How to write feature articles

I’m teaching university students how to write features, so I may as well write about it.

A picture of my grandmother, the writer Pamela Hansford Johnson, looking like she is trying to find an idea to write about. Via Wiki Commons

‘In journalism a feature, like a news story, aims to inform, but it may also narrate, describe, explain, persuade, or entertain, and sometimes all five. It may aim to inspire or stimulate the reader to think or provoke to action. It has distinctive characteristics that add something to the facts. Many features… help us to put the news into perspective’.

Hennessy — Writing Feature Articles (2006)

Features are soft news, not hard news, like a breaking news story which tells the reader the Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? — the facts of the story. Features are a deeper analysis, trying to look at a person, a group, a culture, a movement, an organisation, a trend, an event or any other subject in a holistic way.

A feature can be a descriptive ‘colour piece’, a straight profile based around an interview (like this one I did with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales), a profile of a scene or trend, a How To (like this article!), a personal testimony, a review, a chronology or analysis. As the media landscape expands, there are probably many other possibilities, and it’s only by experimenting that you can find out what works best for the audience you are trying to reach.