Have you ever read "a day in the life of" story? It might have been a day in the life of a supermodel or a day in the life of a police officer. If you have, then you have read a feature story.

A feature isn’t just a long version of a news story, although it does follow the same rules. The difference is, that a feature allows you to be much more relaxed and creative. The feature hooks the reader in with the lede. The same applies to a news story but features use one-word ledes to grab the reader’s attention which doesn’t happen often when writing hard news. As well, a feature can have a whole paragraph describing something and it doesn’t have to answer the five w’s.

"‘Hold it!’ That’s what Staff Seargant Cook said as he went to make his first arrest during his 12-hour shift."

Although most features only deal with people, they can be about anything and they are very much like a descriptive essay.

Hurricanes are a lot like grumpy old men. They are full of hot air. The air just builds until one day it’s released and that’s exactly what happened when I went wind storm-chasing in Alberta with Mike Todd, a local weather man.

The writer then goes on to tell the story by describing everything. You should tell the audience about your subject. For instance, if you choose to write on people, talk about their age, what they do for a living, how long they have been doing this, if they are married or single, or if they have any children. You can even go as far as describing what the person was wearing or eating.

As I walked into the photo shoot, I noticed that Cindy Crawford looked beautiful wearing her Calvin Klein jeans.

However, while you are going into details about your subject you still must focus on what you are actually writing about.

Example: If you wanted to do a feature on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest movie, you can talk about his age and his family but you don’t want to lose sight of his movie. You don’t need to go into his marital problems.

When writing your feature, make sure you build up your point. Don’t just bounce from one source to the next just to fill space. If you do this, your readers will go bug-eyed and get confused. They will forget what your topic is about. You want your story to flow and make sense.

Example: If you’re writing about your experience on chasing a hurricane with Mike Todd, you don’t want to give a lot of statistics and numbers. You should always get as much information as you possibly can, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it all just to fill space.

Remember: Only use what is necessary.

Your conclusion shouldn’t just trail off as naturally as most news stories do (even after giving all the facts). Feature writing should draw strings together. Sometimes your conclusion can be one sentence or sometimes it can be a couple of sentences. Whatever the case may be, you want it to tie in nicely to your story so people won’t be left thinking that it was a stupid ending.

As Staff Seargant Cook closed the police car door on the last arrest of his shift, he looked at me and said, "So, how about giving up journalism to join the police force." I looked at him and said, "No, I think I’ll stick to what I know" and we both laughed as we drove home.

This is a good conclusion because it ties back to the lede and the reader knows where your ending is coming from.

Don’t say "In conclusion, ...blah blah blah." It's boring.

How to Get Started

To come up with ideas for features, read everything you can. Listen to gossip and other people’s conversations, watch television and listen to the radio. Most importantly, just watch everything in your daily life. Most features start because people wonder what it would be like to do something or because they want to write about someone important in their community. These usually make the best features.

Once you have decided what you want to write about, your next step is to research your topic. Look through old issues of your newspaper or watch old videotape. Get familiar with your subject.

When you know your subject well enough, you must then decide with whom you have to talk. Get phone numbers and arrange an interview. (See interviewing.)

Once your interviewing is finished and you have gathered all your information, it is time to start your story.

What is an Entertainment Story?

For the most part, you have about 200 words: Don’t ramble but don’t be too short either. The main thing in entertainment writing is to have fun. When writing CD or movie reviews, don’t just say “it’s garbage!”. Be more specific. Tell what you like or don’t like and why.

“The music was good, but the lyrics were garbage! They didn’t have any meaning.”

While a review is just an opinion, an educated opinion makes a far better case, for or against an album, than someone running off at the mouth. Stick to what you know.

Length: 300-500 words
In the case of writing a story about a show, sometimes a lack of information on a topic is good. The reviewer gets a gut reaction and writes how he/she felt about it. When watching a rock show for example, tell how the audience was reacting to the music. Were they dancing? Was there a mosh pit? Did people body-surf? Was the stage direction good? Little details like these fill in the picture for those people who didn’t go. The more interesting you make the writing, the more people will want to read it. Negative comments are all right as long as they are backed up by fact.

“He was such a bad actor he couldn’t act dead!”

Length : 300-500 words
Book reviews are more tricky. They are a lot like a book report for school, except you can’t give the plot away. The stories can be more creative. You can use more descriptive language and even look into the hidden meanings of the novel, if you wish. Whether it is about The Creation of the World or My Summer Vacation, all book reviews should be interesting to the people who read it. Find the one point that stuck in your mind as being interesting and tell the audience why it did. That makes a good book review.

Remember, also, that it is just your opinion. So don’t take criticism of your work to heart. It is your opinion over someone else’s.

Also, remember to send a cut copy of your review to the production company such as Warner, MGM or RCA. They appreciate the reviews and it sets up a rapport with them. So, in the future, you could be placed on their mailing lists for press kits and other fun stuff.

Sports in newspapers are either read or thrown away. Anyone can print the final score of the game (Vancouver 3, Colorado 1) but it takes detail and creative language to win sports readers. The trick to writing sports is not just to report the scores but to try to tell what happened - readers want to meet the players that made it happen and have a front row seat to the game’s action.

Focus on the important plays of the game or a key player, and build your story around it.

Michael Jordan scored 35 points to help the Chicago Bulls clobber the New York Knicks by a score of 105-73.

You don’t have to put in every play, just the important ones that made a difference.

Joe Carter’s two-run homer in the seventh inning led the Toronto Blue Jays to a 6-4 win over the Milwaukee Brewers.

Everyone would like to know exactly what happened in the game but they don’t need to hear every play or every detail. An example of overusing information on an unimportant play would be like this:

Fred Smith came up to bat in the second inning, and swung strikes on the first two pitches. He fouled off on the next pitch, and then popped one up into left field. Gonzales, the left fielder, caught it in the air for the first out.

Lively quotes from the players or managers give your story a boost.

“It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges,” explained Muhammad Ali“and I believed in myself.”

Sports don’t always happen on the playing field, so if you describe the crowd’s mood, size, or the effect they had on the game, it helps keep your readers interested.

A heavy helping of octopi was heaved onto the ice at game’s end by the 12,400 angry hockey fans in attendance.

Your story doesn’t even have to be about a game. It could be player profiles or about teams preparing for a new season or a tournament - whatever is happening that may be interesting.

Professional sports aren’t the only things happening, either. Amateur teams in competition can be just as exciting as the ‘top of the line' athletes. Sports happening in schools or in communities are always around to report. These are the kinds of stories that people enjoy reading because they’re about the local athletes that people may meet everyday. It makes readers proud of their acheivements.

In either men’s or women’s events, sports news is what matters. Take some 1996 Olympic medallists from Canada as examples. Donovan Bailey won gold with a 9.84 second Olympic record run in the men’s 100 metre sprint. Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle excelled in rowing gold for Canada in the Women’s Double Sculls. Make sure you know exactly what the players or athletes have accomplished, so your story has the correct news.

An editorial is an article in a publication giving an opinion on an issue written by, or on behalf of, an editor.

This is not as easy as it may seem. It has to be well-written and well-researched for it to have a significant effect on the readers. The arguments must be strong but without preaching to the reader. A good editorial has the strength to make readers take notice of the situation and form their own opinions.

For the most part, the topics discussed are things such as gun control or Canada’s economy. Sometimes the editorials are after the fact. They deal with social issues that effect all people. They could be related to the rights of minorities in the country. They could be on politics or the world around us.

Editorials could be written like an essay. A relaxed, first person style of writing, using “I”, can be used.

Remember that the editorial is usually the newspaper’s view on the issue. You can get around this by putting a refusal of claim on the editorial saying that the views in the editorial are yours alone and do not represent the paper as a whole.

Try to form your own opinions on major stories covered in your paper. These may seem trivial at the time but it will train you to think about all news and form an opinion on the subject.