WRITING FEATURES

Who is this topic for? 

Making the transition from reporting to feature-writing is a key step for journalists.  It gives them the opportunity to make judgments and express their expertise about issues and trends in their specialist field.  Peter’s course, which draws on his own long feature-writing experience, gives journalists both the techniques and the confidence they need to make this crucial step up.

The basic course shows journalists the key techniques of style and structure.

Basic Feature Writing covers:

• the difference between features and news
• writing an attention-grabbing first sentence
• identifying a story-line and sustaining it through a piece
• how to discuss writing features, in particular the key elements of story and structure
• obtaining and using the best quotes

Advanced Feature Writing gives journalists more sophisticated tools to keep the reader hooked.  It encourages them to write authoritatively about industry developments and to develop their expertise. It sets out different approaches to feature writing and shows the techniques and strategies for writing award-winning articles.

It covers:

• how to write an outline
• how to use characters to tell stories
• how to develop and express journalists’ specialisms and expertise
• how to use different forms of narrative, implicit and explicit structures, effective set-ups, and the importance of sign-posting an argument
• significance and impact, hooks and pegs, and the crucial nut graf
• how to obtain the most effective quotes, how to use the language of affect, and how to use characters to tell stories
• the briefing process, how to write outlines, how to deal with deadlines, the use of boxes, the visual element – and how to keep your editor happy.

This course is often most effective when combined with a follow-up day, usually conducted in one-on-one sessions which deliver a critique of features written by delegates since the course.

As well as providing delegates with encouragement, this helps to reinforce the principles and techniques imparted on the original course.