F e at u r e

O u t l i n e

LEAD: Build your story around a fascinating person or interesting story in the news. Take the story in the news and localize it with a story about the people it is affecting at City High. Start with a description and create a sense of place. Make sure the topic is worthy of a feature story. Feature stories should be something your friends are interested in reading about because they are longer than the average story.

DEVELOPING THE STORY Human Interest: The best-known kind of feature story is the human-interest story that discusses issues through the experiences of another. Profiles: A very common type of feature is the profile that reveals an individual’s character and lifestyle. The profile exposes different facets of the subject so readers will feel they know the person. How-To: These articles help people learn by telling them how to do something. The writer learns about the topic through education, experience, research or interviews with experts. Historical Features: These features commemorate important dates in history or turning points in our social, political and cultural development. They offer a useful juxtaposition of then and now. Historical features take the reader back to revisit an event and issues surrounding it. A variation is the this date in history short feature, which reminds people of significant events on a particular date.

Tips: * LOCALIZE A TOPIC IN THE NEWS * Build your story around an observable event or action to provide a narrative thread. * Establish a sense of place, so that readers understand how the story couldn’t happen anywhere else. * Keep the mystery alive. Don’t try to tell the reader everything in the first few paragraphs. * Interview more than one person at a time. There’s nothing like dialogue to speed up your story. * Use short, punchy sentences.

Seasonal Themes: Stories about holidays and the change of seasons address matters at specific times of a year. For instance, they cover life milestones, social, political and cultural cycles, and business cycles.

*Organize your notes into themes or categories. Newman indexes his notebook. Whatever works.

Behind the Scenes: Inside views of unusual occupations, issues, and events give readers a feeling of penetrating the inner circle or being a mouse in a corner. Readers like feeling privy to unusual details and well kept secrets about procedures or activities they might not ordinarily be exposed to or allowed to participate in.

* Omit needless words. Be obsessive-compulsive about it. Compress, compress, compress!

Quote - Transition Formula The body of the story should consist mainly of quotes followed by transitions to develop the story, characters and themes. Create a sense of mystery, but make sure to use your best quotes to create interest and develop a story around the different themes you have found in your notes and interviews. Feel free to have longer paragraphs than a regular hard news story and a good feature should be over 800 words long. Make sure to do your homework and have good background information as well on your topic and the people in the story. Feature stories are human-interest articles that focus on particular people, places and events. A feature story is not meant to report the latest breaking news, but rather an in-depth look at a subject.

* Be willing to kill your children. OK, he didn’t say that but it’s what he meant. Sometimes you’ve got to throw away your best stuff when it gets in the way. * If you’re passionate about your subject, you can excite readers. If you’re not, you can’t.

Feature Writing Outline.pdf

Interview more than one. person at a time. There's. nothing like dialogue to. speed up your story. * Use short, punchy sen- tences. *Organize your notes into.

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