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…