This document provides guidance on writing feature stories. It discusses analyzing features by considering the topic, angle, main characters, and point of view. It emphasizes using descriptive language through detailed observations, sensory descriptions, imagery, quotes, and varying sentence structures. Focalization, or point of view, should be carefully considered. Imagery, including similes, metaphors, metonyms, and personification, brings stories to life. Overall, feature writing aims to immerse readers through vivid storytelling that creates mental images.

1. STYLE IN FEATURE
WRITING

2. Analysing feature
Read the example feature story and pay attention to the followin things:
What is the topic and the angle/focus of the story written?
What type of a feature is it?
Is there a main character in the story?
Through whose eyes is the story told (whose point of view)?
Which interviewees, other sources?
What kind of a basic sturcture (e.g. cronological, suspended interest,
parallel narratives, varying distance...)
How does the story begin? Is the beginning (lead) powerful?
Is there a "nut graph" in the story? Where? Can you tell, what is the main
point of theh story (premise)?
How does the story end? Is there a closure in the story or not?

3. FEATURE STYLE
Descriptive
Colourful
Detailed
Uses imagery
With presence of the writer

4. IMPORTANCE OF
DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS
Sets the scene.
Creates mental images: makes readers
"see", "smell", "hear" and "feel" things
you write about!
Establishes the mood of the story.
Reveals something of the personality of
a key character.

5. HOW TO DO IT
Pay attention to details
Use all of your senses: see, hear, smell, feel, taste
Use adjectives and adverbs
Use exact and descriptive verbs and nouns
Use imagery (figurative language)
Use well-chosen direct quatations from the
interviewees
N.B. requires a very good command of the language!

6. EXAMPLE
"A dog was barking at us as we
entered through the gate... "
"A sturdy rottweiler was barking at
us fiercely as we tiptoed through the
narrow wicket door in the colossals
main gate."

7. PRESENCE
The experiences and observation can be
subjective, showing the presence and
possibly involvement of the writer.
BUT: Leave the opinion, conclusions and
judgements to your readers - you just
describe what you see, hear, smell... or
what you do and experience. Remember,
feature is not an opinion column!

8. RHYTHM
Create rhythm to you story by
mixing sentence length: alternate
short, punchy sentences, and long
and more complicated sentences.
alternating direct quatations and
transitions.

9. FOCALIZATION
in feature writing

10. Focalization
(Point of view)
Through whose eyes do you want to tell the story?
Whose experiences and thoughts do you describe?
Third person point of view ("he/she") or first
person point of view ("I")?
Do you keep the same focalization throughtout the
story, or do you change it in the middle?
N.B. First person point of view shows more
involvement of the journalist, and makes the
writer visible in the story. More rare in journalism.

11. EXAMPLE OF
FOCALIZATION
A story of a severly ill young girl. Do you tell the story
through her eyes, through her mothers or fathers eyes, or from
your own point of view (as you get to meet her, interview her,
know her etc.)? Or do you change the point of view in the
middle of the story?
"As I entered the room, I saw the mother holding the hand of a
fragile and pale 15-year old, covered by a blanket up to her
small chin.
Mother had stayed at her side throughout the night, praying that
the morning would bring along a turn towards better. She had
hardly closed her eyes during the long hours at a silent and
dark hospital. She kept hoping for a miracle."

12. IMAGERY
Imagery is created by the use of figurative language, figures of
speech.
Figurative language: "Language which doesn't mean what it
says" (Terence Hawkes) = has other than literal meaning.
Seeing one thing in terms of another thing, making analogies.
Simile
Metaphor
Metonymia
Personification
Idiom

13. IMAGERY: SIMILE
Expresses a comparison between two things
that are normally not linked to each other.
With word "like" or "as".
"Daladala was packed like a tin of
sardines."
"My legs felt as soft as over-cooked
spaghetti."

14. IMAGERY: METAPHOR
Like a simile expresses a comparison/analogy, but
without the words "as" or "like".
Attaches meanings/images from another previously
known context to a new/different context.
"My legs were spaghetti."
"X noticed that he had come to a crossroad in his
life: he had to choose which way to continue his
journey."

15. IMAGERY: METONYMIA
Substituting a literary expression with
another closely associated term, for
example
part for whole ("We need more hands" -
"hands" for worker)
object for user/instutution ("crown" for
monarchy)
Date or place for event ("9/11", "Chernobyl")

16. IMAGERY:
PERSONIFICATION
Attaching human qualities to a non-
living object, plant or animal.
"I had forgotten to water the
geranium and now it was sloaching,
gazing me accusingly."

17. IMAGERY: IDIOMS
Commonly used figurative frases.
Vary from language to another, but
same idioms can also appear in
different languages.
E.g. "It's raining cats and
dogs." (=It's raining hard.)

18. "A good feature article is enhanced
with strong artwork such as
photograph or drawings when the the
artwork and sotry come together as a
unit on the page. Yet, you often have
to write as if there is no art with the
story; you must write to allow your
readers to create images in their
minds from reading your article."
(Garrison 2004, 117)