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Part I
How to get ideas![]()
1
What is an idea?
Before you can come up with feature ideas, you first need to know what a feature actually is.
Unfortunately, it is a very hard concept to define – I haven’t managed to find a satisfactory explanation of a feature anywhere else that is worth replicating here.
First, let’s think of what a feature isn’t. A feature is not a news story, a comment or opinion piece, a review or an interview, though it may contain some elements of all of these. That is, its primary purpose is not to tell you something new is happening right now (news does that), nor to tell you what an individual thinks about a specific subject (comment does that), nor to give an opinion about a piece of work (a review does that), nor to give you a picture of what someone else thinks in response to specific questions (an interview does that).
However, many features will contain elements of all of these. A feature may include a new trend or be in response to something that is happening at the moment, give you the writer’s opinion on an issue, pass comment on a piece of work or interview people about a subject and include their responses.
So what marks a feature out as a feature, rather than as one of those other categories? Well, the aspects of other genres included in features only appear as elements of a bigger piece of work. A feature will combine some of all of these genres to make a wider ranging article.
As a general rule of thumb, a feature will also do two things:
- It will make you an expert in a specific (often narrow) subject.
- It usually answers a question (though this is often implicit rather than explicit).
If you are not sure whether your idea is a feature, try applying these two rules. Ask yourself what subject the reader will be an expert in after reading it, and what question (or questions) your feature is trying to answer.
The BBC news website (www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine) has a Magazine section full of features. Its style is often to use a question as a headline or subhead, which also doubles as a link through to the article.
On the day I am writing this, seven articles are flagged up on the front page of the Magazine section. Four of them have questions as a header or subhead:
- Brazil noodles? – Just how genuine are Brazilian themed products? (to tie in with the 2014 Football World Cup).
- Generation Right – Are young people more right-wing than their parents were? (in response to a report that claims this is the case).
- Face value – why does scarring continue? (about facial scarring traditions in West Africa).
- Line of consent – should you ask someone’s permission to kiss them? (in response to a trial of an MP, in which he said claims against him were the result of a clumsy pass rather than sexual abuse; he was acquitted).
Although it is rarely the job of the journalist writing the piece to come up with the headline, it can be helpful to write yourself a headline in this questioning style to keep in your mind as you write your feature, so that you can focus on ensuring your piece sticks to its narrow subject and answers a specific question.
Although this question need never make it into the final copy, or onto your editor’s desk, it should come through clearly enough in your article that a reader, asked to identify what question your feature is answering, would come up with the same question you had in mind when writing it.
Task: Find the subject and question
Go through any publication that prints features. See if you can identify the narrow subject and the question being answered for each one.
| Narrow subject | Question being answered |
| Scarring traditions in west Africa | Why does this tradition continue? |
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Task: Make the headline a question
Look at all of the features in a publication. Rewrite their headlines and subheads so that they ask a question.
| Original headline | Rewritten headline |
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One of the reasons it is so hard to give a pithy one-liner defining what a feature actually is, is because there are so many different types of feature.
When you are sending a pitch, it is often best not to be too prescriptive about what type of feature you would like your idea to become, because if you suggest one specific type to an editor and they have another type in mind, it might just be easier to reject it outright than to commission you.
However, it is a good idea to be familiar with some common types of feature, so that you can think about how you would approach any articles you pitch, in case an editor asks you this, and so that you can target publications that publish features in styles that you enjoy writing.
The names I have given each feature type here are just ones used by me, so please don’t assume that editors or other journalists will know what you mean by them should you also use these names. As your portfolio of features grows, you may choose to categorise features differently, or come up with styles that are unique to you.
Also, it is worth noting that lots of feature definitions you may read elsewhere talk about how features always tell a story. Features do indeed often tell a story. But not all features do. In terms of definitions, I’d say features that tell a story ... well, they are the ones that tell a story. Features that don’t, don’t.
List features
This kind of feature is a list of different ways to do something, though the number, format and thing can differ – for example, 50 ways to find a man, 37 ways to boil an egg, what your pen says about you, viruses you should be scared of, London’s coolest new restaurants, common illnesses to watch out for in your new kitten, etc. In the past, lists would always be a multiple of five or, preferably, a multiple of ten. At the moment, however, the trend seems to be for lists of random length – perhaps so that journalists can prove they are only including what they really believe should be listed, and not adding things in for the purposes of achieving a round number.
Personal essay
A feature based on your own experience that goes on to explore the subject in more detail – for example, a personal exploration of falling in love, moving to the South Pole, changing career, putting on a play, having children, etc. This doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘deep’ – it could be your experience of aid work in a war zone but it could also be about your experience of trying a new kind of fitness regime.
And personal essays are not always in essay form, as such. I recently saw an article where the writer explored their relationship through looking at the receipts they had kept during their life and talking about what they spent and where and when and the significance of this. This kind of feature allows you to be particularly creative in form and content.
Experiential/reportage
This differs from the personal essay because it is written with the journalist as an observer rather than an active participant. This kind of experiential feature, also known as reportage, uses words to paint a vivid picture so that the reader can get as close as possible to feeling as if they too are experiencing what is being written about – for example, a night in the life of the accident and emergency department of a hospital, what it’s like to sleep rough, walking the Santiago de Compostela, watching open heart surgery, etc.
You can either do this kind of article openly, as a journalist, or undercover, without telling people you are a journalist. A very good example of this is a piece by Carole Cadwalladr from the Guardian headlined ‘My week as an Amazon insider’ in which she got a job at a warehouse belonging to the internet shopping company Amazon, and wrote about what she found there.
News feature
An in-depth examination of a news story looking into the background of what is happening and giving analysis and expert opinion. This differs from news, which just reports new developments and actual events, as it delves deeper into the story and adds colour (that is, the small details that make what is being described seem more real).
Case study based feature
Using a specific story, usually of a person but it could be of a business or an event or something else, as the basis for a feature – for example, a feature on divorce that uses someone’s personal story as the thread running through the feature. Sometimes the case study is separate and runs alongside a feature exploring a particular angle of the subject, such as an article looking at how to protect your finances in case of divorce with a true story of a specific divorce alongside as the case study. A subset of this type of feature is the ‘Freak show’ – a ‘look what happened to me (or the person I am writing about)’ feature, sometimes written as a first person piece, sometimes not – for example, how I lost ten stone, here’s a person with no limbs, this child survived falling into a cage of lions.
Multi case study based feature
As above, but with more than one personal story.
How to...
This can be anything from how to make a fruit cake, to how to change your life by retraining or how to achieve world peace. This kind of article can combine real life experiences with step-by-step processes. I would actually say that many features fall into this category, more than you first think – business sections often include ‘How to start a business’ articles, finance sections look at ‘How to save’, even travel features look at ‘How to have a holiday like me’. There is, of course, a subsection to this genre – the ‘How not to...’ article, which looks at how not to do whatever the writer is warning about, from personal experience or otherwise.
Inspirational
In which the reader is urged to go out and achieve something, be it follow a recipe, run a marathon, start a business, use a new lipstick, find love, stand for office, do their tax return, etc. Often combined with a how to feature or a case study based feature.
Warning
The opposite of the inspirational feature, in which the reader is warned against doing something – for example, don’t marry your first love, never wear yellow, don’t get wrinkles, do not let your adult children live with you, etc.
The explainer
In which the feature highlights a mystery and attempts to solve it, or is an expose of some kind, or thinks there is something that happened in the past (either historically or in the recent past) that you need to know about. For example, ‘Where is Lord Lucan?’, ‘What really killed off the dinosaurs?’, ‘Everything you need to know about World War One’, etc.
A straight feature
A feature that seeks to explore a particular angle of a subject using a combination of techniques, such as case studies, expert opinion, reportage, interviews, etc., in continuous prose. Could also be called a multi-source feature.
Investigative feature
A feature where the journalist has used a variety of reporting techniques to find information that isn’t readily available, often to expose wrongdoing.
Self-help or personal improvement piece
A feature that aims to help you improve your own life, be it in emotional, physical, financial or other terms. Of course, some features are a mixture of the above genres. You might get a how to feature which is also something of a personal reflective essay or self-help feature, or a news feature written in list form, or any other combination.
Not every subject can be written about in every way but many subjects do work in more than one way, meaning that you can often use your research for one article to then write a significantly different article in another genre for another publication.
Let’s take the Ebola virus, which at the time of writing this book is a major news story. You might write a warning article, in which you tell your readers what might happen when the disease spreads. You might write a ‘how to’ piece, be it how to avoid Ebola or what to do if you come into contact with it. You might write an explainer piece looking at what exactly Ebola is and how it spreads. Or a reportage piece on how hospitals are preparing for potential Ebola cases. Or case study pieces from people who have survived Ebola or relatives of people who have died from it. Or a look at other viruses that have spread around the world written in list form. Or you might go back and do a historical explainer piece looking at what happened to other viruses, such as avian flu and SARS.
Task: Type of feature
Have a look at the features in several publications. Try to work out what kind...
