BMC 1154 Media Writing

Feature Writing – Part 1 • What are Feature Articles

• Generating Feature Ideas

• Structuring Feature Articles

HOUSEKEEPING

• Assignment #1

• Will be introduced to you in tutorial this week

• Please download assignment brief from TIMeS

• This is a compulsory-submission assignment

• Due date – Week 8 (Friday 16 May 2014,

12PM)

Definitions of a “feature” story

• ―A feature story is somewhat like the taste of an apple or the sound of a breeze rustling through the trees. It is rather easy to recognise but hard to define precisely in words………‖ (Izard, 1971)

• It is one which presents human emotions through the use of a characteristically relaxed style of writing.

Features often…

• Profile people who make the news

• Explain events that move or shape the news

• Analyse what is happening in the world, nation or

community

• Teach an audience how to do something

• Suggest better ways to live

• Examine trends

• Entertain

What exactly is Feature Writing?

• Think of the feature story as a news story written like a piece of short fiction.

• You must combine the rigors of factual reporting with the creative freedom of short-story writing.

• The feature story‘s form must be more fluid than that of a news story

• the inverted pyramid style won‘t work here

• because the story needs a definite beginning, middle and end.

• The readers won‘t be able to scan a few paragraphs

• they will have to read the whole story to understand it.

• A feature story is usually not always related to a

current event, but it could be.

• Feature stories place a greater emphasis on facts that

have human interest.

• Features put people in the story

• they make the reader think and care.

• You can write a feature story about anyone if you find

an unusual angle that captures the interest of your

readers.

Features Stories

• Appeal to the emotional side of the readers.

• Do not need to be timely or concise. Story unfolds as it is written.

• Can be written less formally than a hard news story.

• Might include an interesting, odd or heart-warming story.

• Are presented in a variety of journalistic styles.

• Flowery language.

News Stories

• Current affairs that affect

the readers.

• Are timely and concise.

• Include all key

information (5Ws & 1H)

in the first paragraph.

• Present the most

important information

first and the less

important details towards

the end.

• Headlines or first few

pages of the publication.

Two kinds of Features

• Generally feature stories are of two kinds:

• News features, which are usually written as a

follow-up or as a sidebar story that is linked to a

breaking news event.

• Timeless story, which does not have to be used

immediately. The information in this story will be

just as relevant if saved for a future issue.

Continued

• In either type of feature story, good reporting is

essential.

• You collect as many (accurate, attributed and credible)

details as possible.

• You describe people, settings and feelings, the

elements of storytelling.

• When all the details are added together, the reader is

placed in the scene you are describing.

Sidebars & News Pegs

• A sidebar is:

• An article that accompanies and appears beside the main

news story. E.g. additional information related to the

main article (main bar) lay out in a side box next to the

main article (or sometimes it can even appear elsewhere

in the publication).

• A news peg is:

• the slant what makes your feature timely or newsworthy

to your readers. E.g. your feature is a timeless piece on

fashion mistakes made by Hollywood stars but the news

peg of this article is the ―Yays‖ and ―Nays‖ of the fashion

choices by stars who attended a recent awards ceremony.

Generating feature ideas

―Naturally, interesting material results

from many factors, most of which can

be lumped under two main

characteristics: human interest and

incongruity.‖

Continued

• ―Human interest‖ is any event or idea that appeals to

people more or less naturally and not necessarily

because it has significance to their everyday

activities.

• Sex, children and animals command people‘s

interest.

• And then there are: Self-interest, sympathy,

corruption, progress, conflict, disaster, hero-worship,

adventure, spirituality and success. And more.

Continued

• ―Incongruity‖ or the unexpected or novelty is another

element common in a feature story.

• Incongruity ―involves a set of circumstances in a

story in which the result our experience would lead

us to expect does not occur.‖ (Izard)

Continued

• There are no restrictions on your choice of subject

matter when it comes to features. You are limited

only by your imagination.

• Often a feature story is a simple story about a

common person in an uncommon circumstance.

• The feature‘s job is to find a fresh angle—to find the

story behind the person.

Generating Feature Ideas

• Ideas generated from observation

• Ideas generated from reading

• Ideas generated from experience

• Observing the environment

• Observing people and their behaviour

Ideas generated from observation

Observing the environment

• What is meant by the term ‗environment‘?

• What are some of the interesting things about your environment?

• What effects do such environments have on you or your readers?

• Look around you and observe:

• What your friends wear to college = article about current fashion trends among Generation Y

• Trees and flowers = article about how a non-descript Malaysian town can exude “European charm” with the right landscaping

• Questions aroused by curiosity can often be developed into article ideas.

Observing people & their behaviour

• Ideas for articles can emerge from our observations of people and their behaviour.

• E.g. at home, you may choose to observe how members of your family interact with one another.

• Perhaps you observed how loving your mother was to your younger sibling and how impatient she was with you.

• What kind of article can arise from this observation?

• Could you come up with some questions which could then be developed into ideas for feature articles?

Continued

• You observe on campus that certain types of students like to congregate in certain types of places.

• What questions could you pose about this behaviour?

• You observe the traffic to and from Uni is very bad at certain times.

• What story ideas could you produce after observing the situation?

• You observe certain behaviours among your friends that made you curious to find out more.

• Could you imagine some ideas that might lead to feature articles?

• Reading newspapers

• Reading other printed materials

Ideas generated from reading

What’s in a newspaper?

• News: International & Local

• Letters to the Editor

• Cartoons/Comic Strips

• Editorials

• Sports

• Family/Lifestyle

• Arts/Culture

• Economic/Business

• Columns

• Classified

• Advertisements

• Movie Schedules

• Education

• Horoscope

• Health

• Obituaries

• Youth

• TV Schedule

• Religion

• Information Technology

• Weather Report / Tide Schedule

• Muslim Prayer Schedule

• Crossword Puzzles

Developing ideas from within the

newspaper

• Feature writers can develop story ideas from various

parts of the newspaper.

• E.g. whilst reading a hard news story, a writer could

develop an idea and propose to write a story from a

human interest angle based on the news article.

• Let‘s look at a hard news story and see what type of

feature ideas we can develop.

What can we make of this?

Sex predator gets 40 years’ jail, 24 strokes

17 Jan 2007 A. Hafiz Yatim and Teresa Yong

KUALA LUMPUR: Ismail Shah Abdul Wahab is a sex predator who asked his victims for directions before abducting and raping them. He would drive around in his car pretending to ask for directions to the nearest mosque or a religious school. His victims were young women and schoolgirls. He would persuade his victims to enter the car to show him the way before taking them to his apartment and raping them. Yesterday, the Sessions Court made sure the 23-year-old paid for his

crimes when he was sentenced to 40 years and 10 months jail. Judge Nursinah Adzmi also ordered that he be whipped 24 times in the proceedings which lasted more than two hours at the Sessions Court yesterday. Nursinah, in passing sentence, said Ismail‘s actions were disgusting and shameful. "He took advantage of young women and schoolgirls. Despite being married, he used his victims to fulfil his lust and desire. "The victims and their families are now faced with long-term trauma as a result of the ordeal," she said.

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Wednesday/National/20070117085659/Article/local1_html

Ideas from other print materials

- Books

- Vehicle Number Plates

- Journals

- Notices

- Magazines

- Bills

- Comics

- Instructions on do-it-yourself

- Billboards

- Road Signs

- Labels on products & consumer items

- Banners

- Names of shops/businesses

- Various brochures

- T-shirt messages

Ideas generated from experiences

• Your own experience

• Other people‘s experiences

Your own experiences

• Your own personal experiences are like a bottomless vessel from which you can draw and develop feature story ideas.

• Some of these experiences include:

- Happy moments - Exciting escapades

- Sad experiences - Amazing incidents

- Humorous episodes - Unbelievable

- Frightening times coincidences

Other people’s experiences

• You can also develop feature ideas from listening to other people‘s experiences.

• These can be sad or happy, humorous or serious, exciting or boring and unusual or mundane.

• E.g. you are listening to your friend telling you about how she suffers from acne. What type of feature article ideas could you generate from this information?

Continued

• E.g. You overhear someone on the LRT narrate their

frustrating experience at the local passport renewal

office. What type of ideas does this revelation

provide you with?

• People‘s experiences on how they survived

calamities or disasters could also generate ideas for

feature articles. These would be ―my most

unforgettable experience‖ type of article or narrative.

Key characteristics of feature writing

• Feature writing is often marked out by:

• Colour: small details adding life to writing

• Observation: description of people/events

• Context: scene setting

• Opinion/slant: writer or publication‘s worldview

• Quotes: most features draw on original material/sources

• Narrative/motion: storytelling/keeping the piece moving forward

• Debate: discussion/argument

• Activity: showing people doing things (action)

• Talk: let the subjects speak at length (direct

quotes/dialogue)

Planning a feature

• Organising interviews: Features benefit greatly from

original, interesting quotes from related

sources/people of interest.

• Accessing background material: press cuttings, other

interviews, listening to music, watching films /

programmes, other kinds of research etc.

• Deciding on the tone/angle of piece: what aspect pf

the topic are you going to go for? Positive, negative,

unusual, cause, effect, impact, humorous, tragic,

sarcastic. Sometimes, this can be dictated by the

publication.

Continued

• Before you begin writing:

• focus on the main idea you want to get across

• organize your information

• eliminate that which does not go along with your

focus

• Focusing is narrowing your topic – reducing a large

amount of information to a usable amount.

Continued

5 questions which might help get a feature started:

1.What is the most interesting fact?

2.What is the best anecdote?

3.What is the most sensational quote?

4.What is the most surprising event?

5.What is the ―did you know that…‖ factor?

Organising a feature article

The lead

The body

The conclusion

The lead

• The lead is the ‗introduction‘ in a feature story & the

beginning of the story.

• Must intrigue the reader, set the tone of the story and

move the reader to the body of the story in a logical

manner.

• Need not be in an inverted pyramid format, unlike

news stories.

Continued

• The beginning of the story must pull the reader in.

• The first sentence must make the reader want to read

the second sentence.

• The lead should contain a hook, a detail that draws

in the reader‘s attention.

Types of feature leads

There are many types of leads that can be used to begin a feature. The following are examples of the more commonly used ones:

1. Chronological Lead – relates the beginning of the action

2. Delayed Lead – does not reveal the identity of the person, group, place or event that is central to the story until a few paragraphs into the story

Continued

3. Descriptive Lead – paints a word portrait of a person, group, place or event

A descriptive lead is also sometimes called a situation lead ―if a scene is set or an atmosphere is created.‖

4. Quotation Lead – the choice of quote is usually tied to some sort of description of the person speaking or the setting in which the quotation occurs.

Continued

• Whatever style of lead you choose for your article,

remember:

• An effective lead makes a promise to the reader,

that the writer has something important and

interesting to tell them.

• A good lead beckons, invites, informs, attracts and

entices

• The best kind of leads are anecdotal (based on

personal account) in nature.

The body

The body of the feature should exhibit the following

principles:

i. ―Unity/Cohesiveness‖ means that the main theme

is threaded through the article and anything not

relevant to the theme is removed.

ii. ―Coherence‖ means that what is written flows

naturally from one idea to the next, from one

paragraph to the next. Transitions which link the

different segments of the feature, make its

arrangement logical and orderly.

Continued

• The main body of the feature article should consist of

several blocks, each representing a different aspect of

the main story. (William E. Blundell)

• It's always a good idea to pepper your blocks with

quotes and examples to make it more interesting

and credible.

The conclusion

• The ending should make you feel that the writer has

achieved his or her purpose, whatever that was.

• Sums up or reinforces the central message of the

article.

• In other words, your article should be able to provide

answers to questions and solutions to problems.

Continued

• Various types of endings / conclusions used in a feature:

- Summary ending: sums up the major theme of the article.

- Quotation ending: ends with a choice quote.

- Climatic ending: ends on a high note (e.g. of an event)

- Circle technique or ―cut-back‖ ending: – a restatement of the lead phrased in somewhat different language but serving to emphasise the important statements made at the beginning and to ‗round up‘ the whole article

The Blundell Technique

Outline of the Blundell Technique:

1. The Lead (Intro – up to 3 paragraphs)

2. Nut Graph (Angle – thesis statement )

3. Main Body (Blocks – structured in)

4. Conclusion (Ending – reinforcement of message)

What is the Nut Graph

• The Nut Graph is a paragraph that explains your

entire article in a nutshell. (―Nutshell paragraph‖)

• Many writers find the Nut Graph to be the hardest

aspect of feature writing.

• Once they‘ve figured out their Nut Graph, everything

else falls into place easily.

(Three paragraph intro)

For five days, Alice's husband, high on drugs, threatened to kill her. He hit her and abused her.

Terrified, Alice fled the house when she finally got the chance and ran to a local business to call the police.

“He would kill me. He's very scary,” Alice said. “He would walk through walls if he had to.”

(Nut Graph)

The police advised her to contact the Domestic Violence Resource Center in Hillsboro, and Alice found her way there, turning around her life.

• The anecdotal lead above uses one specific example to illustrate a larger topic. In this case, Alice's story is a gateway to a larger story on the Domestic Violence Resource Center.

•

The nut graph

• The relationship between the lead and the Nut Graph

can be thought of in this way:

• The intro highlights an individual case. The Nut

Graph, meanwhile, illustrates how that individual

case is actually representative of a bigger trend or

how it fits into a bigger overall picture.

• Central to this approach is the Nut Graph. Without it,

you really don‘t have a story.

• Blundell calls it ―the main theme statement, the

single most important bit of writing I do on any

story.‖

Continued

• Nut Graph is “a paragraph that says what this whole

story is about and why you should read it. It's a flag to

the reader, high up in the story: You can decide to

proceed or not, but if you read no farther, you know what

that story's about.”

• Remember, in the Blundell Technique, up to three

paragraphs can be used for the introduction (but never

more than three).

• Another e.g. of the Blundell Technique used in a story in the

Financial Times:

(Three paragraph intro)

Physicists are just like the rest of us in at least one respect. When they go

online to search for information, they expect the earth.

Bebo White, who runs the website for the Stanford Linear Accelerator

Center, a high-energy physics laboratory in California, knows this all

too well. "They get very frustrated if we don't return good results, and

quickly,” says Mr White.

(Nut Graph)

Call it the Google Effect. Expectations of search engines have

skyrocketed. Whether it involves complex specialist knowledge or the

completely trivial, there is a general belief that everything should be

available instantly, at the click of a mouse.

How to write the nut graph

• To identify the Nut Graph, ask yourself the following question:

• ―What is this story really about?‖ in one word/phrase.

• Greed, politics, sacrifice, loss, redemption, family, hope, freedom? It could be any of these things. But once you know what your story is about, you will have focus.

• A good story should leave a single, dominant impression. This is called your ―angle‖.

• Now all you have to do is to express your angle in two or three sentences.

• That is your Nut Graph.

Main Blocks (The body)

• Another aspect of the Blundell technique is called the

‗Block‘s which is used to organise materials for

feature stories.

• The body of the story should comprise a series of

information blocks.

• However, these blocks are not about time (i.e. not in

a chronological order) – they‘re organised by topic.

• E.g. In a story about egg production, one block might be

about foreign competition. Another might be about the

environmental effects of an egg farm. Another might be

about daily work on the farm.

Continued

• The blocks are arranged in the way that seems to best support the focus of the story.

• The block structure pares down a big, overwhelming writing job into manageable chunks for writer and reader alike.

• Each block should make its point with three facts, examples, proofs or quotes. (Two are too few; four are overkill).

• Blundell has six key blocks that he would use in his feature articles:

History: What‘s the background to this situation?

Scope: What is the extent of the problem?

Cause: Why is this happening?

Impact: Who and what is affected by this?

Action of contrary forces: Who is doing what about this?

The future: How is it going to be in the coming days, weeks, months and years?

Not all these blocks need to be included in your final story. Nor must they appear in the order presented above. But if you have the material to answer all six questions above, you've got the ingredients for a very good feature.

Structure

-After you have written the lead, you need a structure

in which to place the information.

- A structure is an organisational pattern the writer

uses to synthesise (or establish relationships

between) relevant pieces of information.

Finding the right voice

• You have many voices. E.g. you speak to your friends

differently when compared to your parents or your

teachers. If you have a job, you have a voice for your

boss.

• When you write a story, you take on a persona, or

character. Choose a voice that best imparts the

information in that story – serious, professional,

sarcastic, humorous, maternal etc.

• The choice you make becomes the tone or mood of the

story, and it should always match the content or the

slant. Common sense: you would not use humor to

write about a tragic auto accident.

Checking your article

• Flow

• Fairness – how those involved are portrayed

• Facts – making sure these are accurate

End