BEFORE THE PROJECT!
Depending on your expectations, you can spend very little time or several weeks preparing for the writing activity. In a serious journalism class, many resources are available to help teach the style rules and conventions needed for successful “journalistic writing”--see the HELP ME! section. If the activity is being used as a part of a general writing class or to introduce journalistic writing, very little introduction is necessary. At minimum, students should be introduced to the basics of journalistic writing.

INTRODUCTION!
The basic guidelines for writing a feature story include:

• Choose a single focus and interview only on that--do not do a biography.
• Feature leads may be more than one paragraph long and usually do not include the 5 W's and H. The main purposes of a feature lead are to set the tone and get the reader's attention.
• A chronological, logical or narrative pattern of organization is used, not inverted pyramid.
• The final paragraph should complete the story. The best ways to do this are to refer back to the lead or use a quote to refer to the future.
• They story should reflect the subject's character and personality.
• Feature stories should contain many direct quotes. At minimum, features should be one-half direct quotes.
• Write creatively, use color and imagination, make people come alive with your feature writing. Be careful to avoid becoming too sugar-coated or editorializing, however.
• Unlike in standard news writing, contractions may be used to give an informal tone.

EXAMPLES!
If a journalist were writing about the Dakota Writing Project, from which this activity came, there would be two basic ways to do it. If the journalist were writing a news story, it might begin something like this:

Twenty-one teachers from across eastern South Dakota gathered at the University of South Dakota June 14-July 1 to learn techniques used to teach writing.

This is a basic news lead. It gives the facts--the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story. The rest of the story would continue this pattern with the most important information always taking precedence over the less important information, even if it is more interesting.

If this were to be written as a feature story, however, the lead might look more like this:

Teacher Jason Lueth cried as he composed a poem about his grandmother at the keyboard of a Macintosh computer in the basement of the University of South Dakota Arts and Sciences building recently.

The purpose of this feature lead is to draw the reader in--that is, to make him or her curious. What was he crying about? Why in a computer lab? I want to know more! Please note, any news story can be written as a news/feature. That is, taking a news event (like the Writing Project) and giving it the feature treatment. This is done more and more in modern journalism. Only the hardest of news stories get the inverted pyramid treatment in papers like USA Today, for example. Everything else is a news/feature. This is not what we are doing. We are going to write about an individual in pure feature fashion.

After the feature lead is written, students will move on to compose the rest of the story. A feature may take nearly any format, but should be written in third person with many first person quotes, as in any news story.

THE PROCEDURE!
Once students understand the basics of a feature, it's time to introduce the activity. The first step is for the members of the class to get to know each other. A good way to do this is to have the students introduce themselves. Have them stand in turn, introduce themselves, and tell something about themselves that they don't think the rest of the class knows. This will let everyone get to know each other better and give the students material for their features.

Break the students into pairs. They may choose or you may assign, depending on the maturity level of the students. Tell the students they are to take turns being the reporter. That is, first one will interview, then the other. After an initial consultation about topic with their partner, students should be given a few minutes to come up with questions. Then, students should interview! I use some prop “Press” hats to make the activity more fun. The reporter in each group is identified by the hat, and only he or she should be interviewing until the hat changes.

Assure all the students that everyone has a feature story topic in them. If you are paired with someone who never leaves the house and never does anything, bingo! there is your story. If you get someone with an average life, select some average event. Even the mundane can be made interesting with the right feature lead. That is what this exercise is all about.

When students are done interviewing, have them return to their “office” (computer or desk) and begin the first draft of their feature. There are many way to go about constructing the story, but many reporters who have a hard time beginning a feature will write the “body,” or facts, of the feature first and come back to the lead and conclusion later. Students should spend as much time as you would like to allow on this project, sharing their feature with the class or “publishing” in your class newspaper as you see fit when finished. Remember that editing is a key part of journalistic writing. You should spend some time with each student individually fine-tuning their stories.

THINGS TO REMEMBER!
In a true journalism class much emphasis will be put on journalistic style and rules. In a composition class much less emphasis may be placed here, but students should still be reminded that they are writing for publication. It is this emphasis on accuracy and uniformity that make journalistic writing so appropriate for the teaching of grammar and usage. Students should strive for perfection and use multiple drafts to approach it.

Also remember to stress that while feature writing is about creativity, it is also a form of reporting. Reporting stresses accuracy and truth. If I was not crying at that computer keyboard, it should not say so in the lead. Features do not sacrifice accuracy for creativity.

SOME VARIATIONS!
If this activity is being used as a part of a journalism class, the teacher will want to stress interviewing skills and journalistic style as a part of the lesson. This writing activity can be expanded to a several hundred word culminating activity that takes several weeks.

The writing activity also works when extended outside the group. Have each student select someone they know--a friend, relative, etc.--or assign them someone--a faculty member, a resident of a local nursing home, etc.--and have the students take it from there. These assignments take longer but usually generate more genuine and realistic features.

EVALUATION!
If this writing activity is done as a part of a class the teacher is encouraged to set up and explain evaluation criteria in advance. If it is done as an activity to enhance the teaching of writing, no evaluation of the final project is necessary. In the doing is the learning.

WHY THIS WORKS!
The rationale and theory behind this activity

HELP ME!
Other resources that make this activity work, including an introduction to the author and a power point presentation he used to sell this activity at the 1999 Dakota Writing Project