How to write a news feature to fascinate readers

Date:

212013/03

SHENZHEN-On the morning of March 20, 2013, English instructor Priscilla Young from the School of Environment and Energy, a former news feature writer in the US, gave both graduate students and faculty members a workshop on the topic, “How to write a news feature that will engage the reader.”

Majoring in English with a focus on creative writing during her undergraduate studies and working as a freelance news feature writer for several decades in Rhode Island, United States, Young is familiar with news writing, in particular, feature stories.

By taking a fictitious event involving an escaped gorilla entering PKU Shenzhen from a nearby zoo, audiences began to brainstorm how to report this story. Participants were challenged to create an eye-catching headline. Some of the more creative headlines included, “Gorilla also wants a graduate degree”, “Life of gorilla,” a play on words from the popular movie, “Life of Pi” and “Gorilla’s prison break,” inspired from the American TV series, “Prison Break.”

Young emphasized the essential requirements of a good journalist: a curious mind, desire of sharing information with others and hope of changing the world. She introduced the basic elements for storytelling, “the five Ws: who, what, when, where, why.” Next, Young illustrated a common method called the “inverted pyramid” for writing news stories. The widest part at the top represents the most substantial, interesting and important information the writer wants to convey, illustrating that this kind of material should head the article, while the tapering lower portion illustrates that other material should follow in order of diminishing importance.

“Don’t use a ten-dollar word when a 10 cent word will do the job,” Young said to explain the importance of word choice and using language that is easy to understand. “Compared with academic writing, we just use the words that 12 years old can understand,” Young continued. “Draw a picture with words to be descriptive” to make your reader can see the action, the object and event. “Keeping in mind that not how long you write but how powerful you write” Young added.

Young then went on discuss interview skills, which she personally considered the most essential and difficult part of journalism. Participants practiced by interviewing each other about most exciting event in your life, the most important life lesson you have learned or your most interesting travel experience. The purpose of the interview is to get information that you cannot get from other sources, not to have the person explain things that you should know beforehand.

Doris, a student who attended the workshop, commented, “It is really an informative and insightful lecture.” For more resources on writing, Young recommended students visit the online writing lab of Perdue University (owl.english.purdue.edu) and refer to the book, The McGraw Hill guide, writing for college, writing for life.

Written by Bruce Liu (Liu Yichao)
Edited by Gretta Herrin

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How to write a news feature to fascinate readers

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