Basics of Feature Writing: The Art of Telling Stories

A feature story aims to educate and entertain the readers. It reflects the best in a writer. It can be personal, colorful, and
opinionated, but without deviating from the facts. It may be longer and in-depth compared to a straightforward news
story. It carries feelings and impressions. It should be able to grab the reader’s attention instantly and hold that attention.

Writing a feature story is not always easy. It comes with a lot of elements that should come together to make it whole.
Also, the style of writing a feature may vary depending on the writer or the subject. However, at the very heart of it, the
purpose is the same – it aims to explore a range of issues, opinions, experiences, and ideas while captivating the
audience.

On July 1, we attended the Feature Writing 101 workshop hosted by Writer’s Block Philippines. We learned tips and
tricks about feature writing to help us improve how we share stories on WhenInManila.com. Here, we’d like to share
what we’ve learned with you.

 There are different types of feature stories

o Feature stories are created to inform, entertain, persuade, or simply satisfy the audience’s curiosity about a certain
topic. It may provide additional information that may not be found on the news story, give an opinion about a
trending topic, or offer an entertaining personal perspective on a certain topic. Compared with news stories, which
can quickly become irrelevant, feature stories stick around longer even if they have been published for a long time.
Different types of feature stories are:
 opinion on trending topics
 personality profiles
 humorous pieces
 anecdotes
 human interest stories
 Feature stories don’t simply present dry facts, they provide a different take on reality from a different angle.
 Steps in feature writing
o brainstorming
o finding the angle
o creating an outline
o researching
o going through the facts to produce an enticing story
o creating a punch line to leave an impression
Tips on writing the feature story

 Creating the title/headline

o hook the reader
o highlight the main idea of the story
o use important keywords
 Creating the introduction
o The introduction sets the tone of the whole story
o It can have an unusual statement to keep the reader’s attention
o It can invite the reader to take a stand especially if it is a controversial topic
o It should have the important background information
o It should intensify the appeal to keep the reader hooked
 Creating the body
o It should have additional facts and statistics
o It can have opinions from authorities
o It can have sound bites from interviews
o It can have personal opinions
o It can be visual using photos, diagrams, and graphs
 Putting a conclusion
 o The conclusion leaves the impression to reader
o It should remind the reader what the story is about
o It can suggest a course of action and/or change of attitude or views
Remember…

When writing a feature story, it should:

 be well-researched and well-written

 inform
 entertain
 have authority
 present viewpoints

What are the Three Main Parts of a News Story?

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We can divide the newspaper story as it strikes our eye on the newspaper page into three parts:-

(i) The headline;

(ii) The first paragraph;

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(iii) The remainder of the story.

The headline first attracts us. It stands out in bold black type. Its message is terse, abrupt and often startling. It makes us stop and
look. It tells us quickly what the story covers. Its primary function is to attract our attention.

It corresponds to the beat of the drum outside the street show. But we will not consider the nimble art of headline writing here.
As we have seen, headline writing belongs to the copyreader’s province and not to the reporter’s.

The first paragraph or lead:

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It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the opening paragraph or lead. Always this lead remains the primary concern
of the newspaper writer. In any form of writing the writer tries to put his best food foremost. In journalistic writing, this first stride
has unique importance.

Because the present day reader resembles the man who runs and reads; present day newspapers seek to facilitate his getting his
information quickly.

The convention has developed of telling the main facts of a news story in its first lead paragraph. Read any modern newspaper
today-and you will find that by glancing at the headlines and through each lead you get, substantially, all the important news,
although you may miss many interesting details.

This convention requires that in the lead the reporter answers the questions which would occur to any normal person when con-
fronted with the announcement of an event. These questions, called the five W’s are:

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Who?

What?

When?

Where?

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Why?

And How?

Suppose the news story concerns a fire. In writing his lead the reporter would answer the question, ‘What?’ “Fire broke out”, he
would write. He would answer the question, ‘Who?’ and ‘Where?’ by telling whose premises were burnt and giving their location.
He would answer ‘When’ by telling the time the fire broke out and how long it lasted. ‘Why?’-in this case the cause, the usual
carelessly tossed cigarette butt.

Our reporter can answer the ‘How’ in this story in several ways-by describing the type of fire, “flames fanned by a stiff breeze”, or
by answering ‘How much?’ Here, he would estimate the probable financial loss and find out if premises had been covered by
insurance and if so by what amount.

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This simple illustration shows some of the things which a good lead is required to do. It summarises the story for the reader. It
identifies the persons concerned. In this case it gives the full name of the owner of the premises and the address of his property. It
fixes the locale of the story.

It gives the reader the latest available information-in this case probably the extent of the damage. Yet so far, it has neglected
another very important function of the lead. It has failed so far to stress the story’s news “feature”.

The News Feature of a Story:

What is a story’s news feature? It is that angle or twist which differentiates the story from what may be called a run-of-the-mill
item. Blazes of this kind unfortunately happen everywhere, everyday. But, suppose the burnt premises temporarily housed
important works of art which likewise went up in smoke and were lost to the world: or suppose the building was the property of
some well known person, a statesman, a business magnate, a prominent public figure; or suppose, again the next door to the
burning premises stood a cinema building, crowded at the time by people unaware of the danger. Each of these suppositions
would satisfy the story’s news feature. Each would supply the necessary element of uniqueness.

But whether it is run-of-the-mill or outstanding in its impact, the lead should cover the story’s essential facts. The city editor
enunciated the alpha and omega of the craft when he shouted to his inquiring cub reporter:

“Spill the whole story- in the first paragraph, and maintain the interest for the rest of the column”.

The best-written lead not only satisfies the reader’s initial curiosity, but wets his appetite to read more. Summing up, we may say
then that the newspaper writer must see to it that his lead does five things: presents a summary of the story; identifies the
persons and the place concerned; stresses the news feature; gives the latest news of the event; and, if possible, stimulates the
reader to continue the story. And-the present day tendency is to achieve all this as quickly and as briefly as possible.

Rudolf Flesch, a consultant on readability to the Associated Press, insists that the traditional Who, What, When, Where and Why
lead is antique. However, a great many antique traditions still persist. Nevertheless, newspapers have been stimulated by the
radio and television newscasts and also by the newspaper reports in this traditional technique with success.
A reporter may write his lead in a variety of forms. Editors welcome originality. Several types, however, have proved their
readability, and have become almost standardised.

Main types of Leads

(a) The digest lead:

This lead summarises clearly and plainly all the principal facts. It remains the simplest in construction and forms a basic part of all
lead variations. The typical news item or dispatch starts off with the digest or summary lead. The following is a fair example:

London, Jan. 23-A silver cup nearly two feet high, standing on a bar at the Olympia Exhibition Hall here, awaits the winner as 375
bartenders from all over the world submit their prize original cocktail formulas in a contest for the world’s championship that
began today.

-New York Times

(b) The direct appeal lead:

This form borrows the interest compelling device of the personal letter. It addresses the reader directly or by implication as “you”,
and has the effect of making the reader a collaborator in what follows. It often begins with such phrases as “If you have ever
thought,”, or “If you have ever seen or read”. Here is a typical direct appeal lead:

If you think you’ve got it tough when you have to listen to your little sister practice the piano, take pity on Alfred Jay Smith. In the
last 30 years he’s had to audition 20,500 child performers. And he likes his job.

(c) The circumstantial lead:

Here we have a beginning which stresses the circumstances under which the story happened. It crops up usefully when the story
has a human interest slant:

Chester, Pa, Feb. 20-The cries of a pet cat into the mouthpiece of a telephone at a house in West Third Street today brought out a
detachment of police and plain-clothes men bent on frustrating a burglary and possibly saving a life.

A telephone operator at the central exchange called the police department and informed the desk seargent that cries of distress
were coming from the telephone at the Third Street house. A patrol wagon full of policemen was hurried to the scene and they
surrounded the house. Repeated knocks at the door brought no answer and they forced an entrance.

They found the cat with one of its feet caught in an ice chest. In its struggles to get free it had knocked the receiver from the
telephone, which was lying on the floor, and it was crying into the mouthpiece. The family was away.

-Associated Press of America

Here is another circumstantial-type lead. Although the body of the story is about a fatal auto crash in which two of the five sisters
were killed, the emphasis in the lead is placed on the circumstances which lead up to the accident-the heart attack of the driver.
Without this emphasis on circumstances under which the story happened, it would have been just another “run-of-the-mill”
account of an auto accident.

A heart attack suffered by Mrs. Mary White 60 of 5 East 37th Street, Waverly, was believed by the police today to have caused her
to lose control of her car in Cedar Village last night with resultant death for herself and one of the four elderly sisters who were
with her. The three remaining sisters suffered severe hurts.

(d) The statement or quotation lead:

This type of lead starts out with an enunciation which, as often as not, occurs in quotation marks. In speech reporting particularly,
a succinct, epigrammatic sentence often puts in capsule form the gist of the speaker’s idea. When the reporter has added to this
the inevitable five W’s, the resulting paragraph coincides with the digest or summary lead.

A “large percentage” of the persons 60 years of age in state mental institutions “do not belong there”, Abraham Cohen of the
Mayor’s Advisory Committee for the Aged declared yesterday. He spoke at a paque-dedication ceremony at the Walter S. James
Community Center for the Aged, 23-12 Second Avenue.

(c) The Descriptive Lead:

This form of beginning presents a picture. The reporter may set the stage for the action of his story or he may present in detail
one or more of his chief actors. In other words, this lead can describe the scene or it can describe one or more of the people
involved.

Dressed in similar grey gabardine coats and grey fedoras and wearing false rubber noses attached to lenseless spectacles, three
armed young thugs invaded the third-floor offices of the Anderson Jewellery Company, 24 Main Street, Beverly, early yesterday
afternoon, held up seven persons and escaped with £ 5920 in cash.

(f) The suspended interest lead:

This type of lead serves as a stimulator of interest. It gives the reader enough information to whet his appetite, and no more. After
the lead, the story usually runs along in chronological form, so that the reader must read to the very end to get at the climax.
Reporters use this type of lead chiefly for short bits, on the theory that if used on longer articles, readers would not bother to
wade through paragraph after paragraph. Here is a typical suspended interest lead, used in a typical way:

The quick action of John Lowell, a baker, probably saved this city of 16,290 inhabitants from disaster today.

At 4 P. M. he noticed that the gas flames in his bread ovens had flickered out. Ten minutes later gas again hissed through the
pipes, unlighted.

Lowell reasoned that many unattended gas appliances in the slumbering city might be pouring unburnt gas into homes and apart-
ments. He called Fire Chief Charles Albert.

Fire trucks, police cars and ambulances sped through the darkened streets, sirens screaming. A shield truck blared, ”Check your
gas ! Check your gas.” Chief Albert said that the cacophony which woke the population saved many lives as his men found about
200 gas-filled homes and he personally awakened “at least fifty” groggy citizens. No one was overcome.

The light and heat company serving the area laid the gas interruption in an air pocket in the lines.

(g) The tabulated lead:

Occasionally one runs into a story in which no one fact is prominent. Each facet of interest has about the same value. In such
instances, a practice has grown up of tabulating each item in the lead-one, two, three, four.

A major scandal has erupted in the 3rd Internal Revenue District, the World-Telegram learned exclusively today. It involves:

1.Suspension of a five-man ”fraud squad” suspected of shaking down 12 firms for $50,000 to cover up income-tax discrepancies.

2. Implication of a high city official who is a Tammany stalwart.

3.Exhaustive investigation by intelligence agents of the Treasury Department. Their findings have been turned over to U. S.
Attorney, F. X. Mc Gohey’s criminal division for presentation to a grand jury.

-N. Y. World-Telegram.

(h) Various “stunt” leads:

All editors put a premium on novelty, and some even on the bizarre. Accordingly a variety of what we can call exclamation point
leads crop up from time to time and have been dubbed, “astonisher”, “punch” and “teaser” as the case may be. Originally one
knows no pigeonhole and refuses the standardisation of definition beyond the generalisation that such leads are eccentric
variations from the norm. When successful, a stunt lead has its own reward:

Bertram Walker today had a fishing table to top them all. Out of the icy, wind-hiped waters of La Crosse Channel, Centralia,
yesterday, he caught a man-an all-weather swimmer who had been floundering in the fast running ebbtide.

Robert Jackson, 57, a 170-pound hop carrier of 122 Manchester Street, North Port, was losing his fight against the currents when
the fishermen heard his cries for help, uncorked a 50 yard bull’s eye cast, “hooked” -the swimmer and reeled him to safety.

Mr. Jackson was released after treatment at St. Mary’s Hospital, Centralia, for exposure, submersion, cuts and bruises.

Mr. Walker, an electrical engineer for the Calco Engineering Company, went back to his fishing.

Step-by-step Conclusion:

We start the normal story at its beginning and trace it step by step to its conclusion. The newspaper convention of the lead, how-
ever, makes the news story an exception to this general rule. This lead demands that in most instances the news story begin with
its climax. Two reasons lie behind this formula: the desire to catch the reader’s attention; the desire to save the reader’s time.

The lead forms the springboard for the reporter’s leap into the story. From a springboard wholly adequate, he can make a graceful
dive; from one even partially defective, he may sadly flop. Often the impetus given by a successful lead carries him with line
tempo and gusto into the remaining paragraphs. Sometimes when tumbled over, the lead throws a disheartening shadow ahead.

This lead business makes even the practiced journalist pause. While covering a story he carries in the back of his mind the
consciousness that a suitable beginning for the story must somehow evolve within him. He keeps on the watch for the element or
those elements in the assignment which would make a good lead. A feeling of rare content creeps over him when he tucks the
sought-for start away in his mind for eventual use. The best way to gain journalistic facility is to practice the writing of leads.

The Remainder of the Story

From the headline and the lead we come to the rest of the story. The reporter constructs the model news story after this pattern.
He selects the most important incident or fact for his lead.

Then he proceeds by selecting the next most important incident, fact, or detail; then the next important; the next important after
that, and so on till he reaches the least important phase of all. Guided by his idea of news importance, the story assumes
graphically the shape of an inverted pyramid.

To the most important element of the story, the reporter has given the greatest space and prominence. To the next most
important he gives somewhat less prominence and space, so on down the story. He ends up at the apex of the inverted pyramid
with the facts or incidents of least value.

Obviously, he can best shorten his story by cutting off the last paragraph. Herein rests the technique’s chief virtue from the make-
up editor’s point of view. Most papers receive far more news than they have space to publish. Stories must often undergo a last
minute shortening if important late news demands inclusion.

The make-up editor knows that he can slice one, two or three paragraphs off any story written in this inverted pyramid form
without depriving the reader of the story’s chief new element.

The newspaper uses the word “story” as an omnibus term to cover all the items it publishes. Many of these articles are not stories
at all in the sense that they have no narrative quality. Probably, an analysis of today’s newspaper would show that it contained
more exposition, interpretation and opinion than narrative.
We may find that the greater part of the news articles have to deal with new Government policies that the paper strives to make
clear; new judicial decisions the significance of which the paper attempts to indicate; new scientific theories and inventions that
call for explanation. For the majority of these articles, the paper will fall back on the standard inverted pyramid form.

In some instances it happens that all sections of the interpretation have equal value and importance. Here we find no tapering off
to an apex and no building up in time sequence. These interpretive stories fall into a graphic pattern of rectangular arrangement
of equal sections.

The Final Shape:

Back to his typewriter with his notes, the reporter starts to build his story. He already knows, because he has covered it, whether
his story will be exposition and interpretation or a chronicle of what happened.

If his job is to explain, he knows from experience that all exposition calls for a definite plan, and that the time he now spends on
making an outline will be more than saved when he” starts to write. Clarity is the goal at which all explanation aims. No matter
how detailed or learned the explanation may be, if it leaves the reader muddled and puzzled, it has failed. The only way to avoid a
confused story is to make a plan.

Suppose the writer’s assignment calls for the explanation of a process. How will he construct his plan? First, he educates himself.
He clarifies the whole process in his own understanding; mentally he takes the whole process apart and then reconstructs it. Only
when he knows what it is all about himself, is he ready to start. First, he considers the lead which must contain the news or the
process along- with any attention-getting devices he may have in his repertory. Then step by step, as he puts the process together
in his own mind, he outlines it for the reader.

If, on the other hand, his story is a typical news narrative, he knows the ingredients that go to make it interesting.

He knows that it consists of the “and then” or story element, of description and a certain amount of suspense. The descriptive
element comes logically enough into all narrative. The reader wants help in visualising the scene beyond the precise geographical
location.

Conversation too enters as a logical constituent of a story which deals with people other than deaf mutes. The reporter sees that
this conversation can sometimes help him with his description, but he must realise that the best conversation actually steps in
only to help the action along. He injects suspense by delaying the point of climax of his story as long as possible.