How to Write Feature Stories
The Techniques for Gathering Facts for
Organizing, and Writing
Feature Stories. Roundup Stories, Depth Stories, Profiles
Copyright © 2012 by Douglas Perret Starr
Overview
Feature stories, the happy side of newspapers and magazines, provide a balance against
the many columns of hard news about man’s inhumanity to man — crime, divorce, war,
intrigue — and the disasters, resulting from fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes,
airplane crashes, train wrecks, highway wrecks, and the like. In general, feature stories
are “good news” stories, stories about what people do or have done for themselves or for
each other, stories about people helping people, about people doing good deeds, or about
people just living 100 years and remembering other times. Feature stories explain the
origin of a holiday or an event or the development of a tearless onion or a new rose, or
why the sea is salt, or why the sky is blue. They describe a breakthrough in medical care,
in science, in technology. They profile the famous or the notorious, or the average person
who has seen or done something interesting. It’s easy to see why features appeal to
readers; feature stories appeal to the emotions.
The term feature story encompasses several types of story, none of which falls under
hard news or sports or other specific kind of story within the category feature story are
several types, depending upon the approach you care to take,
Feature stories generally are happy stories, and generally about people and animals.
They appeal to the emotions.
Roundup stories and depth stories, though feature stories, are not necessarily happy
stories. They may involve either the good or the evil that people do, or they may explain
the damage from natural or man-made disasters.
Profile stories are about individuals, about personalities in the news, explaining how and
why they achieved whatever status they have.
Gathering Information
Before you can write any feature story, you must gather information. Information comes
from three sources: the subject person, people who know or work with the subject person,
and published documents. Use as many of them as you need.
The information you get depends upon the questions you ask, the answers you get, the
place of the interview, your interview notes, and documents you research. Here are the
steps.
Pick a topic, and pick a subject person to interview.
Write the questions you plan to ask; write the specifically. Write them in a notebook,
listed in the order you plan to ask. If you need assistance with questions, ask
colleagues, the boss, anyone. Here are some suggested question areas.
Goal — What were/are you trying to achieve? What was/is the purpose of your
program?
Obstacle — What problems did/do you face? What problems did/do you
anticipate?
Solution — How well did/will you handle the problem? How did/do you plan to
overcome the problem?
Start — When did/does the program begin? Whose idea was it?
Set up the interview. Contact the subject person and set a date, a time, and a place.
The task of interviewing can be disheartening to a beginning interviewer. But, an
interview is merely a conversation between two people; you ask questions; the
interview subject answers. So, don’t worry, your subject person most probably is
experienced in the interview, and will help you.
Take with you your notebook with the questions on the beginning pages. Use the rest
of the notebook for taking longhand notes. Take two or three pens; one may run out
of ink. Take a digital camera for random shots of the interview place and of the
subject person. If you plan to use a voice recorder, test it before you go to ensure that
it works.
Dress appropriately for the interview. Arrive at the interview site 15 minutes ahead of
time. That will give you time to review your questions, and you may get to begin a
few minutes early, all to your advantage. Above all, mind your manners; be polite.
In the office, take a seat alongside the subject person’s desk; that’s less
confrontational than directly in front.
Remember, you are in charge of the interview. In the interview site, after don’t ask
permission, simply set up the voice recorder and begin to ask questions. If the
interview subject objects to the recorder, explain that it is necessary for accuracy.
After a while, both of you will forget that the recorder is on.
Ask each question specifically, without such preambles as “Let me ask you this.”
Above all, don’t interrupt the speaker’s answers. If the speaker does not answer your
question, simply ask it again.
This is vital: Listen to the answers and continue taking longhand notes. Your subject
person may introduce a new angle, one that you had not thought of. Continue along
that new line; you can always return to your listed questions.
Off the Record — Never mention those words or “just between us.” You are not
there for off-the-record information. If the interview subject proffers an off-the-record
statement, explain that you cannot use it and request that it be on the record. Once
you accept an off-the-record statement, you are honor-bound never to reveal the
information.
After the interview, gather your belongings, but do not turn off the voice recorder
until you have left the interview site. Your last question should be “Is there anything
else that you’d like to say?” You want that answer on the recorder.
After you have written your story, it’s a good idea to send a copy to the interview
subject to be read for factual accuracy. If the interview subject changes your writing
style, don’t worry; you have the original. What you want is accuracy.
After the story is published, send you interview subject a copy and a thank-you note.
Writing the Feature Story
As diverse as feature stories are in topics, all of these story types — feature, roundup,
depth, profile — are handled the same way as any other story. Gather the facts,
interview people as appropriate, take notes, find a peg to hang the story, and write the
story, this way.
Organize the information; omit what does not pertain
Lead with information that will attract the reader into the story.
Describe quickly the main point of the story or the news event upon which the story is
based.
Explain why the information is important or significant or relevant to the reader.
Write clearly and simply, in terms that people can understand.
There is no required length for any feature, but, remember, onscreen, one page
double-spaced is 250 words.
Some questions that should be answered.
What does this mean?
What will be the effect, the result?
Who will be affected? How?
What will happen next?
What does this mean to the average citizen?
Describe the background and summarize the information.
The ending may summarize the story, or it may refer to the lead, or it may just stop, or it
may project into the future.
Of course, you must write a reader-catching lead and an interesting story, tersely and
concisely, using proper grammar, punctuation, syntax.
Keep in mind two admonitions: one firm, one perhaps. The firm admonition is that you
should not deliberately strive to write, or think that you must write, a prize-winning
feature story. Most feature stories are just good yarns, stories that appeal to the average
reader. In the beginning of our writing career, you’re not likely to write any kind of prizewinning story. But you needn’t worry about that just now. Just now, the goal is to write
an acceptable feature story, a publishable story.
The perhaps admonition is that you should avoid writing a feature story about something
or someone personal in your own life. If you do write something from your own life, that
story probably will fall short of your expectations That’s because (a) in general, few
people, if any, care about what affects you personally, and (b) the topic is too subjective;
you’re too close to the story and to the people involved.
Now and then, some exceptional “it-happened-to-me” stories are published, but those
stories are relatively unique and really outstanding: attacked by a grizzly bear, adrift at
sea, that sort of thing. Even stories growing out of Hurricane Katrina or of 9–11, or of
whatever, emotion-packed as they are, pale by the fact that whatever happened to one
person in those instances probably happened to hundreds more. If you’re going to write
something like that, write about what happened to one person or to one family. You can
handle a story about someone else more objectively, and the story will be quite
believable. Let someone else write the story about you or about your family; you can
provide the details.
In writing these feature stories, remember, there are no dull stories, only dull writers.
There are no fixed rules for handling feature stories; each set of facts, each story, usually
will dictate the type of lead and the approach that fits best. Look for that. Above all, don’t
be stuffy; don’t be afraid to experiment with the lead, to try different approaches, to
surprise the readers, to have fun. In writing any of these stories, the inverted pyramid of
news writing is not necessarily the best approach.
Sometimes, the story can be written best in chronological order, like an English essay, or
following an anecdote or a vignette, a short sketch that focuses on the main topic of the
feature story — Reader’s Digest uses anecdote and vignette leads frequently, and
successfully. And don’t forget, rewrite and revise as many times as needed to make the
story the way you want it. You’re going to do a lot of rewriting and revising of your
stories before you’re satisfied, and a lot more before your editor is satisfied, but that’s
what it takes to be a writer.
A feature story is not something you write on the run. It’s a precision piece, a story
crafted over time, word by word, sentence by sentence, graf by graf, each handled
lovingly and carefully, as though each might crumble if used incorrectly. As in any story,
the lead is vital; It’s the showpiece of the story, the part that grabs the readers and entices
them into reading the rest of the story, and, with any luck, all the way to the end. In
general, write in conversational style; use you as frequently as they story will permit; it
helps draw readers into the story.
Any feature story has a good many approaches to the lead. Use a story, an anecdote, a
vignette, a description, a quotation, even a shock word or phrase (“a teddy bear lying in a
pool of child’s blood”), anything that will grab readers’ attention and lure them into the
story. Another approach is to lead by telling the story from one person’s perspective.
Sometimes called the Wall Street Journal format after the newspaper that uses it
extensively, this is a way of personalizing or putting a face on a complicated or an
abstract story.
As in any story, select your words, particularly the pebbles of the language, with great
care. Make certain that each word fits the sentence precisely, that each word says exactly
what you mean to say. Remember, words are either boulders or pebbles. Boulders are
the main words, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives; pebbles are the small words,
articles, conjunctions, prepositions. Although small, and seemingly unimportant, pebbles
can wreak havoc with your story if used incorrectly.
After the lead, provide readers a nut graf — sometimes called justifier — telling exactly
what the story is about and why it is important.
Another suggestion for a good feature story is to provide many quotations, allowing your
subjects to speak for themselves, bringing your story to life. Be sure that the quotations
are accurate, quotable, and appropriate.
As in any story, feature stories usually focus upon one topic. That helps readers identify
with what the story is telling them. If you see that your story is moving at a tangent, think
about using that tangential topic as a separate story. It may be worth it.
Remember to work statistics into the story, rather than to focus mainly on them. If a
hurricane dumped 8.4 inches of rain onto a city in 12 hours, knocked out electricity in 75
percent of the city, killed 9 people and injured 48, and left $438 million in damages,
that’s important and interesting, of course. But it would be far more interesting to readers
— especially those away from hurricanes — to describe the hurricane from the vantage
point of a victim: the rain lashing the trees, the noise of the wind ripping apart buildings
and blowing away homes, the ever-present danger of injury or death by flailing objects.
That’s what interests readers. You can work in the statistics as support.
Write in terms of people. It’s one thing to write about 8.4 inches of rain. But who knows
what that is. In New Orleans, which gets 6 feet of rain every year, hurricane or not, 8.4
inches is just over one month’s average. Tell readers what those 8.4 inches of rain did to
the town: flooded streets, overflowed creeks and surged knee-deep into homes, soaking
furniture and beds and rugs; turned low sites into automobile-swallowing lakes; that’s
what’s of interest. Tell readers that the wind blew steadily at 85 knots — whatever that is
— and gusted to 120, but add the moan and the howl as the roof blew off the pastor’s
rectory, centuries-old trees were uprooted and tossed against churches and schools,
automobiles scattered haphazardly like children’s toys after play. Tell readers the size of
the hurricane, but explain it. A 300-mile wide hurricane that centers on New Orleans
causes damage from Lake Charles, La., to Pascagoula, Miss., and from New Orleans to
Hattiesburg, Miss., and everything in between. That covers a lot of readers.
In feature stories of all kinds, much of time, attribution can be dispensed with. If your
interview subject tells you that she believes in going to the source and then tells you that
she went to the source and secured the information, you need not attribute all that. Simply
write that your subject received the information from the source.
Above all, be accurate. Spell names correctly. If you are unsure about the spelling of a
person’s name, ask the person. If you are unsure about the spelling of the name of a store,
check online or with the store manager.
Roundup
Every spring, cowboys go on the range and collect the cattle, round them up from fields
and gullies and copses and drive them to holding pens for branding and whatever before
shipping them to market. In similar manner, news writers round up information from
various sources and put it all together into a story.
Basically, the roundup is a result of an informal survey of various people or departments
concerning related developments on a particular topic or event. It is a collection of
opinions about a common element.
Roundups are of three general types.
Developing — Strikes, disaster, gasoline shortage, epidemic, sports, the economy, the
job market.
Reaction — Development of cold fusion, abortion laws, wars.
Trends — Fashion, tax increase, specific crimes, universal medical protection,
rise/fall of interest rates.
Roundups can be written on any topic, but general, these command the most attention.
Business — General business, inflation, recession, new home construction, results of
tax increases, strikes, job layoffs, rise/fall of tax revenues, particularly sales tax and
gasoline tax.
Crime — Generally, major crimes, but minor crime if it is pervasive, serial killings,
the death penalty.
Disasters — Weather, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, explosions, earthquakes,
epidemics, epizootics (among animals), traffic accidents and fatalities, the death
penalty.
Government — Potential effects of proposed legislation, actual effects of enacted
legislation.
Holidays — How birthdays are celebrated in various places or by various groups of
people, and in other times.
Politics — Campaigns, candidates, platform promises, elections, winners.
Science — Energy, environment, medical advances.
Society — Fashion, entertainment, television, theater, the arts.
Sports — Before the weekend games are played, relative strengths and weaknesses
of the teams, and prediction of outcomes. After the games, describe the games in
brief.
War — Battles, invasions, peacekeeping, deaths, injuries.
The basis of roundups is a survey, a collection of appropriate information from multiple
sources, sometimes in multiple cities. You must ask each source the same questions,
because what makes the roundup interesting and newsworthy is either the similarities or
the differences in the responses.
To ensure that you do not overlook any questions, write them in your notebook and mark
each one as answered. This is necessary, because people will add information that you
had not thought of, information necessary to the roundup. In such case, you add that to
your list of questions, and you need to ask every person you interviewed about that issue.
There is no fixed number of people in a roundup, but the list should be broad enough to
represent all sides of the issue and to cover possible differences of opinion. Therefore,
make a list of people you plan to interview. Ask colleagues for suggestions for both
people to interview and questions to ask. Don’t be reticent; you can’t think of every angle
yourself.
For example, to do a roundup on the possible effect of lower interest rates, you need to
interview the president of every bank in the city, the director of every savings and loan
association and every credit union, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, university
professor of economics and finance, and the state banking board. If that is too much for
you, you might enlist assistance from colleagues or find a representative sample of
individuals who can provide the needed information.
If you are unable to contact some subjects, make that plain in the story. If some subjects
decline to be interviewed, make that plain in the story.
Your lead focuses on the common element of the survey topic; the body of the story
provides the detail of the responses; and the end of the story just stops. There is no
conclusion; that information was in the lead. If you must have an ending, select an
appropriate and meaningful quotation.
For example, for a roundup on the possible results on city revenue of a 2-cent increase in
the tax on cigarettes, you would contact two sources in every city: the mayor and the
head of the city accounting department. Your lead would focus on the overall result: how
many mayors and accountants favored/opposed/had no opinion on the tax increase, and
what the additional money was to be used for. Of course, mention the name of each city
in the roundup, but also the populations of those cities.
Include whether the interviews were in person, by telephone, or online. Select appropriate
quotations to bring your roundup to life.
Depth
A depth, like a roundup, has its basis in hard news, in some event that has affected or
might affect or will affect people. The depth goes into detail about the results of a news
event, puts the news event into focus, tells what the news event is all about and what it
means. The depth explains, but does not take sides. Basically, the depth tell the WHO,
the DID WHAT, the WHY, the HOW, and the THEN WHAT, and presents a lot of
information on the WHY and the HOW of the news event.
Depths require a lot of research, interviews with more than just the main persons
involved. So, seek out specialists in the field, colleagues, rivals, competitors, relatives,
friends, various publications and documents, as many of all that that you need. Don’t
worry that you are not an expert in the topic of the story. All you need to know is how to
ask questions until you understand the situation. If you are alert to what your interview
subject is telling you, you can write a meaningful depth story.
In that you are writing from the vantage point of an observer, you may write much of the
depth story on your own initiative, without much attribution. Be sure, however, that you
base projections, conclusions, and consequences upon fact, and be sure that the facts are
stated in the story. In all probability, you must include alternate views, alternate,
conclusions, alternate projections. But that’s all right.
Profile
A profile is about people. It is not a biography — that deals with the entire life of a
person — nor is it a result of a question-answer interview. A profile describes and
explains why readers are interested in the subject person today, in what the subject person
has done lately. It focuses on the here and how. The best profiles are those that are tied to
the news of the day.
Before you can write a profile, you need biological information, and you need to
interview the subject, ask questions, get answers, but you need more than that. You need
information about the subject person, which is available from knowledgeable sources,
from people who know and like and know and dislike the subject person, who work with
the subject person, who are neighbors of the subject person. You need information from
previous articles written about the subject person. All of that means that you will move
around quite a bit to get your story.
During the interview, don’t be afraid to ask tough questions, ask about failures as well as
successes; ask about why the subject person get into such a situation. More often than
not, you will receive answers, good answers. If you don’t? Well, perhaps you can get
answers to those questions from other sources.
Thus, you need to research three areas for your profile: (a) published material:
newspapers, magazines, books, FaceBook, online; (b) official records: court documents,
property records, professional and business affiliations; and (c) financial records All of
that is available; you just have to search.
As you do your research, seek, listen for, anecdotes and information for vignettes that
will make your profile sparkle with life. Look at your subject person and surroundings.
Describe your subject person for readers — appearance, height, weight (not for women),
hair and eye color, dress, gestures, expressions, smiles, frowns, mannerisms — and
describe the surroundings — the office, the home, the home office, automobile(s), family,
friends. Make your subject person come to life on the page. After all, your subject person
is a human being.
Be careful, though, don’t just write that your subject person is this or is that. Instead,
describe how your subject person acts, so readers can arrive at the conclusion you want
them to.
Some profiles describe a day in the life of the subject person. This requires following that
person for nearly 24 hours a day, from the alarm clock’s ring to bedtime. Some use
breakfast as a beginning before launching into the meat of the profile. Your approach
depends upon you and your subject person.
Summary
Features tend to be happy stories, “good news” that balances the harsh realities of
daily events.
Roundups contain a collection of opinions from experts on a trend, development, or
event.
Depths go into great detail about a news event, focusing primarily on the why and the
how.
Profiles are personality stories about one person, and should contain sufficient detail
so that readers empathize with the subject person.
Feature leads can be vignettes, anecdotes, shockers, sometimes even full quotations,
but they must be interesting to grab the attention of readers.
The nut graf, justifier, explains the reason for the feature.
Use appropriate, meaningful quotations to liven up the story.
Don’t write; tell your story in terms of people. Talk to your keyboard. The more you
write in conversations style, the more interesting and readable your story.
Writing Tips
Write conversationally. Use the active voice: subject, predicate, object.
Use proper attributive verbs, action verbs, not to-be verbs.
Use the dictionary to look up definitions and usages of words.
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched, the concrete word to the abstract, the short
word to the long.
Avoid such redundancies as revert back … while at the same time … is presently, and
also … past experience.
Avoid such meaningless words as somewhere … sometime … earlier this month.
There never is the subject of a sentence. Don’t use it.
Reserve feel for sense of touch.
Above all, rewrite. As many times as needed to make the story glow.