

As students sharpen their stories’ themes, they should consider some of the questions Blundell raises in Chapter 4 (assigned earlier). They also might ask themselves these questions, among others:

• Is the story’s scope too broad?
• Do I have time to report and write a story of the scale I’m proposing?
• Am I getting down to street level in my reporting?
• Can I establish an element of suspense or anticipation at the outset of the story that isn’t answered until near the end?
• Does something happen in the story? Does something change? (Action often informs character and stories are easier to construct if they arrive at a resolution. In his excellent book on narrative nonfiction, Writing for Story , author Jon Franklin notes that the best stories are built around sympathetic characters forced to confront and resolve a conflict or complication in their lives. “A story,” he writes, “consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.”)
• Does the story’s contemporary context or its past make it more interesting to tell?

To help internalize the process of writing theme statements, students can be asked to select an article from the Journalist’s Resource web site, to deconstruct it and to craft a single theme sentence that captures its purpose. They then should compare their efforts, either in small groups or a discussion of the entire class.

Class 2: Pitching the story

Students will read their theme or focus statements aloud in class. These will be critiqued by the instructor and class. Using the memos submitted by students, the instructor should work with them to sharpen the focus of their stories and troubleshoot the direction of their reporting.

Reading: Blundell, page 95 (four stages), 126 to 140 and 148 to 152; Zinsser, pages 55 to 58; Stepp, 99 to 101 and 149 to 153.

• The first draft of the 1,500-word public affairs feature article described above will be assigned for the second class of Week 5 (in two weeks).
• Those students with a weak focus statement will be expected to recast them for the following class.
• Students should come prepared to discuss which lead in Appendix 2 of Blundell’s book they consider most effective and why. They also should consider which ending they consider most effective and why.

Week 4: Organizing stories

Class 1: Leads and endings

Journalism textbooks love to categorize lead types. Among the feature leads they’ll list are anecdotal leads , short vignettes that exemplify or show what the main point of the story will tell; scene setters , that paint a picture and create a mood of a place central to a story’s central theme; zingers , short, sharp leads that pull readers in with a quick turn of phrase or sharp contrast; and narrative leads , which foreshadow what’s to come and build suspense without giving away the story’s ending.

Categories aside, though, every lead serves the same purpose and has the same mission: To engage readers immediately and to do so well enough to keep them reading.

Reporters, particularly those writing for newspapers or web sites, don’t have the time or space to luxuriate in the scenes they create. They cannot afford to waste space or words. They must, in the words of E.B. White, “make every word tell.” This is as true in writing features as in writing news. The forms and style change. The mission remains the same.

In his book, On Writing Well , William Zinsser puts it like this: “The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead.”

He notes that leads must not only force the reader to keep reading but that to do so, each sentence must do “real work.” It needs to build on the sentence before, to introduce information even as it entices or draws the reader in.

Leads must do something else: They must be honest. A lead about a shark surfacing a few feet from a swimmer off Cape Cod likely would draw the reader to the next sentence. But if the story had nothing to do with sharks other than they were swimming in the waters near a controversial site where offshore windmills will soon be built, the lead would be deceptive and tangential to the story. A lead must fit the story — in its content, its tone and its direction. Readers will resent the writer who deceives.

The second most important sentence in a good feature is its last. It should leave the reader with a sense of finality or resolution, a strong image, a reminder of the story’s main theme. The best endings both surprise and resonate. This is not the long windup of the college English essay. Students are urged to leave out their editorial opinions and to eschew that dreadful term-paper transition: “in conclusion.” Instead, the best stories stop, sometimes abruptly, often before the reader is quite ready.

When an opening anecdote or scene introduces a broader theme, the writer often circles back or bookends the story to where it began. Stories that return to where they began offer a sense of symmetry, a sense of completion. Other stories end by looking ahead, to the future. Or, in the case of narrative, they reach the solution readers have been seeking since they were enticed into the story in the opening scene.

The best way to learn to write different kinds of leads and endings is to (a) read many writers and take note of their approaches and (b) to try multiple leads and endings to the same story.

In this session, the class should discuss Blundell’s four stages on page 95. The first. “tease me, you devil” is the anecdotal or scene-setter lead of the conventional public affairs feature and, perhaps, the first chapter of the pure narrative. The second stage, “tell me what you’re up to” is the nut graph , the paragraph or two in traditional features that resolves the anecdote before it by telling what it showed and then, by placing it in broader context. The second stage is a theme or focus statement with a bit more muscle on the bone. The third stage, “I’m from Missouri. You’ll have to prove what you just said,” is the story’s middle, its evidence and its story development, often woven together. And the last, “I’ll buy it. Help me remember,” is the ending.

In addition to critiquing the leads and endings in Blundell’s Appendix B, the class, time permitting, might either evaluate how well one piece meets these four stages and/or recast the lead for one of the stories, a means of matching their wits against a master and also, perhaps, proving to themselves that no story has a single right lead.

Reading: Blundell, Chapter 5; Stepp, pages 141 to 149, 182 to 192; 52 to 54

Class 2: Managing the middle

Good organization can’t rectify weak content. That’s why students should start this class by playing close heed to Blundell’s “rule of threes” (page 54), a means of layering strong reporting into story. The author notes that readers need repetition to understand ideas and concepts. But, he adds, that repetition should take different forms. So, for example, if a sentence says the catch of Gulf oystermen has been cut by a third since the BP oil spill, the next sentence should give a specific example, perhaps showing the diminished haul of the story’s main character on a specific day. The third sentence might be a salty quote from that main character on how bad things have become.

Fact, followed by example, followed by quote: That is one application of the rule of threes. Working in tandem, these different kinds of story “proofs” build knowledge and entertain the reader. The rule of threes also can apply to multiple examples from different places. If, for example, new research shows a rise in foreclosures in more states, the reporter might give examples from three of them.

Regardless of their structure, stories work well when like ideas are kept together. Those ideas might be related material, as in the rule of threes, or related themes. A feature about preparations to enforce Arizona’s harsh new immigration law would have one section that looks at the efforts of those interested in enforcing the law and another that examines efforts of opponents to block that enforcement. It would not whipsaw back and forth from one group to the other.

Since we all live by the clock — 24 hours a day, seven days in a week, four weeks in a month, and so forth — writing often works well if at some point it returns to the beginning and progresses to the end. The story, in other words, is organized chronologically . When explanatory passages or sections are needed, writers can step back from this chronological framework by alternating expository “chapters” with the personal narrative ones.

In class, students should analyze Blundell’s story about the loss of farmland in Chapter 5 (it begins on page 103), reviewing not only its structure but the content he musters. Does he apply the rule of threes? In what ways? Does he keep like ideas together? In what way? Contrast this story to the story that begins on page 114. This story relies heavily on chronology for its structure.

Reading: Review Blundell, Chapter 4; Read Stepp, page 72 to 76, 138 to 139

Assignment: Students should come prepared to discuss the following:

• William Blundell writes: “The story is happening on streets where there are no PR men strewing palms in the reporter’s path, no computers disgorging blocks of seductive statistics, and a lot of people who have nothing to gain from doing pirouettes for the press. This territory can be tough on strangers, but we have to go there to gather details and direct experiences that show the reader what we’re talking about.”Students should discuss what he means by this. Blundell further suggests that a good half of reporting can be spent seeking the right person to talk to at that street level. Students should discuss how close to that street level they’ve gotten in their reporting and what else they might do to close the gap.
• Students also should consider whether and how they’ve used Blundell’s method of planning and execution to inform their reporting and come prepared to discuss this. Has it helped them? Confused them? Have they applied it or ignored it? Why?

Each student should weigh:

• What gaps remain in reporting his or her story.
• Whether the reporting has unearthed sound, research-based data at the story’s foundation.
• Whether or not the data is recent.
• Whether sources interviewed carry authority.
• Whether they show a range and balance.
• Whether they take the story to street level.

Week 5: Working through the reporting process

Class 1: Reporting at ground level

This class will be run like a newsroom in which the instructor, as editor, coaches students through the latter stages of their reporting process. Students should be challenged to defend their initial theme statement. Does it still stand up? Should it be tweaked in any way? They should be pressed on what data they’ve gathered to support that premise. And they should be asked to explain and, if necessary, defend their choice and breadth of sources.

Reading: Stepp, pages 85-88

Assignment: Each student should craft a two- to three-page memo containing the following:

• An updated theme or focus statement
• A list of primary points that support that focus, tied, if possible, to Blundell’s six question areas on pages 70-75.
• A lead that shows (or, as Blundell says, teases)
• A nut graph (or graphs) that establishes the story and summarizes its main point.
• A contextual section that places the story into a broader perspective and reinforces its main point
• Sections or chapters built around like ideas
• Anecdote or scenes interspersed as examples. These support the ideas and reintroduce the main character.
• A closing section that circles back to the main character.
• An example to support each primary story point.
• A summary of research-based evidence that supports the story’s main thesis.
• An assessment of what reporting gaps remain and how they might be filled.

Class 2: Outlining the story

Students, working in teams of two, should read each other their revised theme statements (and consult the instructor on an as-needed basis). Teammates should listen as readers and coach as editors. Each should ask his or her teammate to talk through the story. What did he/she find most interesting? What alternative leads has he/she attempted? What gaps does the story have?

After finishing the critiques, each student should:

• Read through notes and mark key facts, key quotes and key examples
• Fast-draft a rough lead through the nut graph
• Identify contextual material that would enhance the story
• Order key points/facts that should be in the story
• Identify interior scenes that belong in the story
• Highlight any information that needs to be verified or double-checked.

In organizing key points, students should remember to keep like ideas together. They should seek examples that support all general statements. Some long-form feature writers work with a master chronology that sets all facts and scenes in a timeline of when they took place. This helps with fact checking and with chronological organization.

Reading: Blundell, Chapter 7; Stepp, 51-57 and 176-192

Week 6: The roots of good writing

Class 1: Using language with style and precision

This class will review the elements of good journalistic writing, from active, right-branching sentences to specificity and simplicity of language. Among the issues instructors might touch on and model are:

• The cadence, pace and rhythm of good writing. It should become second nature for students to read their work aloud.
• Selective detail and its use. (Using Journalist’s Resource or news web sites, students might look for examples of selective detail that are enhanced by features and examples that detract because they don’t reinforce storyline.)
• Specificity versus generality. How does Blundell’s rule of threes ensure specificity?
• The use of analogy in translation and definition. (The value of comparing the unfamiliar to what we know.)
• The importance of consistency of tone, person, tense and style.

After the discussion, students should draft either a lead anecdote or an interior scene from their stories. Some of these will be critiqued in class.

DUE: First draft of 1,500-word backgrounder or impact feature. Selected stories will be due the night before class so they can be distributed to the entire class in advance.

Class 2: Workshopping first drafts

Selected students should read their stories aloud, discuss obstacles they faced in drafting them, explain how they tried to overcome these obstacles, and identify what they liked best about their stories and what they lacked confidence in. Classmates then will weigh in with their critiques.

Reading: pages 76 and 77 (Blundell’s profile outline) and these stories in his book: pages 44 to 47 and 242 to 248 (personal profiles), 248 to 254 (institutional profile) and 114 to 119 (occupational profile).

Assignment: Students weigh the differences between a profile, a depth interview with a subject and story about their background. What does Blundell mean when he says that profiles, like other stories, need a clear theme? Students also should try to determine some of the ways that Blundell’s outline on page 76 and 77 helped define the structure of his own work.

Week 7: The profile (personal and institutional)

Class 1: Finding a subject, finding a theme, finding out information

Few aspects of journalism are more interesting and challenging than to write about someone else, — to capture what motivates that individual, what makes that person “tick.” Profiles can be written as well about organizations and about what makes them distinctive or unusual. Good profiles demand backgrounding, patience, legwork, independent engagement and curiosity.

First, however, the reporter has to answer the questions, “Whom should I profile and why?” Sometimes those answers can be found in the news: Who has surfaced as an interesting figure? Sometimes the answers can be found in something interesting that a subject does, or doesn’t do (note the profiles in Blundell’s book of the Disney corporation, still living in the shadow of its deceased founder.) Or the answers can be found by looking for someone who exemplifies a larger group or population in the news, a veteran with PTSD, for example. Whomever or whatever the subject, writers don’t merely want to catalogue that individual’s or company’s accomplishments. Corporate biographies and resumes serve that purpose. Profiles dig beneath the surface, capture the subject complete with quirks and blemishes. They help readers understand what makes someone “tick” and what lies behind that person’s passions.

As with other features, backgrounding plays a central role in establishing the profile’s theme. Backgrounding can help the reporter identify how a subject has changed and uncover inherent contradictions between the subject’s words and actions. It allows the writer to separate what has been written about someone from what hasn’t. And it can open doors. For example, when Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy Breton of The Providence Journal interviewed two actresses co-starring in a theatrical performance, she had done “her homework.” She knew that decades earlier one had understudied for the other, a fact the actresses had forgotten until reminded and one that helped Breton break the ice.

The patience to gather information in varied ways often comes into play in reporting. Profiles require multiple interviews with a subject, preferably in a setting that shows who the person is.

Profiles also benefit from the times the reporter can simply observe. Author Gay Talese, one of the most respected of a generation in the 1960s that experimented with forms of narrative nonfiction storytelling, has written and spoken about “the art of hanging out,” of observing a subject and capturing the scenes that reflect that person’s manner and personality.

To learn about subjects, reporters don’t only interview them and read what they’ve written or what has been written about them. Reporters also interview others who can provide insight — family and friends, competitors and former employees, customers and patients. That’s legwork. Whom they seek out depends largely on what the story’s focus is. A profile of a Las Vegas card shark might lead to the subject’s high school or college math teacher, his mother and his competitors around the table. It likely wouldn’t call for an interview with his former piano teacher or swim coach.

To win a subject’s trust, reporters must show sincere interest in that individual. At the same time, the reporter has to maintain his or her independence. Good profiles reveal some aspect of a subject’s life. They are neither intended to promote nor diminish, simply show the subject as he or she really is.

Finally, reporters must be curious enough to delve beneath the surface. Most people have a public persona and a more private one. The profile writer wants to tap into both.

During this class, students will critique the profiles published in Blundell’s book and the elements of framing, reporting and writing interesting, informative profiles.

Assignment: In teams of three or four, students should research their professor, then draft a tentative focus or theme statement for a profile. It might focus on the professor’s research, a hobby or passion, his or her teaching style, some recent notable achievement (a book, for example) or something else. Teams should prepare to interview the professor “for story” during the next class, developing whatever themes their focus statements outline.

Class 2: Carrying out and critiquing an interview with the professor

A member of each team should read that team’s theme statement and other members should explain how the team decided on its focus. After all teams have finished, students will vote on which story offers the most promise. (Team members cannot vote for their own idea.) When the vote and subsequent discussion are finished, the winning team will interview the professor. Certain rules apply.

• Questions cannot be read.
• Team members should listen closely to the answer and try to build on each question in their subsequent question.
• Students on the other teams, meanwhile, should observe, take notes, and evaluate the content and quality of their classmates’ interview. (They might consider, for example, how well each questioner engages, whether they are asking “open-ended” or “close-ended” questions, whether they are probing for emotion and insight as well as fact, and whether they appeared to be listening and taking cues for follow-up.)

After the interview and discussion about its effectiveness, the class should reflect on what steps would be needed to finish the profile.

Assignment: During the second class of next week, students will be expected to propose a profile subject and submit a theme or focus statement that identifies their approach. They should contact the subjects before preparing their pitches. They should also thoroughly background their subjects and identify at least two other people whom they can interview to develop the story further.

Reading: Article, “The Power of Listening,” Scanlan, Poynter Institute; “Rules to Interview By,” Rubinkowski, Poynter; Zinsser, pages 100 to 116; Stepp, 68 to 72; “Frank Sinatra has a Cold,” a Gay Talese profile, published in Esquire and available in full online. Finally, students should read Anna Quindlen’s essay from The New York Times “Hers” column on April 10, 1986. It begins with the words, “For most of my adult life, I have been a emotional hit-and-run driver, that is, a reporter.” The essay is an excellent starting point for a discussion of the ethics of depth reporting and interviewing.

Week 8: Interviewing for story

Class 1: Logistical and ethical considerations in interviewing for story

Successful interviews start with strong preparation and curiosity. Reporters who know next to nothing about their subject, who seem bored or hurried, who work off a set list of questions instead of listening to answers, who seek facts rather than knowledge or understanding, will leave with little.

Jacqui Banaszynski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and now a Knight professor at the University of Missouri, says at times the most effective question can be a sympathetic nod or an interjection, such as “really.” This keeps the subject talking. Granted. It is not wise to start an interview this way. But often reporters are so intent on their questions that they don’t hear the answers and don’t encourage subjects to say more, to elaborate.

The first step in interviewing for story is to choose the right setting, a place that shows something about the subject and a place in which the subject feels comfortable. Then, says Banaszynski, the reporter’s job is to “peel back the layers of the onion,” to get to the story behind the story, to engage the real subject not the public persona. This takes time, patience, lots of directed yet open-ended questions, and genuine interest in what the subject has to say. Bored reporters conduct boring interviews.

It’s no small matter for a green reporter to park the jitters before knocking on the door. Several things help:

• Know as much as possible about the subject beforehand.
• Prepare questions in advance, but never read them. Preparation helps the reporter think through the interview’s purpose. Their questions shouldn’t be obvious — or left sitting on the table.
• Ask permission to tape as well as take notes. It can ease the anxiety of keeping up. But do take notes, listening for details and quotes and hints that bear follow-up.
• Ease in with questions that relax the subject and establish rapport. The props of setting can help. Ask why the subject has chosen a particular meeting place. Comment on pictures on the wall.
• Listen. The reporter’s job is not to ask brilliant questions but to get brilliant answers.

This class discussion should focus on the techniques and pitfalls of interviewing for story. It is a skill that requires instinct and humanity as well as thoughtful preparation. (Banaszynski describes it as a dance in which the reporter must lead, but the interview subject gets to choose the music.)

At times reporters don’t get the opportunity to interview a profile’s central character. Such was the case in Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” Students should discuss how Talese compensated for this.

This session should end with a discussion of Quindlen’s essay. What are the ethical dilemmas raised by interviewing for story and emotion as well as for information? What are the ethical responsibilities of the reporter in setting out on a project that will involve considerable revelation on the part of the subject (for example, a profile of a family caring for an Alzheimer’s patient)?

Assignment: Students should prepare a memo for pitching their profiles, which should be roughly 1,500 words in length. The memo should include:

• A theme or focus statement
• Key background information about the subject.
• Key contacts and contact information for the subject and other people the student will interview to gain insight.
• A few reflective paragraphs considering the story’s approach in the context of Blundell’s story development criteria on pages 76 and 77.

Class 2: Pitching profile ideas

Students will read their theme statements aloud and explain why they’ve proposed specific profile approaches. Students and instructor should react to each theme statement and offer constructive criticism. Those students lacking clear themes will be expected to recast their theme statements for the following class.

Week 9: The writer’s voice

Class 1: How voice emerges

Inexperienced writers frequently make the mistake of approaching “voice” as something that can be superimposed. They overwrite, laboring to create something that neither sounds like them nor reflects their style. In On Writing Well , Zinsser cautions that his students seem determined to “create an act of literature,” only relaxing paragraphs into a story to emerge as themselves.

Students should rest assured. For the writer who reads widely and writes frequently, voice emerges naturally over time. It is not a construct of big words and fancy phrases, nor is it an affected effort to sound carefree and breezy. It is not a celebration of the writer’s opinion. It comes from within, something akin to a slightly more polished version of the writer’s spoken voice.

Writes Stepp: “Voice probably comes more naturally than most writers believe. Many writers describe the struggle to ‘find’ their voice, but most writers’ voices will emerge spontaneously if they just clear away some of the obstructing professional underbrush: the artificial constraints, expectations, and hobgoblins that haunt many newsrooms, writing studios, and writer-editor collaborations. Writers who are steeped in good material, relaxed and enthusiastic about their assignment, comfortable in their surroundings, and encouraged to be original and inventive do not have to find a voice It rings out intuitively.”

In this class, students should discuss what concerns they have about voice and how they believe they should and have gone about developing it. They should then take a scene or section of their revised first features and write through it as they might tell a friend. The class should listen to a few of these and critique them.

Class 2: Workshopping the revised first feature

The instructor should identify two or three students who will be asked in advance to distribute their work to the class. They should read their stories aloud in class, be given the opportunity to discuss what worked for them and where they struggled. Then classmates should weigh in with a discussion of these stories, starting with what they liked best and then making suggestions for improvement.

Week 10: Working through the reporting process

Class 1: Sharpening the story’s angle and content

Both classes in this week largely replicate the critiquing and outlining goals set in Week 5, with the instructor acting as coach to shepherd students through the latter stages of their reporting process.

Students should be asked whether their initial focus holds up; what facts, examples, quotes and scenes they have to support it; who they’ve interviewed (in addition to their profile subject) and what these individuals have to add. Much class time will be spent troubleshooting obstacles to reporting.

Each student should craft a two- to three-page memo containing the following:

• A brief summary of key details, anecdotes and examples that give support to the theme.
• A structural design for the story (at some point within most profiles, the writer moves chronologically through at least a portion of the subject’s life)
• A summary of key insights into the subject provided by other sources.

Class 2: Building an outline

Week 11: Workshop profile drafts

The instructor should keep a list throughout the semester of which students have read their work in front of the class. All students should have their work subjected to class-wide critique before any individual is given a second opportunity.

Class 1: Workshop profile drafts

Assignment: Bring a local newspaper and The New York Times to the next class.

Class 2: Finding stories off the news

Reporters need to be nimble. The best, it is said, can “speed” as well as “bleed.” The feature writer often does not have the luxury to report and write depth public affairs stories. She’s given a day to find, report and write a story, not a week or two. This places even more weight on the challenge of conceiving something interesting and narrowing its scope. Writing stories on deadline can be a high-wire act. The reporter must gather fact and push for scene, show patience and interest in interview subjects yet race the clock, write and revise, but on the same afternoon.

Next week, the class will be expected to pitch and then write a feature off the news in the two to three days between classes. This class is designed to help students identify stories off the news.

Asking a number of questions of the news can help:

• Who is left out?
• Who is affected? How?
• What’s behind the news? (An 85-year-old becomes a citizen or graduates. Why?)
• How does the past inform the story? (The calendar and unusual anniversaries suggest stories daily.)
• What led up to the news?
• What’s the reaction to the news? (Blundell’s moves and counter-moves.)
• Who is the person behind the newsmaker?
• How can the reporter localize a national or international event?
• Do a number of similar actions — beaches closed for a high bacteria count — constitute a trend?
• Can the reporter show this, or other developments, by taking readers to a place?

In teams, reporters should scour the day’s paper, drawing up and prioritizing a list of possible features that might be turned quickly. The class will critique and respond to each team’s ideas.

Assignment: Background and write theme statements for two stories off the news. Students will be assigned one during the next class to turn in 48 hours.

Week 12: Pouring it on

Class 1: Pitching the feature off the news

In this class, the instructor should coach students toward features they can reasonably report and write in a day or two. This discussion should reinforce the importance of ingenuity and scope in turning features fast.

Class 2: Workshop features off the news

This class should begin with a discussion of the challenges of turning features fast. As time permits, students should workshop these efforts.

Week 13: Finding a niche

Class 1: Researching publications, framing queries

The topsy-turvy pace of technological changes makes this an extraordinary time to start a career in journalism. In some ways, it has never been easier to be published: Register for a blog at WordPress or Blogspot and write. It’s that easy. In other ways, it’s rarely been harder to get noticed and paid. Students interested in doing serious journalism should pursue a few parallel paths. Even in college, they can begin building their “brand,” a word that still makes older journalists shudder (their job was to cover the news, not market themselves or be the news). Students can build brand by building a website, preferably one named after them. This should be linked to blogs, a Facebook account, Twitter accounts, a resume and examples of their writing that they hope someone significant in the world will visit and read.

If today’s journalism students should act aggressively in asserting a voice and marketing their work, they also should be smart and circumspect about what they post. Too many horror stories circulate today about students denied jobs because of ill-advised party pictures posted on social media accounts. As a rule of thumb, students should sleep on anything they are tempted to post in the glow of the moment.

Marketing freelance work has been streamlined in the digital age. Most newspapers and some magazines today prefer emailed query letters pitching an article to letters sent by post.

Again, however, speed can kill rather than enhance. Sizable percentages of pitches never make it past the first gatekeeper (often an intern) for a variety of reasons:

• A misspelled name
• A letter sent to the wrong editor
• A letter sent to the right editor at the wrong publication
• Grammatical errors
• Spelling errors
• Ill-conceived or boastful ideas
• Efforts to negotiate price before a piece is sold
• Offers to write for free

Once again in journalism, the query begins with research. Reporters need to research not only stories and story ideas but which publications serve an audience that would read them. They can learn a great deal about publications, their freelance guidelines and their freelance rates in the library’s most recent edition of Writer’s Market or by subscribing online to WritersMarket.com.

As a rule, query letters should be a single page long. At their best, they show a writer’s talent and sell a clearly conceived and substantive story that fits the publication’s style and audience.

The query’s first paragraph tries to hook the reader very much like the first sentence of a feature does. This, however, is not the place for elegant anecdotes. It is best to settle for a quick turn lead, one that grabs the reader’s attention. The second paragraph pitches the story’s particulars. How long is the piece the writer is proposing? How will it develop? What’s its purpose? The third paragraph introduces the writer and answers the question “why me — why this writer?” This is where writers talk about special qualities — expertise, access to the subject, experience. The final or closing paragraph makes clear that the writer will follow up.

The entire letter should be businesslike. Pleading or begging editors for a chance does not work. One more tip: Always call the publication before sending a query to check whether an editor still works there, what the editor’s title is, and how to spell his or her name.

In addition to discussing queries, instructors should consider inviting in a local newspaper or magazine editor to talk about the queries they’ve received, which queries they liked and which ones they discarded immediately. Such visits give students a chance to network, a significant aspect of building a niche.

Assignment: Students should research a publication to which they will pitch one of their articles from the semester. They should come to the next class knowing the appropriate editor’s name and title, the submission guidelines of the publication, and the nature of the articles it publishes.

Class 2: Writing and revising the query

Students will spend this class crafting and revising query letters for one of their stories from the semester. In most cases, these should be ready to email to the publication by the end of class.

Exam week: Revised profiles are due

Tags: training

About The Author

The Journalist's Resource

Harness the Power of Persuasive Writing: 10 Inspiring Feature Story Ideas

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on Published: October 28, 2022  - Last updated: June 23, 2023

Categories Writing , Inspiration

Do you need a little inspiration for your next feature story? Check out our list of ten persuasive story ideas that will hook your readers! From powerful personal narratives to stories about overcoming adversity, these ideas will help you produce engaging content that engages your audience and drives conversions.

10 Feature Story Ideas

• The triumph of the underdog: Whether you’re covering an inspiring athlete or a small business that has beat the odds, this is a classic story idea that never gets old.
• Overcoming adversity: Everyone has experienced hardship at some point in life and detailing how someone overcame major obstacles makes for a compelling read.
• Saved by the community: Sometimes it takes a village to save someone from disaster, and sharing these stories of courage and resilience will inspire your readers to look out for one another.
• Making a difference: If there’s one thing we can all learn from great feature stories, it’s that every person has the potential to make a positive impact on others’ lives.
• Living on the edge: Whether you’re writing about extreme sports athletes, passionate explorers, or adventurous entrepreneurs, capturing people who push boundaries makes for an exciting read.
• Finding happiness in difficult times: Even though life can be tough sometimes, there are always ways to find joy and meaning in your everyday experiences.
• Success through hard work and persistence: From high-achieving professionals to emerging artists and creatives, this is an uplifting story that inspires us all to keep pushing forward no matter what challenges we face along the way.
• Breaking down barriers: Whether overcoming social prejudices or shattering glass ceilings, this is a powerful topic that will resonate with audiences of all backgrounds and beliefs.
• Inspiring tales from animal rescue organizations: Visiting shelters and talking with animal rescue experts can uncover compelling stories highlighting the amazing work being done to save animals in need.
• Uncovering the stories of the unheard voices: From political dissidents to those struggling with addiction, this is a powerful way to bring attention to people and causes that need a little help from their communities.

The Basics of Feature Writing

Feature writing is a great way to get your byline and hone your storytelling skills. But where do you start? Here are the basics you need to know to get started in the world of feature writing.

What is a Feature Story?

A feature story is a type of journalistic writing that tells a story from a human interest angle. Unlike most news stories, which focus on the facts of who, what, when, where, and why, a feature story digs deeper to explore the emotions and personal experiences behind the news. Feature stories can be profiles of interesting people, first-person accounts of events, or trend pieces that explore how current events affect people’s lives.

What Makes a Good Feature Story?

A good feature story has all the elements of a good news story—it should be well-reported and accurate—but it also goes beyond the bare facts to add color, emotion, and humanity. A good feature story will make the reader feel something, whether it’s anger, sadness, happiness, or intrigue. It will give the reader a new perspective on an event or help them understand another person’s experience in a way they could never have before.

How Do You Write a Feature Story?

Writing a successful feature story takes time, effort, and practice. Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Find a topic that interests you. A good place to start is by brainstorming people or places you know well. Once you have an idea of who or what you want to write about, start doing some research to see if there’s already been a lot written about your topic (in which case you may want to find another angle) or if there are gaps in the coverage that you could fill.
• Talk to people. The best way to get information for your story is to talk to people directly involved with the subject matter. If you’re writing about a specific event, talk to witnesses or people affected by it. If you’re writing about someone’s experience with an issue like addiction or homelessness, reach out and see if they’re willing to share their story with you. The more voices you can include in your story, the richer it will be.
• Go beyond the obvious. When researching your topic, look for stories that haven’t been told before or offer a new perspective on familiar events or issues. These are the stories that will capture readers’ attention and set your piece apart from all the other articles out there on the same subject matter.
• Write, rewrite, edit…and then edit some more! A successful feature story requires multiple drafts before it’s ready for publication. After each draft, put your article away for at least 24 hours so you can come back to it with fresh eyes; this will help you catch errors and spot areas that need improvement more easily than if you tried to edit immediately after writing. Then show your article to somebody else—a friend, family member, or coworker—and ask for their feedback; they may catch things you missed. After incorporating their suggestions (as well as any others from your editing process), give your article one last read-through before sending it off into the world!

How to Write a Feature Story that Sells

To write a feature story that sells, you need to understand what a feature story is and how it’s different from other types of stories. A feature story is a long-form piece of creative nonfiction that tells a human interest story.

It should be well-written and well-researched and have a strong central character or characters. If you can write a compelling feature story, you’ll be able to sell it to any number of publications.

How to Write a Compelling Feature Story

The best way to write a compelling feature story is to focus on the following elements:

• The Characters: The people in your story should be relatable, likable, and interesting. Readers should be able to see themselves in the characters or at least feel like they know them.
• The Problem: There needs to be some problem or conflict that the characters are trying to solve. This gives the story tension and keeps readers engaged.
• The Solution: The solution should be interesting and unique. It should also be something that readers can take away from the story and apply to their own lives.
• The Writing: The writing should be clear, concise, and engaging. You want readers to feel like they’re right there with the characters, experiencing everything firsthand.

How to Write a Feature Article: the Basics

A feature article is a type of soft news story. It contains all of the basic elements of a news story – who, what, where, when, and why – but it also has something known as the “human element.” This additional component sets a feature story apart from a hard news story; it’s what makes a feature story interesting and engaging.

Writing a feature article can be daunting. Where do you start? What are the basic components? Here’s a quick overview of how to write a feature story from start to finish.

The Inverted Pyramid

The first thing you need to know about writing a feature article is that it follows the inverted pyramid format. This means that the most important information (the who, what, where, when, and why) is at the story’s beginning, while the least important information is at the end.

The lead paragraph should contain all of the essential information about the story; everything else in the article should be secondary in importance. The lead should be no more than three or four sentences long; anything longer risks losing the reader’s attention.

After the lead, you’ll want to include a nut graph. This is a brief paragraph (one or two sentences) that states your article’s main theme or argument. Think of it as a mini-thesis statement.

The remainder of your article will focus on fleshing out this theme or argument. Remember to keep your language clear and concise; features are not the place for flowery prose or dense jargon. When in doubt, err on the side of simplicity.

Your article will conclude with a kicker – a short sentence (no more than 10 words) that sums up your article interestingly or memorably.

3 Ways to End a Feature Story with a Bang

As any seasoned writer knows, one of the most challenging aspects of writing a feature story is crafting a strong ending that ties up all the loose ends without sounding contrived or cliche.

Here are three tips to help you end your next feature story with a bang:

Leave them wanting more

One effective way to end a feature story is to leave readers wanting more. This can be done by raising more questions than you answer or hinting at future developments in the story. For example, if you’re writing about a new product to hit store shelves shortly, you could end your story with a quote from the CEO about the company’s plans for world domination. Tease readers with what’s to come, and they’ll come back for more.

Go out on a high note

Another option is to go out on a high note—literally. If your story has been largely positive up until this point, end it on an even more positive note by including an inspiring quote or heartwarming anecdote. This will leave readers feeling good about what they’ve just read, and they’ll be more likely to remember your story fondly long after they’ve finished reading it.

Draw attention to the bigger picture

Finally, you could choose to end your story by drawing attention to the bigger picture. If your feature story has been focused on a particular event or issue, use your concluding paragraph to step back and discuss the larger ramifications of what’s been happening. For instance, if you were writing about an upcoming election, you might use your conclusion to discuss the importance of voting and how every vote counts. By putting things in perspective, you can help readers see your story in a new light.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

13 Chapter 10: Feature Stories 

Feature writing.

Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (“Toy Story,” “WALL-E”) gave a TED Talk in 2011 about storytelling. He told the audience: “Storytelling is joke telling. It’s knowing your punchline. Your ending. Knowing that everything you’re saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.” 

Storytelling is a crucial tool used in feature stories. Feature stories are news stories with a storytelling focus. They are still full of verified facts and information, but they often include more narrative and anecdotes and human elements. They are still objective and written in the third person.

Like news stories, feature stories need to tell the reader something new. Stanton summed it up nicely in his TED Talk:

“Make me care. Emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically. In the beginning, make a promise to your audience that this story will lead somewhere that’s worth their time.”

Feature stories are your chocolate news. They are written in the same manner as news stories with leads, nut grafs and fact-based endings. But they are often more fun to consume. They are more likely to have alternative leads, but the newsworthiness is always paramount.

Feature stories allow for more narrative writing and descriptions, but good feature writers know that their readers might still leave if the story drags. In feature stories, like with news stories, you need to be stingy with your words, sentences and paragraphs. Every word should enhance the story to keep readers engaged.

Feature Characteristics

Writing expert Roy Peter Clark delves into feature stories in a 2004 article for Poynter. 

“Readers like stories, even news stories, written in ‘feature style,’ ” Clark writes. “And since the invention of the human-interest story, the feature has had the beneficial effect of expanding the universe of newspaper readers while enriching our definition of news.”

Clark goes on to list possible characteristics of a feature story:

• You can read it in a single sitting on the day it was published.
• You can read a short one in five minutes and a long one in 15 minutes.
• It is NOT a news story but can be inspired by the news.
• It has, at its heart, human interest.
• It illuminates lives lived in our time.
• It takes advantage of an expanded set of language and narrative strategies.
• It can be written and reported within the normal timeframe of journalistic enterprise.

Another Poynter expert, Butch Ward, writes about the importance of details in a feature story. He emphasizes the importance of the reporter being in the middle of the story when possible. He writes that a “keen observation allows the writer to speak with authority” and points to examples of reporters who are there to hear sirens or see children play and describe that from their own observations.

Ward also advises feature writers to carefully choose what details go into their story: “Show me instead of telling me. When I read ‘the security guards did not stir from their cigarettes and tea,’ I not only know something about the guards; I see them relaxing – because that’s what you do with a cup of tea and a smoke.”

Lastly, Ward writes that all sizes of feature stories have details. Even social media posts can be specific enough to put the reader in a particular place. Details humanize your sources and get the readers vested in the outcome.

Eight Types of Feature Stories

Profile or personality feature .

• A profile or personality feature is an objective news story about a person.

A Jan. 30, 2022 profile feature story by the Washington Post’s Eli Saslow was one of four that won the journalist the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing . In Saslow’s story about a billionaire, the reader gets a glimpse into his life. The story chronicles the billionaire’s long hours at his desk watching his money, the size of his wife’s closet and the fact that he has never swum in his own infinity pool. This level of detail comes from comprehensive reporting.

Saslow described how he produces such profiles in a 2021 interview with the website Neiman Storyboard. He said a profile feature story requires the right subject and that he conducts preliminary interviews with five to 10 people to find the right person. Once the source has been selected and agrees to the profile, Saslow typically has “hours and hours of conversation. … Then I turn that into a 1,500-word piece.”

During the pandemic, Saslow conducted interviews over the phone and, when possible, on Zoom so he could use his senses to learn more about his subject and their environment. His best way to learn about someone is to follow them through their day or week. If that’s not possible, several interviews in various places – home, school, work – allow a broader snapshot into their life.

A good profile goes beyond the primary source. It’s imperative to interview others in the person’s life.

In another of Saslow’s award-winning articles, this one about education published Oct. 2, 2022, he interviews several people surrounding his primary source. Remember to talk to a wide array of people. Someone’s mother will have a different perspective than their classmate. Interview friends and enemies to get a more objective and interesting profile.

Historical Feature

When I worked at a daily newspaper, I often was tasked with writing historical features, and I dreaded them. A historical feature is a news feature story looking back on an important event in history. I wrote historical features on Sept. 11, Pearl Harbor and even major earthquakes. These stories were meant to remind readers about an event while finding a fresh angle. As a new reporter at the time, I had no trouble recapping the past, but it was trickier to find something new about it.

I remember calling schools to see how they were handling Sept. 11 memorials or calling local veterans associations to see if any members were willing to reminisce about past wars. When I found a person or group that could add a fresh perspective, it breathed new life into an old tale. But finding sources like that every year could be tough.

For inspiration, check the professionals. In October 2023, Reporter Teri Figueroa of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote a remarkable historical feature on the 20th anniversary of a terrible fire that devastated the region.

Smoke stretched from the backcountry to the beach. Ash fluttered like snow. Authorities warned the devastating fires could reach the coast. Everyone was in disbelief.

It’s been 20 years now, but the 2003 firestorms, led by the deadly Cedar fire, remain part of San Diego County’s collective consciousness.

The Cedar fire, followed quickly by the deadly Paradise fire and the Otay fire, held the region under siege for days.

At the time, the Cedar fire was largest wildfire in California’s recorded history. Nearly 16,000 firefighters responded to the region. When the firestorm was over, 13 percent of San Diego County had burned.

It started late in the afternoon, east of Ramona. Small initially. Then around midnight, the Santa Ana winds hit.

As San Diego County slept, the monster grew, burning 29 miles in 10 hours. At one point, according to one report, it moved an astonishing average of 2 acres every second. 

Notice that Figueroa’s feature story has a creative alternative lead. The second and third paragraphs summarize the nut of story. Then the article builds along with the fire, describing a “monster” and giving facts about the fire’s path.

If you read further in the story, you’ll note that the reporter went back and talked to people who were affected by the fire to see what they remember and what has happened since. That depth of reporting makes for an outstanding story.

Seasonal Feature

A seasonal feature is a fact-based story about a seasonal event or holiday. They are designed to remind readers about the origin of a holiday while giving a fresh perspective.

When I was a newbie, I was often stuck working holiday shifts. I would search for stories about people working at food banks during Thanksgiving or running toy drives at Christmas. These stories are fun to write because they allow for more description and narrative writing. They still must be well-reported and full of facts to interest readers.

Here’s an example of a seasonal feature from the New York Times in February 2023 about the mysterious origin of Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day is upon us again. It’s a time of candlelit dinners, heart-shaped candy boxes from the drugstore and (depending on your relationship status) watching old romantic comedies while you drink wine by yourself.

It’s a great celebration. But where did it come from? And why do we care about it so much?

People have been trying to answer those questions for a long time. The New York Times pondered the day’s origin in 1853 but called it “one of those mysterious historical or antiquarian problems which are doomed never to be solved.”

Sidebar/Explanatory Feature

The sidebar or explanatory feature is a feature story that often accompanies a longer story and provides more information about one element of the main story. This type of story usually comes after a reporter works on a news or feature story and realizes that there are other elements that need to be explained but can’t fit into the original story.

For example, if you’re covering a new power plant coming to town, you might need a sidebar on how a power plant works. A reporter asked to write a feature story on a new college president could decide to write a sidebar on the role of a college president.

In The New York Times in October 2023, a main news story was published about a mosquito-borne illness that was increasing around the world and had been found in California. Reporter Stephanie Nolen wrote a sidebar about the disease itself. This feature is written in a Q&A form and answers questions ranging from what the illness is like to who’s at risk.

How-To Feature

As the name implies, a how-to feature is a feature story in which you help the reader accomplish something by introducing a task and then creating clear and simple step-by-step directions for completion. These features should include videos or photographs to help your reader see the steps.

You will commonly find how-to features in the DIY section of any media organization. For those looking for a tastier option, consider the Washington Post section called Voraciously. It shows readers how to make a variety of food, as in a October 2023 story about baked potatoes and air fryers from Writer Aaron Hutcherson.

Have you ever eaten multiple baked potatoes in one sitting? I recently did, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I can’t remember the last time I’d made or eaten a baked potato before last week but conducting “research” for this article reminded me just how comforting and delicious these humble spuds are regardless of how they’re prepared — in a microwave, oven or air fryer.

All methods can yield good results, but I’m now convinced that the best baked potatoes — hands down — are made in the air fryer.

Notice that Hutcherson’s writing is casual and in the first person. It is playful and engaging. This article, like most in the how-to genre, starts with a few paragraphs about the project and the reason to attempt it, before evolving into a step-by-step process much like a traditional recipe. Make sure your writing is clear and simple, so your reader completes the task instead of stopping in frustration.

Job Feature

Another type of feature to consider is one called a job feature , which is about a person’s job. In particular, unusual jobs make great topics for stories, such as a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature from The New Yorker magazine in 2019 about a military man’s assignment guarding an important detainee at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison.

But a job feature can focus on a traditional job and still be fascinating to the reader. Have you ever asked your Uber driver about their weirdest fare? The person who does your nails or watches your dog might have some strange stories from their occupation. Here’s a prime example of a job story about the unglamorous side of delivering food. Notice the detail of the sushi order in the piece by Kellen Browning of the New York Times in April 2023.

Brantley Bush couldn’t shake the fear that he was about to be ripped off.

It was a chilly Saturday evening, and Mr. Bush, a delivery driver for Uber Eats, was waiting in an alley next to a dumpster in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood — a decidedly unpretentious spot in the middle of a wealthy enclave near Santa Monica, Calif.

He had just snagged an order from a nearby high-end sushi restaurant, for three separate deliveries, giving him a chance for a hefty tip.

The first delivery was to a two-story house with a manicured lawn and a large magnolia tree. The second was handed to a teacher at a late-night music class in an office complex.

The third was the big item, the reason Mr. Bush had accepted this delivery: a bulging paper bag filled with $388 of sushi and miso soup. If he was lucky — and if the customer was generous — Mr. Bush could hope for a $50 or $70 tip, which would make his night worthwhile.

If you read further in the story, and you’ll want to because of Browning’s effective writing, you’ll learn that the delivery driver was indeed ripped off.

Adventure Feature/Participatory Feature

An adventure feature is a fact-based story about a source’s adventure or experience. A participatory feature is a fact-based story about a reporter’s experience or adventure.

Both adventure and participatory features contain emotions and reactions but must include verified facts about the experience. For example, if a source survived a plane crash, most of the story would focus on the source, but the reporter should verify information about the crash from officials who investigated it.

A participatory feature is often written in the first person. You will see other feature stories that include the first person “I,” but it’s best for reporters to keep themselves out of the story as much as possible to emphasize objectivity.

Writer Catherine Porter wrote an adventure feature for The New York Times Sept. 14, 2023.

Essaadia Boukdir stumbled through a valley of death in the throes of labor. Her husband, Brahim Bel Haj, held her up on one side. A cousin supported her on the other.

She worried her baby would die, as so many of her neighbors had only two days earlier, when an earthquake struck high up in a valley on the Atlas Mountains on Friday, cracking concrete, hurling giant boulders down the rocky slopes and burying people in their mud-brick and rock homes.

The earthquake, the most powerful to strike Morocco in more than a century, killed more than 2,900 people, most of them in the small villages scattered in mountains near the southwestern city of Marrakesh.

Behind-the-Scenes Feature 

Like the adventure feature, a behind-the-scenes feature is a fact-based story about a person whose job is hidden from the public but might be interesting to readers. It could be a person working behind the curtain at a play or the engineer who controls traffic lights. Any job that the public can’t see is often a great subject for a behind-the-scenes feature.

There are other features that might not fit into a neat category but still entertain and connect with readers on a human level. If a feature is reported, researched and sourced, and teaches the reader something new, it can be an effective way to disseminate information.

Key Takeaways

• Feature stories are objective, fact-based stories with more storytelling and descriptions. They still have leads, nut grafs and fact-based endings, but they also have human interest at their core.
• A historical feature is a news feature story looking back at an important event.
• A seasonal feature is a fact-based story about a seasonal event or holiday.
• A sidebar or explanatory feature is a feature story that often accompanies a longer story and provides more information.
• A how-to feature is a feature story in which you help the reader accomplish something by creating step-by-step directions for completion.
• An adventure feature is a fact-based story about a source’s adventure or experience.
• A participatory feature is a fact-based story about a reporter’s experience or adventure.
• A behind-the-scenes feature story is a fact-based feature story about people working in a less visible role.

Chapter Exercise

Remember when we set goals in Chapter 1? It’s time to revisit them. Using the information from Chapter 1, or from reflection now, answer the following questions:

• Did you successfully learn what you wanted to from this textbook? Please explain.
• Did you successfully learn what you needed to from this textbook? Please explain.
• What was your favorite part of this learning material?
• What was the biggest challenge for you in learning about journalism?
• Were you correct about the obstacles you encountered along the way in this textbook?
• Did you set aside enough time for this class?
• Did you stick to a regular schedule? Why or why not?

Broccoli and Chocolate: A Beginner’s Guide to Journalism News Writing Copyright © 2024 by Erin Hiro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Feature Story—Fifteen Minutes (and 500 Words) of Fame!

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

At the heart of all feature stories is human interest. This lesson asks students to write a profile of a classmate, with a particular focus on a talent, interest, or passion of that classmate. As an introduction to the feature article, students compare the characteristics of a hard news story to those of a feature story. They then practice writing about the same event in the two different styles. Next, they list and freewrite about their own talents and interests. These topics then become the focus of a feature story as students randomly select topics noted by classmates and write interview questions based on them. Finally, students interview a classmate, write a feature story, and share it with the class. This lesson enables students to practice interviewing techniques, develop voice, learn to write for an audience, and perhaps most importantly, celebrate their individual strengths.

Featured Resources

Qualities of a Feature Story : This handout lists the main characteristics of a feature story.

Printing Press : Students can use this online tool to publish their writing as a newspaper, flyer, brochure, or booklet.

From Theory to Practice

This lesson plan taps two pedagogical beliefs-students work best in collaborative and supportive environments, and moving beyond the typical essay formats can help students grow as writers. In Go Public! Encouraging Student Writers to Publish , Susanne Rubenstein explains that the writing teacher: "must create a classroom environment that allows her students to see themselves and each other as writers, not students. In this classroom-turned-writing-community, the writers support and encourage each other, and, through their efforts, not only as fellow writers but also as readers and as editors, they work to strengthen both the quality of each other's work and the confidence of the writer. . . within this classroom-turned-writing-community, writers are engaged in work that has meaning outside of the classroom." (15)

This notion of collaborative growth in the writing classroom fits naturally with writing feature stories, which move beyond the typical personal essay format and give students the chance to share significant personal information with one another. Rubenstein explains, "Certainly there is nothing wrong with teaching students to write personal essays . . . . But as a form it is perhaps overused in middle and high school classrooms, and when students begin to see it as ‘the way one writes in school,' they adopt a writing voice that is academic and artificial and calculated to please the teacher alone" (43). To avoid this situation, Rubenstein invites students to "experiment with different genres to find their strong suit" (43). Feature stories provide just the right solution: "Through the writing and reading of each [feature] story, students come to learn a lot about each other in a very short time, and we are well on our way to becoming a community of writers" (44).

Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

Sample newspapers and magazines (see Websites for possible online sources)

• Qualities of a Feature Story
• Prewriting Questions: What Makes you Interesting?
• Reviewer Response Sheet
• Sample Leads for Feature Stories
• Student Reflection Sheet

Preparation

• Collect issues of newspapers and magazine that students can use in class. Include both national and local publications.
• Collect sample feature stories that offer personality profiles. Look for recently published pieces in newspapers and magazines, especially pieces about people with whom students are familiar. A good source is Parade—The Sunday Newspaper Magazine . Also some local papers in their annual back to school issues publish feature stories about area teenagers. These are especially effective and engaging for students.
• Reviewer Response Sheet , if needed for response group work.
• The Society of Professional Journalists offers a succinct description of feature reporting that can be used for teacher reference.
• Test the Printing Press on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

Student Objectives

Students will

• read published feature stories and determine the characteristics of this genre.
• discover an appreciation for their own unique talents and those of their classmates.
• develop interviewing techniques and carry out an interview.
• consider the importance of audience.
• apply their knowledge by writing their own feature stories.
• employ all the steps of the writing process to create a polished piece.
• take the first steps toward writing for publication.

Session One

• Distribute copies of various newspapers and news magazines to small groups of students (3--4 students per group). Your goal during this session is to generate interest in the idea of a feature story and to guide students to understand the characteristics of the piece.
• Tell students to peruse the papers/magazines and find a hard news story. Ask each group to list the characteristics of the piece they find.
• Once groups have gathered the information, have each group report their findings. As the groups share the information, compile a class list of qualities of a news story on the board or on chart paper.
• Challenge students to peruse the same paper or magazine looking now for something that is almost a news story, but not quite. Ask them to look for a piece that gives more than the basic facts and that does more to tell a story. (If students are unfamiliar with journalistic writing, the teacher may need to offer help to individual groups.)
• Ask students to list the characteristics of this piece, and put their responses on the board. Use these two lists to help students understand the particular qualities of a feature story and its purpose. (Refer to Qualities of a Feature Story .)
• a recent school event such as a homecoming parade
• a spring dance
• the hiring of a new teacher/administrator/coach
• the induction of students into a group such as the National Honor Society
• the selection of students for a team
• a story about a student who has won some honor or achieved some special distinction.
• Ask each group to read both pieces aloud, and use the content in conjunction with the lists already on the board to illustrate and emphasize the qualities of each journalistic style. Introduce students to the concept of "hard news" vs. "soft news."

Session Two

• To help students find a focus for their feature stories, and, in doing so, to generate a positive sense of self in each student as he/she acknowledges his/her strengths and abilities, begin class with a brainstorming activity in which students make two lists: one listing their talents, and the other listing their passions/interests. Allow about four minutes for each list.
• Encourage students to think beyond the obvious. Tell them, for example, that it is just as appropriate to note the ability to wiggle one's ears as it is to note one's skill at tennis!
• Go quickly around the room, asking students to share one item from each list. Continue to encourage them to name an unusual talent or passion. Allow class comments and discussion, as this will generate enthusiasm for the project.
• Ask students a series of prewriting questions from the Prewriting Questions: What Makes you Interesting? to generate more material that highlights the uniqueness of each student.
• Instruct students to choose any one item from the talent list (it may be the one shared or another one entirely) and to freewrite about that talent for six minutes.
• Repeat this process with an item from the interest list.
• Finally, repeat with something from the responses to the What Makes You Interesting? prewriting questions.
• Ask for one student volunteer to share the topic of one of his or her freewrites. Put the topic on the board, and ask other students what they would like to know about the topic. Fill the board with their questions.
• Ask the student to read her or his freewrite, and direct the class to note how many of their questions were answered.
• Explain to the class that in six minutes, one would not expect a writer to be able to tell everything about his/her passion; but that this exercise demonstrates that there is much to tell and that an audience is interested.
• Use the questions on the board to generate discussion of what makes a good interview question. Guide students to see that the best questions lead to more questions. Promote a discussion of interview techniques in terms of note taking, courtesy, respecting privacy, etc.
• To read as a homework assignment, give students 2 or 3 sample feature stories that present human profiles, as gathered in the preparation of this lesson.

Session Three

• To begin the interview process and determine a feature story focus, give students each a slip of paper when they enter the classroom, and ask them to put two of their most significant interests, abilities, or unique experiences/qualities on that slip. Put the papers in a box.
• Allow each student to randomly draw a slip of paper. At this point, students should not acknowledge to whom the paper belongs. It's best if students do not know whom they will be interviewing at the early stages of planning the interview.
• Give students 10 or 15 minutes to list as many good questions as they can for these two topics. Then ask each student to pair up with another student, share the assigned topics and the lists of questions, and try to add to each other's lists.
• Begin the actual interview process. Establish interview pairs. This can be done either by a random draw, or the teacher can assign pairs in order to ensure that students are interviewing someone whom they do not know well.
• Allow ten minutes per student for each introductory interview. Encourage students to use this introductory time to explore a focus for the interview. (They do not have to use both interests/talents provided on the slip of paper, but having two choices can give students more options. Sometimes, moreover, a story can blend the two.)
• Tell interviewers to also seek out basic factual information.
• Remind students of the importance of strong quotes in a feature story. Encourage them to take detailed notes (or use tape or audio recorders, if preferred). Tell students that they will be given additional time during the next class session to take the interview further and to recheck important information.
• At the end of class, suggest that students who are unfamiliar with the subject(s) their interviewee is interested in should do further research on the topic at home. Remind students that professional writers often have to "do their homework" in terms of researching topics they are going to write about.
• Instruct all students to refine interview questions for homework and to determine what else they will need to know to write a complete story.
• Tell interviewers and interviewees to be thinking about a photograph that can accompany the story. This should be a photo of the interviewee involved in the activity the story describes or of something connected to the story (i.e., a photo of the artwork of a student who paints, the project of an Eagle Scout, the items a collector collects).

Session Four

• Choose one of the feature stories students read for homework at the end of Session Two, and use that to encourage class discussion on the design of the feature story.
• importance of a clear focus for the story.
• a strong, attention-getting opening (the lead).
• an equally memorable ending (often a quote).
• the use of correctly quoted material throughout.
• the inclusion of significant background information.
• verified factual data (including the subject's name spelled correctly!).
• the importance of a unique writing voice that captures the writer's own style.
• Have students determine the intended audience for this particular feature story.
• Point out the ways that the focus, language, background information, and other aspects change depending on the audience.
• Who is my audience? and
• What response do I want from this audience?
• Allow students to conduct the second phase of their interviews. Tell students to ask all remaining questions, verify important information (e.g., names, dates, spellings), and be sure they have a clear focus for the story.
• Ask students to discuss with their partners the choice of photograph. They might choose a picture that already exists, or, if it needs to be taken in class, the teacher should allow time and opportunity for that. (Note: If students don't have access to cameras, the teacher can provide a time for picture taking using his/her own or the school's digital or 35mm camera.)
• Instruct students to work on the first draft of the feature at home. Give students whatever amount of time is appropriate for the group to complete a first draft to share in response groups.

Session Five

• Have each pair of students join with another pair to share their stories and give and receive feedback. (Note: it is helpful to have both interviewer and interviewee in the same response group in case there is incorrect material in the story that needs to be corrected and revised.)
• If students are inexperienced with response, use the Reviewer Response Sheet to guide their work.
• Tell students to help each other create memorable and meaningful titles.
• When all students have received response on their stories, direct them to use this material to continue revising and rewriting their feature stories until they reach a final draft stage. If desired, students can compile the feature stories in a reader-friendly format using the Printing Press . The teacher can determine with student input how much additional time is need for completion.
• This project works especially well at the start of the school year (or at the start of a second semester class) to help build a sense of community in the classroom OR as an end-of-the-year activity to "wrap up" a course and to celebrate the strengths of each member of the class. In addition, it could be a good activity if new students move to the school or transfer into the class.
• hung with accompanying photographs on the classroom wall or on a school-wide bulletin board
• collected in a class publication
• submitted to the high school or local newspaper.
• Students may want to think about the "Feature Story of the Future," and write the story that could be written about them thirty years in the future.
• If a number of students are struggling with a particular aspect of the story (i.e., creating a good title, developing an interesting lead, organizing material logically), the teacher can conduct mini-workshops to help the group. For example, a mini-lesson on leads might include the Sample Leads for Feature Stories handout that promotes discussion of why certain leads work better than others and how weak leads can be improved.
• If students need more practice in mechanics of including quotations in their writing, the ReadWriteThink lessons Character Clash: A Mini-Lesson on Paragraphing and Dialogue and Inside or Outside? A Mini-Lesson on Quotation Marks and More can provide useful supplements to this activity.
• Have students use the Profile Publisher either as a template for gathering information on each other or as a way to publish the information that they find during their interviews.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• Grade each feature story as a complete writing assignment. When students are writing and revising their stories, they should be guided by the specific characteristics outlined in the handout of Qualities of a Feature Story and in the Reviewer Response Sheet .
• What do you think is the strongest line in the story? Why?
• What do you think will most please the person the story is written about? Why?
• What part of the story are you still dissatisfied with? Why?
• What did you struggle with most in creating this story?
• Where could you include some more specific detail?
• What was the best piece of advice you got from your response group?
• Talk about yourself as a “journalist.” Is this a kind of writing you like or dislike? Why? What did you think about the interview process?
• Calendar Activities
• Professional Library
• Student Interactives

The interactive Printing Press is designed to assist students in creating newspapers, brochures, and flyers.

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YouTube Premium users can skip to the good part with new AI feature

Sophie Atkinson is a UK-based journalist and content writer, as well as a founder of a content agency which focuses on storytelling through social media…

After testing back in March, YouTube is rolling out their new AI ‘Jump Ahead’ feature for Premium subscribers, making it easier to skim videos and find the best bits.

The feature works as an AI-powered recommendation system that analyzes patterns in viewer behavior to help users skip to the most popular parts with just a double tap.

The double tab is used on videos currently to skip time and jump between chapters if the creator has implemented those, but it’s not always been the easiest to use and can appear quite clunky. This is especially so when using the tool on a mobile device.

On YouTube’s Creator Insider channel , the ‘small experiment’ was first announced on March 19 and the current format for skipping was described as a reason why the AI version has been experimented with.

“…Constantly tapping can be tedious. We’re running a very small experiment in the US for a premium-only feature that combines user watch behavior data and AI to help identify the next best point a viewer typically wants to skip ahead to.”

While the feature was merely being tested a couple of months ago, it’s now in full action for full experiment mode. This is available for users of the YouTube Android app who pay for the Premium service.

YouTube Premium is a paid-for membership that allows people to watch ad-free and download videos to watch when offline.

It only applies to English videos at the moment, but the experiment could be rolled out further in the future.

How does YouTube’s Jump Ahead AI feature work?

The double-tapping process will see an upgrade for Premium subscribers who take part in the experiment, as this will now bring up a pill-shaped button that says ‘Jump Ahead.’ This will move the video along to where other users commonly skip to.

“The way it works is, if a viewer is double tapping to skip ahead on an eligible segment, we’ll show a jump ahead button that will take them to the next point in the video that we think they’re aiming for.”

Creators will be able to use the feature too when watching their own videos, including those who don’t have YouTube Premium.

Featured Image: Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

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Sophie Atkinson Tech Journalist

Sophie Atkinson is a UK-based journalist and content writer, as well as a founder of a content agency which focuses on storytelling through social media marketing. She kicked off her career with a Print Futures Award which champions young talent working in print, paper and publishing. Heading straight into a regional newsroom, after graduating with a BA (Hons) degree in Journalism, Sophie started by working for Reach PLC. Now, with five years experience in journalism and many more in content marketing, Sophie works as a freelance writer and marketer. Her areas of specialty span a wide range, including technology, business,…

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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