Feature Writing

Course Description
This course moves beyond basic journalistic reporting and news writing. It will teach students how to write longer, impactful feature articles. We’ll work on techniques to find angles and develop them into research-based non-fiction stories that have characters, show development and follow a structural, narrative arc from beginning to end. The class is run as a magazine newsroom, with students pitching their stories and workshopping their drafts. We shall also look at how we write differently for different platforms, and at multimedia elements of feature writing, including audio and video.

Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Carry out research and write their own feature stories.
• Find story ideas and conduct interviews to develop in depth profiles.
• Be able to pitch stories and write for the University's print and online student magazine, The Lennon Wall.
• Explore the qualities of storytelling and how they differ from news.
• Identify skills required for writing features for different platforms, including radio/podcasting, film and hybrid platforms.
• Use multimedia elements as a supplement to feature-writing.
• Build a robust vocabulary of longform writing.
• Introduce tools for finding and framing interesting features.
• Practice skills of interviewing for story as well as fact.
• Learn to constructively critique and be critiqued.
• Examine markets for journalism and learn how stories are pitched and sold.