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What is it???

MAGAZINE AND FEATURE WRITING

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Feature article Hard News StoryMagazine and News features are Follow-up articles on News stories

Focus on immediate events

Longer, creative, and timely Includes the 5 W’s and HYou can be more creative Gets straight to answering the 5

W’s and HDetailed and descriptive Gives the audience a clear

picture.Focus on Human Interest stories which relate to the five sensesMade up of opinions and views but balanced with facts.Aims to give readers pleasure, entertainment, humour, emotion, etc.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FEATURE ARTICLE AND NEWS STORY?

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THE WELL-CRAFTED SENTENCE

Sne is jumping for

joy.

A group of words make up a phrase

Add a subject and a verb, you have a clause

If that clause expresses a complete thought , its called a sentence.

If that clause expresses an incomplete thought, it’s called a subordinate or dependent – attach it to a main clause

Several sentences join together in a paragraph to form a thesis or idea. And several paragraphs form either an essay, report or chapter for a book.

Words are built from letters

1. The intentional Fragment (Piece) – Expresses meaning without a subject

and verb. E.g. What a women! (reader completes the missing words – I think

she is a great women.) e.g. What a dork!

5 BASIC SENTENCE STRUCTURES

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2. The Simple sentence: has a complete thought, expressed in one clause. E.g. Rome has fallen to the

barbarians. It can have more than one subject or verb e.g. Like a freight train, the fullback rumbled and

stumbled into the end zone. A simple sentence can be very short e.g. Trevor wept and very long e.g. I like

pizza, pasta, fired chips, chicken, lamb…

e.g. Neliswe loves going to the beach to sunbathe.There is only one independent clause, and no

dependent clause.

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3. The Complex sentence: has one independent clause and any number of dependent clauses e.g. ‘Where there is no justice, there can be no peace’. (The last clause can stand alone ‘There can be no

peace’ but the first clause needs help ‘where there is no justice’ .

e.g. Although they are miles apart, they keep in contact via email.

This sentence comprises of One independent clause.

And one dependent clause.

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4. The compound sentence: It requires more than one independent clause linked in a variety of ways e.g.

Madonna was once the Holy name of a Blessed Virgin, but then came along a young Italian girl singer from the suburban Detroit. (Either clause can stand alone, can be linked with a comma (,) and conjunction (but,

and… ) or semicolon (;) )

e.g. Thembi went to the salon and Philile went shopping.

There are two independent clauses in this sentence separated by a conjunction.

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5. The compound/complex sentence: one or more subordinate clauses are added to a compound sentence

e.g. Madonna was once the Holy name of a Blessed Virgin, but then came along a young Italian girl singer from the suburban Detroit, who turned gay disco clubs into little

houses of worship.

In the above example there are two independent clauses and one dependent clause.

e.g. Zibu uses her cellphone to play music and Sli sits on the beach with her laptop, which she connects to the

internet using her cellular phone.

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DIFFERENT STYLES OF WRITING FOR MAGAZINES

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• Should not feel like a news story.•Must not seem like an inverted pyramid.•Must end with bang.

StructureFocus on the individual

Introduce the individual in the intro.By doing this you are giving your story a human interest angle and tells

us how this person is dealing with the topic of our feature e.g. the individual has AIDS.

The transitionTakes the reader from the individualised beginning to the larger story. The reporter will answer the question: ‘so what?’ . The transition will

include most of the information given in the lead of a traditional inverted pyramid story. (Containing the 5 W’s and H)

The larger issueAfter the transition, include more facts and statistics about the topic in

the body.The conclusion

Requires a strong finish. Return to the subject you included in the beginning.

WALL STREET JOURNAL

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•Adds sparkle to the inverted pyramid with minimal reorganisation.•Attention focussed on a good ending.

Organise the lead sentenceTraditional inverted pyramid method

Then begin to describe theAction in logical order

First this happenedThen that

ThenThenThenThenThenThen

Then close the story with a kick (must end forcefully).

THE CHAMPAGNE GLASS STRUCTURE

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• Uses story-telling techniques.• A chronological (in order of how it happened) approach.

• The opening paragraph will begin with the story.• Then the events will be listed in order of which they

occurred.• The structure demands a strong, interesting lead

paragraph to draw the reader into the story.• There must be a central theme and weave the events

together so that they have a unity for the reader.• At the end the reader must have a strong sense of the

sequence in which the events occur and an understanding of why this sequence is important?

THE NARRATIVE

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Two way approach:

1. Reporter is present at the event. The reporter will be able to describe sights, sounds, and smells that might be left out of news stories.

2. The reporter and the eyewitness works together closely for an event to produce an on-the-scene story about a particular event. The reporter will spend a lot of time with the eyewitness and understand not only what the eyewitness saw and heard but how he/she felt about the event. The reporter will write up a draft of the event using the words of the eyewitness and will write from his/her point of view. The eyewitness will review it and might make changes.

EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS

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• Anecdotal features

• Suspended Interest features

• Question and answers

Examples were shown

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Instead of using only photographs to support your story, try using other types of graphics.• Numbers – Bar, line, and pie charts and tables can be used to

enhance the readers understanding of the feature.• Location – a data map can be included if your feature requires a

map. The map could stand on its own or include information.

• History and context – Use a timeline, fact or profile box. • Process – Using either pictures or text jointly to show readers how

something works?• Procedure – Show the readers a step-by-step procedure about how

something happened using a procedure chart. E.g. a Tsunami.• Profile – this is where a writer can outline or explain extra

information about an organisation, company or person in a story.

INFORMATION FOR GRAPHICS

Explains events or shows history

Adds to the reader’s understanding to explain

more info about the person in the feature.

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1. IIE.(2011).The Well-Crafted Sentence, LU 3.– Magazine and Feature Writing. Student manual.p70,72

2. IIE.(2011).Different Styles of Writing for Magazines, LU 3. -Magazine and Feature Writing. Student Manual.p73-78

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