Journalists' Bookshelf: 'The Art and Craft of Feature Writing'
A step-by-step guide to mastering long-form stories.
Honestly, someone should write a guide to writer’s guides. There are so many out there that an aspiring journalist might be overwhelmed.
Every writer has their favorites, and most of the books have some good advice, but I’ve found a handful that are good for learning very specific lessons.
One of those is William Blundell’s “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing,” which focuses on how to report and write the kind of long-form feature story you’d be likely to read in the Wall Street Journal, where he worked.
The key to the book comes in Chapter 4, “Planning and Execution,” which outlines a series of questions the reporter should ask themselves as they are reporting out the story, long before they’ve even pitched it to an editor.
The questions are straightforward, but in answering them, you are likely to come up with an idea for how to approach the piece.
For example, here are the questions for “History”:
A. Does my main theme development have roots in the past? What are they?
B. Is it a clean break with the past? How?
C. Is it clearly a continuation of the past? How?
D. If history seems a potentially relevant part of my story, are there any historical details that I can use to lend authenticity and interest? Can I relate them briefly?
As an example of this in action, Blundell points to this feature lede:
BLACK CANYON, Nev. — More than a century ago a young Army officer named Joseph Christmas Ives sailed up the Colorado River to explore it. Stopped near here by deep gorges and wild water, he later reported: “Ours was the first and doubtless will be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality.”
Lt. Ives was a lousy forecaster.
The area that Ives was looking at turns out to be Las Vegas, and the story goes on to explain why he was wrong about the area but also had a point about its limitations, as the desert city struggles to handle growth. It’s the kind of lede the writer might never have come up with without spending a little time reflecting on these questions.
“The Art and Craft of Feature Writing” is available for $16 on Bookshop.org.
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