Feature Writing Exercise

I responded recently to a Facebook post from an adviser who wanted to know if anyone had an efficient exercise to teach feature writing to students who, apparently, are neither interested in “features” nor “writing.” My short answer is, “No.” My long answer is, “Try this.”

Day 1 LESSON

Exercise A —Pair students up and have them tell each other a story about an interesting event in their lives. David Knight refers to this as a “defining moment.”

For example: The time we were driving to California and Dad took a wrong turn and got lost in the desert. The time we were sailing and a storm came upon us, and our boat sank. The time I won my first tennis tournament. The time I learned the difference between a hassle and a problem. And so forth.

Give students 5 minutes to think about their answers, then have them write or type the following: This is a story about _____ , as in “This is a story about how Dad almost got us killed.” So, each student knows what their defining moment is when they join the other student for the interviews.

I’m going to call the two students Charlie and Lucy.

First, Charlie interviews Lucy. Charlie’s first question: What was your defining moment? Lucy should be prepared to answer. Then, Charlie asks a few more questions. The interview should last no longer than 7 minutes.

Then, Lucy interviews Charlie. Same first question. Same follow-up. Same time limit.

Oh, by the way, record everything.

Now, Lucy writes her story about Charlie. Charlie writes his story about Lucy. No story should be longer than 250 words.

End of Day 1 Lesson.

Day 2 LESSON

Teacher prep — Place all stories into a PPT or Keynote or whatever.

Show the story on a screen. Have Lucy and Charlie come up.

Read Lucy’s story. Ask Charlie what he thinks of it. Is it accurate? Is it complete? Would he be OK if this story ran as is?

Now, read Charlie’s story. Same questions..

This prepares students for the fact that their stories will be (or should be) read by the people they/ve written about as well as the general school population. The two big lessons learned here are content and accuracy. We’re not particularly worried about style, grammar and other “correctness” issues that can be addressed later. Is there a story? Is it accurate? Is it interesting?

End of Day 2 Lesson.

Day 3 LESSON

Exercise B — [This can be done as homework or as in-class assignment] | Using the saved recordings, Lucy writes a feature story about herself, based on the answers she gave Charlie. In other words, it is as she has interviewed herself, and she’s now writing the story in third person. Give her 30 minutes to write the story.

Now, compare Lucy’s story about Lucy to Charlie’s story about Lucy. What’s the same? What’s different? Explain why that is. Chances are, the difference is Lucy knows her story better than Charlie does. She knows all the small details, what people were thinking and doing. She knows the setting, the back-story, the take-aways, so she’s able to report and write more accurately and fully than Charlie.

So, what’s the teachable moment? To write a more accurate and fully-developed story, Charlie must ask Lucy better questions and more questions. He must ask obvious follow-up questions.

Let’s assume this assignment was given as homework, so all students come to class with a draft of a story. Show the drafts on a screen. Have Lucy and Charlie come up. Show Charlie’s story about Lucy first. Show Lucy’s story about Lucy. .Which is natural and interesting? Which is formulaic and dull?

End of Day 3 Lesson.

Day 4 DISCUSSION

What have we learned? 1. Writing is a lot easier if you have good material/information. This requires that we conduct better interviews. This requires that we ask probing questions, then ask relevant detail questions. For example, “You said he drove a sports car. What kind of car? What model? What year? What color?

2. If you emphasize natural storytelling, the writing will take care of itself. Students come into journalism equipped with little or no experience in writing that’s meant to be read. All they know is writing that’s meant to be graded or assessed by someone who is paid to read it, not anyone who would choose to read it.

3. The purpose of journalism is to present news. What is news? News is information that is fresh, original. News is not a rehash of the obvious. Whether it’s written in rule-bound classic inverted pyramid formula or highly-stylized feature/analysis form, the story must present information students can’t get anywhere else. That’s how you produce “news.” If students can get information any place else, they’ll go there long before they go to your publication. That’s means you’re irrelevant.

Day 4 HOMEWORK

Ask follow-up questions needed to flesh out the story or correct problems. Run spell-check. Fix grammar and style errors. Repair problems with flow and transition. Make sure all quotes are attributed to the source and make sure all sources are identically fully and accurately. Then, eliminate redundancies and run-on or incomplete sentences.

Teacher prep PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

Go through this exercise with your students. You cannot effectively teach writing if you aren’t writing. Don’t expect students to master something you haven’t mastered, and I’m not talking about reciting a rubric. To tell a student to write a better lead is meaningless. Show them.

The two things that matter most in journalistic writing today are narrative (do you have an interesting story) and voice (is the story told in a natural, original voice or a fake, forced voice?)

This is the dominant theme of The Radical Write.