Writing feature articles
What is a feature?
When new reporters first learn the basics of news writing, many complain that the standard inverted pyramid technique cramps their style and limits their creativity. There are some things that a writer can’t do in an eight-inch news piece—such as set a scene, narrate a story, explore several different aspects of an issue or profile a person’s life or career. That’s why there are features.
News stories and features are meant to complement each other, and allow a newspaper to offer well-rounded coverage that varies in depth and timeliness.
While the two styles share basic elements, they differ in the treatment of an issue, the depth of research, the style of writing and the structure of the piece.
Perhaps it's easier to define a feature by saying what it isn’t. A feature isn't simply a long or extended news story. The inverted pyramid style works fine on short-to-medium length stories, but it can be tedious to read and downright boring in longer pieces.
Neither is a feature an editorial or opinion piece. Departing from a straight news structure doesn’t mean we forget research, attribution, quotes and attention to several sides of an issue. And while a feature is similar in structure to an essay, it should not read like an academic paper. Scholarly writing is difficult to read precisely because it is written with scholars in mind. Don’t lapse into jargon, stilted language, windy paragraphs and an academic tone when you are writing for a general audience.
If the news story structure is known as an inverted pyramid, the feature could be described as an hourglass. Instead of starting with the most juicy, timely or relevant details—and working down to less gripping information—the feature pulls the reader in with the lede, winds through with a narrative based on research and interviews and then leads to a conclusion.
Different kinds of features
Features can serve many different purposes for a journalist. For instance, investigation features usually evolve from an insider tip or a hunch by the journalist that things are not what they seem. The reporter is prompted to investigate an issue and clarify the elements. The story becomes longer, more detailed and more informative than the original news story.
To use an example, your paper may have published a brief sports story on an athlete suspended for steroid use. This could become a starting point for an investigative feature on drug use in university sports. Who knows, you may discover performance-enhancing drugs are rampant across Canadian campuses or that a drug company is making millions off the sales of steroids.
Another strength of a feature is that it gives a writer an opportunity to profile someone’s life and career. So look to artists, educators, politicians, community activists, business people, scientists and others in your community and campus. And don't just interview them—talk to the people they work and live with and anyone who’s been affected by them.
How to get started
A good feature writer is always paying attention to what is going on around them. They read everything they can, listen to gossip and other people's conversations, watch television and listen to radio, and observe everything they encounter in their daily life.
By immersing yourself in information, you can develop a germ of an idea and let yourself go with it. Brainstorm by jotting down every aspect of a topic—but don’t edit yourself at first, just come up with a slew of ideas until you hit on an interesting theme. After you have decided on a focused subject for an article, look critically at your ideas. Toss what’s been done to death and come up with a fresh angle. Narrow your idea into a tightly focused story proposal by describing it in a five-word title, or maybe shape it into the main question you’d want your story to answer.
Once you have chosen a topic to write on, it’s research time. Look through back issues of your paper, the city paper and publications related to the topic. Once you’re familiar with your area, decide who you'll talk to, look for their phone numbers and draw up a list of questions for them.
Like a news story, interviewing people for a feature means you must listen carefully to the answers. But the process should be aided by keeping your eyes and ears on alert for detail: the way people look, talk, and move. What does a place look like? Pay attention to the sights, sounds and smells around you. And watch for physical elements that can act as a metaphor. Books on a bookshelf, for instance, are a great way to illustrate someone’s mindset.
Most straight news writing tends to be very dry. But in a feature, you can add lots of colour by giving the players in your story a human face. What would be useless information in a hard news piece—the way someone dresses, a person’s daily routine, the decorations in someone’s office or apartment—can become very important in a feature.
As you have probably figured out, however, a feature requires you to synthesize a lot more information than a news piece. That is why the first draft of a feature is simply a way to get all your information down on paper or onto the computer screen. Type the most important parts of your notes out, write key sections, then cut-and-paste them into some sort of coherent order. You can refine your lede, add or delete quotes or whole interviews, and juggle the sequence around as you progress. As you write your second or further drafts, you may discover that some questions are left unanswered and that more research or additional interviews are needed.
Have someone read your drafts and offer an outsider’s point of view before you fine-tune your final version.
The final step is to edit your feature for clarity and colour. It is at this point where you refine sentences, find better choices for words, cut out wordiness and clutter, and ensure your story flows in a coherent fashion. Pay special attention to the lede—the opening lines of your story, which serve to grab the interest of your readers and pull them into the story. In the middle, make sure you build your thesis up carefully, point by point. But avoid “ping-pong journalism.” Don't just bounce from one source to another, contrasting their arguments. The reader will go bug-eyed. Interject differing opinions selectively within a section.
Finally, the conclusion should not trail off as many news stories do. It should draw the strings together and give the piece a sense of cohesion. As with the opening paragraphs, select quotes or an anecdote that illustrate your conclusions, or sum up with an irony.
In a feature you have lots of space to work with, so do not feel like you have to write an upbeat ending, or decide the fate of the world in one final sentence.
Profiles
In non-journalism terms, a profile is a side view of somebody’s face. The written profile, similarly, takes a look at a person from a particular angle, although the power of words allows us to rotate, cross-section and fracture that image to get a 3-D portrait across. A profile is a mini-biography, a character sketch, a celebration or an expose of a particular person or group of people.
Why write profiles? First, because human beings are inherently interesting, if you write about them well. Writing about people helps your readers (who, believe it or not, are people) identify themselves with the story.
Second, it similarly allows you to humanize social situations and political issues. If you profile a politician, administrator or community leader, readers get a glimpse of what motivates their actions for good or for ill. If you profile someone living through oppression or fighting for her rights, it dramatizes the issues involved. And if you place a person in a social context, it gives the reader an idea of what it might be like to experience life in another place or from another perspective.
You can cover a sleazy administrator, an interesting student, or a little-known professor. Or choose someone from the surrounding community who is at the centre of some controversy or some innovative program or group.
Prepare
Before arranging any interviews, find out everything you can about your subject. Talk to some of his/her/their friends, associates and enemies.
What stands out about your subject? Think of your first impressions of that person. Have they changed since before the interview (better or worse)? What about them makes them significant to the readers’ own lives? Whatever the primary impression is, use it as the centrepiece for your profile.
The end result should be something of a mini-drama, blending description, action, and dialogue. It should usually touch on the following, in whatever order works journalistically:
1. The person’s background (birth, upbringing, education and occupation)
2. Anecdotes and incidents involving the subject
3. Comments by the individual about herself, and about the subject that makes her newsworthy
4. The reporter’s observations
5. Comments of those who know the interviewee (friend or foe, ideally both)
6. A news peg, whenever possible, which indicates why the subject is significant
After reading your profile, the readers should not be asking themselves why they’ve read that story. If that’s the case, you haven't done your job. You haven’t made the person appealing or repulsive, or demonstrated where they fit into a certain structure or problem, or anything. Never leave the reader indifferent.
Advanced features: the New Journalism
A significant development in the art of feature writing over the past few decades is the rise and decline of what's called New Journalism. This style of writing challenges the traditions of objective writing in the commercial press and relies on a more literary style.
New Journalism can be traced back to the 1960s, when reporters like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe turned news writing on its head. Central to the philosophy of New Journalism is the belief that a reporter should become part of any scene they are reporting on. This call for subjectivity, in sharp contrast to the detached approach advocated in most newsrooms, is a radical step.
Most reporters make sure they participate as little as possible in any event they’re covering. For instance, a reporter writing on a demonstration will refrain from marching in the rally. In contrast, New Journalism advocates that reporters become part of the event.
So when Hunter S. Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — his seminal 70s novel on a drug-crazed adventure in Vegas — he didn’t interview policemen, gamblers or tourists. Rather, he got stoned out of his gourd and chose to portray Las Vegas through his own drug-crazed eyes.
Not all New Journalism is as crazy as the writings of Thompson. A reporter who sleeps on the street for a period of time, while working on a feature of homelessness, is engaging in New Journalism. This is also called participatory observation.
New Journalism, however, is not synonymous with mainstream investigative reporting. A key difference between investigative journalism, as practised by the Washington Post during Watergate, and New Journalism is found in distinct writing styles.
Investigative reporters rely on standard writing techniques, such as the inverted pyramid. New Journalists, on the other hand, revel in unconventional writing forms. These flowery techniques range from word play to descriptive phrases that are more at home in a novel than a conventional newspaper.
New Journalism provides a fascinating form for a reporter to work with. Be wary, however, of succumbing to ego. Too often reporters experimenting with New Journalism begin describing themselves and their fantasies at the expense of the larger story. Like all experiments, use this style with caution.
Content provided by the Martlet Publishing Society, with files from CUP.
